| The focus of this investigation was on the strategic planning practices among institutions accredited by the American Association of Bible Colleges (AABC). Strategic planning is a departure from traditional long-range planning in that it concentrates on achieving and maintaining a strategic fit with a changing environment through the development and implementation of a product (programs)/market approach to institutional planning.;The research design was an organizational assessment case study. This study was not concerned with evaluating the quality of individual institutional strategic planning practices but was designed to present an overall picture of strategic planning within the AABC.;The information gathering component of the case study was accomplished through the development and implementation of the Institutional Strategic Planning Assessment Questionnaire (ISPAQ). The research instrument was based on accepted standards of educational strategic planning put fourth in the literature.;The research population consisted of the ninety member institutions of the AABC that held full accredited status as of January 1, 1989. The research instrument was directed towards the presidents of the Bible colleges included in the research population. Sixty-one institutional presidents participated in the research by filling out and returning the completed questionnaires resulting in a response rate of sixty-eight percent.;As a result of this case study the following conclusions were reached: (1) Strategic planning, as defined by the literature was not practiced to any significant degree in forty institutions (60%) responding to the ISPAQ. (2) Strategic planning, as defined by the literature, is generally not practiced as a part or component of existing long-range institutional planning structures. Although strategies can be and were developed through these structures, most institutions remained unsensitized to environments, major trends, product/market opportunities, and did not possess the information and control systems necessary to achieve and maintain a strategic institutional posture. (3) Strategic planning, as defined by the literature, has had a beginning in the AABC to varying degrees at a limited number of institutions. It was found that further sophistication and development was needed in terms of environmental analysis, strategy formulation, organization analysis, strategy formulation, organization design and marketing and control systems design. |
