Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Organizational Development
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm
After nearly 100 years as a mid-size regional law firm, Duane Morris entered a period of spectacular growth led by CEO Sheldon Bonovitz. Originally founded by Quakers, the firm had a distinct organizational culture featuring a number of unique or unusual business practices: a transparent and flexible compensation system, practice-group integration across multiple offices, ancillary businesses, early adoption of financial reporting software, and consensus-based decision making. The firm was proud of its corporate culture and sought to maintain it as it grew, bringing in only people who would fit the culture, in small groups. In 2005, the firm completed its first merger, taking over a 64-person San Francisco firm. Growth was necessary to remain competitive, but could Duane Morris maintain its unique culture while bringing on large numbers of new attorneys?
Swot Analysis of "Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm" written by Boris Groysberg, Robin Abrahams includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Duane Morris facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Growth strategy, Leading teams, Mergers & acquisitions, Organizational culture, Organizational structure and Organizational Development.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm casestudy better are - – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, geopolitical disruptions, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is backlash against globalization, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Duane Morris, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Duane Morris 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 Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Duane Morris
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 Duane Morris
Strengths Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Duane Morris in Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm Harvard Business Review case study are -
Innovation driven organization
– Duane Morris is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Duane Morris has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Duane Morris has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Duane Morris has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
High brand equity
– Duane Morris has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Duane Morris to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Duane Morris in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Duane Morris has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm 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.
Organizational Resilience of Duane Morris
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Duane Morris does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Strong track record of project management
– Duane Morris is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Analytics focus
– Duane Morris is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by Boris Groysberg, Robin Abrahams can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Organizational Development industry
– Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Duane Morris to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Organizational Development industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Duane Morris to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Duane Morris 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Duane Morris is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Weaknesses Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm are -
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Boris Groysberg, Robin Abrahams suggests that, Duane Morris 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 Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm 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 Duane Morris 's lucrative customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm HBR case study mentions - Duane Morris 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Duane Morris 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Duane Morris needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm 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 Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Duane Morris is planning to shift buying processes online.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm, is just above the industry average. Duane Morris needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Duane Morris 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Organizational Development strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Duane Morris has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm 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 Duane Morris has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Opportunities Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm | 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 Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Duane Morris 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Duane Morris has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Duane Morris to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm case study. Duane Morris can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Duane Morris 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Organizational Development industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Duane Morris can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Duane Morris can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Buying journey improvements
– Duane Morris can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Duane Morris 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 Duane Morris to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Duane Morris in the consumer business. Now Duane Morris can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Manufacturing automation
– Duane Morris 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Duane Morris to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Duane Morris to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
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. Duane Morris 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. Duane Morris 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Duane Morris can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Organizational Development segment.
Threats Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Duane Morris high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Duane Morris with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Duane Morris in the Organizational Development industry. The Organizational Development industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Duane Morris.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Duane Morris 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.
Increasing wage structure of Duane Morris
– 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 Duane Morris.
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.
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. Duane Morris can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Environmental challenges
– Duane Morris 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. Duane Morris can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Organizational Development industry.
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 Duane Morris business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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. Duane Morris 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 Duane Morris is facing in Organizational Development sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm 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 Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm 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 Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm 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 Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm 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 Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm 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 Duane Morris needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
