The following points highlight the objectives of a corporate organisation. The objectives are:- 1. Primary and Secondary Objectives 2. Short-Run and Long-Run Objectives 3. Short-Term and Long-Term Objectives 4. Structure-Wise Objectives.
1. Primary and Secondary Objectives:
While primary objective of a company may be either market dominance or profit and/or business expansion, the major secondary objectives are—bonus to employees, community development projects, education and research, and social responsibilities.
According to one management expert, profit is the primary objective as it fulfils obligations to shareholders and provides an adequate cash flow for corporate renewal, and secondary objectives describe the company’s future identity.
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2. Short-Run and Long-Run Objectives:
The short-run objectives are, sometimes, the means to achieve long-run objectives. For example, the short-run objective of market penetration could be a strategy to attain the long-run objective of profit improvement or market development for dominance.
3. Short-Term and Long-Term Objectives:
The short-term objectives, as the name implies, are similar to short-run objectives. In some companies, the secondary objectives are also pursued as long-term objectives. But that does not mean that long-term objectives are secondary objectives. Likewise, ‘profit’ is one of the long-term objectives, yet it is essentially the primary objective of many companies.
4. Structure-Wise Objectives:
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The organisations with hierarchical structures normally have a ‘hierarchy of objectives’ to be pursued at different levels, viz.
Although objectives are given specific descriptive terms, their categorisations may be of several types; for example, tangible and intangible objectives, individual and group objectives, national and international objectives, and so on.
Social and economic objectives encompass promoting the interests of different groups of people like the shareholders, workers, consumers, local population and the general public. The economic and social objectives may conflict with each other. Again some of the social objectives may conflict with each other.
Further, economic objectives may hinder some of the social objectives. Fulfilment of some of the social objectives may offset the advantages of economic objectives. It is, therefore, necessary to reconcile the conflicting objectives in order to achieve a proper trade-off between the different objectives.
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Again, the pursuit of large firms to attain international objectives like market share and growth at competitive prices may adversely affect its national objectives of social priorities. In such case, proper balancing of objectives is a necessity.