Managerial Activities and Organizational Performance: An Empirical Study in 26 High Tech Plants

Abstract

Managerial activities like planning have been advocated as a help in managing the organization’s environment. If effective, such activities are assumed to improve the performance of an organization. This paper reports the findings of research involving twenty-six plants of a large electronic high tech firm. The results suggest that different types of management activities have mixed but significant impact upon three measures of plant performance. Externally oriented activities, including planning appear to most significantly impact subjective valuations of the supportiveness of a plant’s internal operating climate. Several implications of these findings are explored.