INTRODUCTION:

The corporate vision is a very important strategic management tool. It has been discussed and developed throughout centuries since the initial stages of the civilizations. However, many of those early cases were based on impact of vision to the personal success rather than applications on business. charisma is an early concept of vision, which is discussed about the ability to make miracles or predict future events. Both concepts were highly influenced by religious and political leadership (Krantabutra, 2008)

Before the 1980s, vision was highly recognized as a social concept and widely used with political and religious leadership. As a result of development in the leadership theories, vision has been recognized as a business concept during last two decades of the 20^th century. Modern business concept such as “visionar Y leadership” and “visionary companies” were taken into account and new paradigms have been practiced in the business field during that period. (Bratianu and Balanescu, 2008)

As the word “vision” suggested, it is an image of how the organization sees itself in future. It is a dream and aspirating of the organization which holds for its future. It might therefore be difficult for the organization to actually achieve its vision even in the long term, but it provides the direction to work towards it. When people talk about shared vision in organizations, it is expected that members of the organization share a common mental image of the future, which integrates their efforts towards that future state. (Krantabutra, 2008)

Vision needs to be appropriate according to the nature of the organization. On the other hand it should reflect the future demand. If vision becomes obsolete, it could lead to disasters (Eriksson, 2008). Each and every organization should have a vision in order to have survival and growth in the market. However development and implementation process to the vision might differ, according to the investment level and structure of the organization.

The purpose of this research paper is to identify the current knowledge about corporate vision of Indian SMEs through a review of the theoretical and empirical literature. As per the general view, SMEs do not take considerable attempts to follow well developed and standardized business procedures like large companies. However SMEs should have a vision for either maximizing their revenues or maximizing their profits. If not so then there will be a problem towards survivals in the market.

Small and Medium Enterprises SMEs play a critical role in economic development as they provide a considerable number of employment opportunities and generate a large proportion of technical innovations. In developing economy like India, this sector is considered to be a source of innovation , flexibility and economic development .

SMEs are defined in different ways in different parts of the world. Some definitions are based on the term assets, while others use employment, shareholders funds, sales and the revenue as the hybrid criterion. According to the Ministry of Micro, small and Medium Enterprises (2013), Small and medium business entities are classified on the basis of their investment size. The classification of manufacturing enterprises is based on their investment in plant and machineries while service enterprises are classified with respect to their investment in equipment.

In accordance with annual reports (2012-13) of Ministry of Micro Small and Medium Enterprises, total number of enterprises in MSME sector was estimated to be 361.76 lakh with total employment of 805.24 lakh. However majority of them are recorded as unregistered organizations and their contribution to the economy has not been properly valued. SMEs include organizations such as proprietorships, hindu undivided families, association of persons, co-operatives societies, partnerships, corporations and other legal entities.

Development and Implementation of Corporate Vision:

Effective strategic management begins with the organization clearly articulating its vision for the future. The vision of the organization refers to the broad category of long term intention that the organization wishes to pursue. It is broad, all inclusive and futuristic (Ireland et al -2009)

Table 1.1 – Classification of Micro, Small and medium Enterprises

Description	Manufacturing Enterprises	Services Enterprises
Micro Enterprises	Does not exceed twenty five lakh rupees	Does not exceed twenty five lakh rupees
Small Enterprises	More than twenty five lakh rupees but does not exceed five crore rupees	Ten lakh rupees but does not exceed two crore rupees
Medium Enterprises	More than five crore rupees but does not exceed ten crore rupees	More than two crore rupees but does not exceed five crore rupees

Kantabutra and Avery (2005) found that visions characterized by the attributes such as brevity, clarity, stability, abstractness, future orientation, challenge, desirability and ability to inspire, and containing customer and staff satisfaction imagery. However there is no proper, generally accepted definition over the corporate vision. According to Kantabutra (2008), vision is still not defined in a generally agreed upon manner, because various researchers have defined it differently based on the nature of their studies. He also noted that vision was about the future , encouraged people to act toward a common goal , provided a better direction and became very useful for strategic planning . Illesanmi (2011) emphasized that vision is a difficult thing to describe and no wonder most executives find it difficult to formulate a clear vision for their organizations. A strong correlation can be identified between organizational performances and customer and staff satisfaction , when sharing vision among leader and followers. Shared visions directly create a positive impact on overall organizational performance through staff and customer satisfaction.

The vision should be external and market oriented and should express preferably in aspirational terms. Corporate vision of an organization must be operationalized through the vision statement which must also be measurable. A quantified vision statement provides clear focus for the strategic management. However many organizations visions are too vague. (Kaplan et al., 2008). In addition to that some of them are not forward looking ,too broad , uninspiring , not distinctive and too reliant on superlative. An effectives worded strategic vision might be graphic, directional, focused, flexible, feasible, desirable , and easy to communicate . (Thompson et al., 2010)

CORPORATE VISION OF INDIAN SMEs:-

The success or failure of small and medium enterprises is highly influenced by the personality and leadership characteristics of owner or board of directors. These companies basically target to enter to a single market or a small number of markets with a limited range or products or services because virtually they are unable to compete with existing companies. Practicing of strategic management tools on these businesses are considerably at low level when comparing with larger organizations (Adriana, 2011).

