European Journal of Scientific Research - EuroJournals

439 Cihat Polat
within the forecasting discipline [see Sanders & Ritzman, 1991; Bunn & Wright, 1991 for
gaining more perspective about judgemental forecasting]. Management knowledge and
understanding about future events and trends can therefore be incorporated into forecasts.
On the other hand, no strategic planning is expected to reach its goal without considering the
future (state of a specific circumstance).
Summary and Conclusion
The paper has discussed in detail the various areas in which forecasting has the potential capability to
use as a strategic decision tool in the strategic context. More specifically, the paper has pointed out the
potential internal and external decision areas where forecasting can extensively be used for strategic
decisions as an essential support tool. The paper pointed out the central role of forecasting function as
regard to how it provides the critical needs of information with the strategic management, which is the
key to strategic managerial decisions and the forecasting function concentrates on the production of it
by the means of various techniques. It has also highlighted the criticism raised about the applicability
of forecasting to strategic management. As a general conclusion it can be said that forecasting has a
major role and the potential capability to use in many of the decision areas; therefore, it can easily be
used for functional and strategic decision-making in these areas.
However, forecasting is an expertise area and it requires technical knowledge, reasoning, and
the ability to analyse and judge, and an infrastructure in order to obtain the expected benefits from it.
“Forecasts may be needed for prices, costs, events (such as new laws or regulations, entry of
competitors, or the shortage of critical resources), or the advent of new technologies.” [Krajewski &
Ritzman, 1993]. Thereby, forecasting has a capability to be used almost in every steps of strategic and
functional management. It has a substantial potential in terms of capabilities that it has. Being different
from many other decision tools, its main capability lies in producing and providing information about
the future, which most of the strategic decision processes are directly concerned with. Forecasting
contributes significantly to building up a background and stand for strategic decisions. In this sense,
forecasting is more like a collection of essential support procedures in the background, which feed the
information required by strategic managers. However, due to variety of reasons, though it is applied
widely in many developed countries, it is not explicitly expressed its importance, functionality, and the
problem domains that it can be applied to. As there exist many academic journals, conferences, and
institutions specific to forecasting, it is even rarely the case to see academic articles in most of the
developing countries e.g. Turkey in spite of its potential.