Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
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Case Study Description of Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This?
A new concern is beginning to gain notoriety in society: human trafficking. This issue, which can result in slavery, should concern businesses. Almost 30 million slaves exist globally today. The fact that human trafficking is a $32 billion business indicates either indifference for human rights or an ignorance of the injustice occurring. Even though companies may be against the idea of human trafficking, they may not recognize that they could be contributing to this problem through their business operations and relationships. However, companies can exercise social responsibility by using their influence over suppliers and business partners to prohibit human trafficking. This article examines the extent to which companies are involved in combating human trafficking, and helps companies identify where they are at risk for involvement with human trafficking. Moreover, steps are suggested to prevent human trafficking from occurring within company operations and supply chains.
Swot Analysis of "Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This?" written by Katherine Taken Smith, Teresa Betts includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Trafficking Human facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Supply chain and Global Business.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? casestudy better are - – there is backlash against globalization, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, wage bills are increasing, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, technology disruption, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This?
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Trafficking Human, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Trafficking Human 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Trafficking Human
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Global Business field.
4. Making a Global Business topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Trafficking Human
Strengths Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Trafficking Human in Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? Harvard Business Review case study are -
Innovation driven organization
– Trafficking Human is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Trafficking Human has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Trafficking Human 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
– Trafficking Human is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
High brand equity
– Trafficking Human has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Trafficking Human to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Training and development
– Trafficking Human has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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 Trafficking Human
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Trafficking Human does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Trafficking Human 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Trafficking Human 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 Trafficking Human is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Trafficking Human 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Global Business industry
– Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Trafficking Human to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Global Business industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Trafficking Human to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Trafficking Human in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? are -
Need for greater diversity
– Trafficking Human 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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 Trafficking Human has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Trafficking Human 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Trafficking Human 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. Trafficking Human 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This?, it seems that the employees of Trafficking Human 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, Katherine Taken Smith, Teresa Betts suggests that, Trafficking Human 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Trafficking Human 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Trafficking Human, firm in the HBR case study Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This?, in the dynamic environment Trafficking Human has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Trafficking Human has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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 Trafficking Human 's lucrative customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Trafficking Human is planning to shift buying processes online.
Opportunities Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? | 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? are -
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. Trafficking Human 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 Trafficking Human 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 Trafficking Human to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Trafficking Human is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Trafficking Human 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 Global Business segment.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Trafficking Human 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, Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This?, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Trafficking Human 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Trafficking Human to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Developing new processes and practices
– Trafficking Human can develop new processes and procedures in Global Business 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Trafficking Human 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Trafficking Human 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Trafficking Human can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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.
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 Trafficking Human 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 Global Business industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Trafficking Human 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. Trafficking Human 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Trafficking Human in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Global Business segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Threats Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Trafficking Human has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Global Business industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Trafficking Human needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Global Business 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Trafficking Human in the Global Business industry. The Global Business 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Trafficking Human 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 Global Business industry regulations.
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 Trafficking Human business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This?, Trafficking Human may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Global Business .
Increasing wage structure of Trafficking Human
– 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 Trafficking Human.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Trafficking Human 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? .
Consumer confidence and its impact on Trafficking Human 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Trafficking Human 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 Trafficking Human with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Environmental challenges
– Trafficking Human 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. Trafficking Human can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Global Business industry.
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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Global Business field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Trafficking Human can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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 Your Company May Unwittingly be Conducting Business with Human Traffickers: How Can You Prevent This? 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 Trafficking Human needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
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