Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Organizational Development
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign
Hospital CEO Paul Levy confronts an SEIU unionization drive via a "corporate campaign" aimed at undercutting the hospital's relationships with key internal and external constituencies. Having shepherded one of Boston's top teaching hospitals much of the way through a painful turnaround, but with the hospital still in a fragile financial condition, Levy must formulate a strategy and tactics to deal with the impending initiative by the SEIU, the fastest growing union in the United States with 2.1 million members and a huge organizing budget. The union will likely seek the hospital's agreement to a "neutrality agreement," under which, unlike traditional union processes, management would effectively be silenced during the organizing process. Levy is concerned that the hospital's strategy of innovation and flexibility would be imperiled by an SEIU-unionized workforce.
Swot Analysis of "Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign" written by James K. Sebenius includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Levy Seiu facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Labor, Negotiations, Strategy and Organizational Development.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign casestudy better are - – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, technology disruption, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, geopolitical disruptions, there is backlash against globalization,
cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Levy Seiu, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Levy Seiu operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Levy Seiu
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Organizational Development field.
4. Making a Organizational Development topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Levy Seiu
Strengths Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Levy Seiu in Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign Harvard Business Review case study are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Levy Seiu are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Levy Seiu in the sector have low bargaining power. Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Levy Seiu to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Levy Seiu in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Organizational Resilience of Levy Seiu
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Levy Seiu does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Organizational Development industry
– Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Levy Seiu to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Organizational Development industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Levy Seiu to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Digital Transformation in Organizational Development segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Levy Seiu digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Levy Seiu has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Levy Seiu has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive segment. Secondly the value chain collaborators of the firm in Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Strong track record of project management
– Levy Seiu is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Levy Seiu has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Learning organization
- Levy Seiu is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Levy Seiu is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Training and development
– Levy Seiu has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Weaknesses Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign are -
Need for greater diversity
– Levy Seiu has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign HBR case study mentions - Levy Seiu takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Levy Seiu has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Levy Seiu has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign, in the dynamic environment Levy Seiu has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Levy Seiu has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Levy Seiu has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign that the firm needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department in the case Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Levy Seiu is planning to shift buying processes online.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Levy Seiu has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign, it seems that the employees of Levy Seiu don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, James K. Sebenius suggests that, Levy Seiu is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Levy Seiu 's lucrative customers.
Opportunities Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign are -
Manufacturing automation
– Levy Seiu can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Organizational Development segment. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Developing new processes and practices
– Levy Seiu can develop new processes and procedures in Organizational Development industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Levy Seiu in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Organizational Development segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Levy Seiu is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign case study suggests that firm can utilize new technology to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Levy Seiu can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Levy Seiu has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Levy Seiu to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Levy Seiu can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Organizational Development industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Levy Seiu can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Levy Seiu can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Buying journey improvements
– Levy Seiu can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign suggest that firm can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Levy Seiu can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Levy Seiu operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Organizational Development sector.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Levy Seiu can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Levy Seiu to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Levy Seiu to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Levy Seiu can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help, as suggested in case study, Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Threats Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Levy Seiu can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate prominent markets illustrated in HBR case study Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign .
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Levy Seiu with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Levy Seiu will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Levy Seiu is facing in Organizational Development sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Levy Seiu business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Levy Seiu can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the field.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Regulatory challenges
– Levy Seiu needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Organizational Development industry regulations.
Increasing wage structure of Levy Seiu
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Levy Seiu.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Levy Seiu in the Organizational Development sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Levy Seiu demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Organizational Development field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Levy Seiu can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Environmental challenges
– Levy Seiu needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Levy Seiu can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Organizational Development industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Paul Levy: Confronting a Corporate Campaign is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Levy Seiu needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
