IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Organizational Development
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace
Explores how IBM incorporated diversity into its business strategy, making the case that workforce diversity is critical to marketing its products and services to its customers. In the early 1990s, Ted Childs, vice-president of Workforce Diversity, proposed to CEO Lou Gerstner the creation of eight diversity task forces. Delves into the organizational and cultural impediments to starting a diversity task force initiative and how IBM overcame these obstacles to implement an effective diversity strategy. After the task forces were established, they underwent tremendous growth and became global in scope. Childs also faces the challenge of taking a U.S.-based diversity strategy and applying it to IBM's global organization. Teaching Purpose: To demonstrate how a company can implement an effective diversity strategy and integrate it into its overall business strategy.
Swot Analysis of "IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace" written by David A. Thomas, Ayesha Kanji includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Diversity Childs facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Globalization, Human resource management, Leadership, Strategy execution and Organizational Development.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace casestudy better are - – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing energy prices, increasing transportation and logistics costs, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, wage bills are increasing, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Diversity Childs, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Diversity Childs 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 IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Diversity Childs
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 Diversity Childs
Strengths IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Diversity Childs in IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace Harvard Business Review case study are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Diversity Childs is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace case study a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
High brand equity
– Diversity Childs has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Diversity Childs to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to lead change in Organizational Development field
– Diversity Childs is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Diversity Childs in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Learning organization
- Diversity Childs 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 Diversity Childs is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Diversity Childs 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 IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Diversity Childs 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.
Training and development
– Diversity Childs has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Organizational Development industry
– IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Diversity Childs to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Organizational Development industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Diversity Childs to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Innovation driven organization
– Diversity Childs is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace 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)
– Diversity Childs 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 IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Diversity Childs is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace 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 IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace are -
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace, 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Diversity Childs has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Diversity Childs even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Need for greater diversity
– Diversity Childs 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 IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace HBR case study mentions - Diversity Childs 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 Diversity Childs 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, Diversity Childs 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace 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 Diversity Childs 's lucrative customers.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace 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 Diversity Childs has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Diversity Childs 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace, it seems that the employees of Diversity Childs 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Diversity Childs is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Organizational Development segment. Diversity Childs needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Diversity Childs to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Opportunities IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace | 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 IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace are -
Developing new processes and practices
– Diversity Childs 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Diversity Childs 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, IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Diversity Childs 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Diversity Childs can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
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. Diversity Childs 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. Diversity Childs 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.
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. Diversity Childs can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Diversity Childs 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Diversity Childs 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.
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. Diversity Childs can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Loyalty marketing
– Diversity Childs has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Diversity Childs is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Diversity Childs 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 Diversity Childs to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Diversity Childs can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Diversity Childs operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Organizational Development sector.
Threats IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace are -
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Diversity Childs needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Organizational Development industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Diversity Childs business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Diversity Childs 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Diversity Childs 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.
Environmental challenges
– Diversity Childs 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. Diversity Childs can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Organizational Development industry.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace, Diversity Childs may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Organizational Development .
Increasing wage structure of Diversity Childs
– 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 Diversity Childs.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Diversity Childs 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Diversity Childs is facing in Organizational Development sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, 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. Diversity Childs 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.
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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Diversity Childs 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 IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace .
Weighted SWOT Analysis of IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace 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 IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace 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 IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace 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 IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace 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 IBM's Diversity Strategy: Bridging the Workplace and the Marketplace 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 Diversity Childs needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
