This paper reopens the question of Corporate Planning (CP) from a political economy perspective by analyzing its evolving role in capitalism. To account for the evolution yet persistent relevance of CP, we analyze the content of Harvard Business Review (HBR) since its foundation in 1922 until 2021 included, using text mining and network analysis techniques.

Our results show that CP found new venues but remains crucial in the process of capital circulation and accumulation. Through Industrial Capitalism, CP used to be conditioned by two types of means of planning identified as means of information and knowledge appropriation (MIKA) and means of spatio-temporal projection (MSTP). The former was used to capture relevant intangibles for the construction and assessment of the plan while the latter were used to deploy the plan and concretely control and organize the activity from production to consumption. From the 1980s on, in a context of ample socioeconomic changes, the spread of digital technologies and the growing relevance of (and capacity to capture) intangibles for large corporations led to a transformation in the temporal orientation of the plan and contributed to change not only the how managers plan but also the immediate purpose of planning.