Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Finance & Accounting
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures
This case deals with the issues of the corporation's organizational structure and capital structure. Jack Wright and the Mega Corporation board must consider a proposal to eliminate a large number of subsidiary companies to simplify the organization and another proposal to issue corporate bonds, the proceeds of which would be used to repurchase a large block of the company's outstanding shares.
Swot Analysis of "Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures" written by John L. Colley, Wallace Stettinius includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Wright Jack facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Compensation, Financial management, Labor, Operations management, Regulation and Finance & Accounting.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures casestudy better are - – increasing commodity prices, technology disruption, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, there is backlash against globalization, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google,
wage bills are increasing, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Wright Jack, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Wright Jack 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 Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Wright Jack
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Finance & Accounting field.
4. Making a Finance & Accounting topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Wright Jack
Strengths Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Wright Jack in Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures Harvard Business Review case study are -
Strong track record of project management
– Wright Jack is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Training and development
– Wright Jack has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Wright Jack in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Innovation driven organization
– Wright Jack is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
High brand equity
– Wright Jack has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Wright Jack to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Wright Jack has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Wright Jack 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Wright Jack is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Wright Jack 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Wright Jack 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 Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Diverse revenue streams
– Wright Jack is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures 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.
Learning organization
- Wright Jack 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 Wright Jack is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Weaknesses Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Wright Jack 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 dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures 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 Wright Jack has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Wright Jack 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Wright Jack 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures, in the dynamic environment Wright Jack has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Wright Jack has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Wright Jack, firm in the HBR case study Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Need for greater diversity
– Wright Jack 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures, is just above the industry average. Wright Jack 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 bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, John L. Colley, Wallace Stettinius suggests that, Wright Jack 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Wright Jack is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Finance & Accounting segment. Wright Jack needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Wright Jack to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Finance & Accounting 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.
Opportunities Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures | 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 Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Wright Jack 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 Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Wright Jack to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Wright Jack 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 Finance & Accounting segment.
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. Wright Jack can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
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 Wright Jack 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Wright Jack can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Developing new processes and practices
– Wright Jack can develop new processes and procedures in Finance & Accounting 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Finance & Accounting industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Wright Jack can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Wright Jack is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Finance & Accounting industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Wright Jack 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. Wright Jack 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Wright Jack 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Wright Jack 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Wright Jack 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.
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 Wright Jack in the consumer business. Now Wright Jack can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures are -
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Wright Jack in the Finance & Accounting industry. The Finance & Accounting 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.
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 Wright Jack business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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 Wright Jack.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Finance & Accounting field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Wright Jack can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Wright Jack 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.
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. Wright Jack needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Finance & Accounting industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Wright Jack 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Wright Jack 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.
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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Wright Jack is facing in Finance & Accounting sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Wright Jack has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Finance & Accounting industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Wright Jack needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Finance & Accounting sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Wright Jack 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 Wright Jack
– 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 Wright Jack.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures 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 Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures 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 Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures 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 Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures 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 Corporate Governance: The Jack Wright Series #8-Corporate and Capital Structures 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 Wright Jack needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.