THE STRATEGIC PLANNING OF SMES IN MALAYSIA: A VIEW OF EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENTAL SCANNING

The business world today is getting more competitive and many companies are looking for ways to survive in the market competition especially Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs). This research was aimed at investigating whether formal strategic planning is relevant to SMEs and whether the strategic planning model suggested by Wheelen and Hunger (2008) is applicable to SMEs in the Asian context and in particular the Malaysian context. The main focus was to determine how important external environment scanning was to SMEs in the Northern states of Malaysia and do SMEs perform the external environment scanning which resemble the Wheelen and Hunger (2008) strategic planning model. The sample of the research comprised of SMEs in the Northern states of Malaysia which covered Perlis, Kedah and Penang. The population of the samples was derived from the directory of SMEs from the website. A purposive sampling was used and a cross sectional study was conducted where data was collected over a period of weeks through mail questionnaire and individual administrated questionnaires. The result of the research suggested that most SMEs do have some form of formal strategic planning. Further to this, it also indicated that environment scanning is getting more attention from the SME in today's competitive market. The findings suggested that most of the SMEs do have strategic planning which resembles the Wheelen and Hunger Strategic Planning Model. There is a strong indication that the model of Wheelen and Hunger Strategic Planning is applicable to the practice of SMEs in the Northern region in Malaysia.