In many cases, experiences of the owners are very influential to make direct contact with the market place. Similarly values, expectations and leadership characteristics of the owner or board of directors are also critical to success or failure of the business. Many researchers argued that strategic management methods and techniques applied in large companies will not work in small firms. Strategies of many small and medium size enterprises are intuitive or empirical and not kept as written documents and are subject to change in accordance with attitudes and knowledge of the owner (Adrina, 2011). Strategic planning is not widely practiced among SMEs, because they do not have the time or staff to invest on the same. However it is further noted that SMEs were increasingly turning their attention towards strategic planning practices (Neneh and Vanzyl , 2012).

Indian SMEs, are suffering from inherent bottlenecks such as traditional technologies, financial problems, low scale of economies, mostly family-owned enterprises and insufficient division of labour. As a result of this, there is a lethargic growth in the SME sector (Prajapati, 2008). These organizations don’t follow proper strategies like large firms. However, in order to survive in the market, they have to adopt new marketing strategies as well as new innovative techniques for the product development. As they don’t have layers between the decisions makers and the people who implement these decisions, new strategies can be easily practiced (Trivedi, 2013). Gautam and Singh stated that Indian small firms are now coming forward to accepting professional managerial techniques. They are becoming out- ward looking from inward looking and competition is greatly acknowledged. Therefore it is needed to practice proper strategies to satisfy the customers, to capture the market and meeting challenges in the business environment.

Knight (2008) States, the success of SMEs which have already entered to the international market depend in large part on the formulation and implementation of strategy. Strategy reflects the way of accepting challenges and opportunities posed by the competitive business environment. However evidence of planning strategies of SMEs show that they prefer to focus on short term goals rather than long term goals. (Avram and Kuhne, 2008) Normally small firms will have to find opportunities and strategies that are mostly appropriate to the particular resources and competencies of the organization. Their visioning process is also influenced by experiences, knowledge, attitudes and expectations of the owner or senior management (Johnson et al. 2009). According to the federation of Indian chambers of commerce and industry (2012), Indian SMEs are usually single or multi promoter or a partner venture. Decision making process of these organizations is dependent on their experience and education. Similarly human resource practices of these organizations are in a very low level. There is no clear process for segregation of duties and delegation of authorities. In many cases business plans of these organizations are superficial and not widely covered in all essential areas. However, business practices of medium typed private limited companies are somewhat different. According to the company act 1956, before a company is registered, it is essential to submit Memorandum of Association and Articles of Association. Memorandum of Association defines the company's relationship with outside worlds and Articles disclose the regulations for the internal management of the company. The objects clause is the most important clause in the memorandum of Association. It is disclose how company’s money is going to be invested under the permitted range of activities. (Bulchndani, 2010). Therefore they have to be clear in their future targets well the corporate vision.

Charantimath (2009) Identified some common reasons with SMEs to avoid strategic planning:-

1. As small business, they believe they don’t need strategic planning.

2. They do not have time for strategic planning.

3. They believe strategic planning might limit their choices.

4. They believe strategic planning may be wrong for their business .Some instances, non-practicing of strategic management tools will lead to sickness of SMEs. On other hand, Pasanen (2005) stated that lack of marketing skills and lack of prior managerial experiences of entrepreneurs are highly responsible for the failures of Indian SMEs. Therefore strategic management practices are very vital for survival of SMEs also.

However there are a very few number of researches done in the field of corporate vision of SMEs in India. As per general belief, most of the SMEs don’t have proper vision and strategy development process due to their inherent issues such as low investment, improper decision making and lack of knowledge about markets. Due to feasibility problems with investigations, research institutions as well as individual researchers have ignored this critical area form studies. Government institution are also not much concerned about this area when formulating development plans. Even though, all the SMEs as well as regulatory bodies should accept the importance of corporate vision because it will play a critical role in improving and sustaining organizational performance.

CONCLUSION:

The literature review suggests that vision has been critical to organizations when formulating strategies to achieve their goals. In addition to that it will make a positive impact on performance outcomes. However vision has not been properly defined in the literature. When coming to all of these definitions, it can be concluded that, vision is a corporate strategic tool which relates with future status of an organization.

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are backbone of the Indian Economy. Therefore these organizations should have a corporate vision for their growth and survival. However we know very little about corporate vision of Indian SMEs as it has not been properly investigated. There as a huge research gap in this area which has to be fulfilled immediately, because it will critically affect development plans of the country. It is recommended to design and undertake exploratory as well as descriptive researches in this area, to identify barriers and possibilities within the SMEs to develop and implement their corporate vision.

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Received on 04.10.2014 Modified on 25.02.2015

Asian J. Management; 6(2): April-June, 2015 page 75-78

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5763.2015.00012.8