The economic crisis and financial crisis have had a great impact on UK companies, their performance, and profitability. The main changes take place in the priorities and strategic goals of companies. In contrast to the previous time, many companies introduce strict economic measures aimed at safe resources and survive in difficult economic conditions. Some UK companies prefer to avoid huge investments in outside projects and taking. Also, these companies avoid loans using their own resources and capabilities. Their mission statements and objectives changed towards savings and effective use of financial resources rather than development and growth opportunities. The UK companies try to sustain their market position and remain competitive in difficult market conditions.
Because the company never knows what is going to happen, the manager must deal with contingencies. The question, what would happen if financial markets or competitors’ policies change in a specific manner, is very important. For many producers, time is one of the common means of classifying new objectives. There are long-range, intermediate, and short-range needs and demands. In this way, the company can explore the planning horizon — the period of time for which the manager is predicting a marketing environment within which a marketing program will be introduced. For some marketing objectives, the horizon is quite distant where the planning may extend three years or longer (Dunkley 2009).
The mission of some companies is to save jobs and provide employees with substantial income and regular pays. The job of creating realistic goals and objectives is certainly not simple. The company typically has many goals, some of which are short-run and others long-run, and some of which are well-matched, whereas others engender conflict. In view of the multiple objectives, confusion often arises in both planning and action. During a period of crisis, market potential and purchase decisions presuppose a specific period of time. Financial efficiency is measured on the basis of sales or profits over time, and new strategic programs are laid out in terms of a time period — a quarter or a year. Though, the time aspect may be considered in another way. New financial planning rests on the sales forecast, which is a consideration of future market changes. As a result, the strategic policy is involved in the determination of expectations (Dunkley 2009).
Mission and objectives are determined goals and are related to the means and inputs to their achievement. If the means are insufficient, objectives have to be scaled down. It is the corporate commitment of financial resources that indicates whether objectives seem reasonable. Another measurement of the relationship between goals and missions stems from the fact that the company does not have a single corporate goal; it has multiple goals. Thus, a choice that at first appears to be a compromise among conflicting goals actually creates a super-goal: to remain on the market and overcome the financial crisis (Macalister 2009).
In sum, financial crisis and market changes force UK companies to save resources and economize. The changes in missions and objectives show that stable position and survival are the main priorities of UK companies today. This goal is the weighted average of all corporate objectives rather than a single goal. A new financial environment necessitates the classification of a company’s goal or objective; but lately, there has been a change in the perception of the market. Therefore, a company first specifies goals and then develops objectives to carry them out, thus being able to achieve the goals.
References
Dunkley, J. 2009. Financial crisis: UK job losses. The Telegraph. Web.
Macalister, T. 2009. UK green companies facing cash crisis.The Guardian. Web.