Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A)
A major sports league has decided to run its season opening game in Mexico City. When the teams arrive in the country four days before the event, two of Team A's star players are kidnapped. The (A) case provides relevant background information about the league, the team, the players, and the planned activities surrounding the season opening game. It also describes what is initially known about the crisis situation. In cases (B) through (F), additional information is revealed as the crisis unfolds. With each case, students are given important issues and questions to consider and discuss.
Swot Analysis of "Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A)" written by George Foster includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that League Season facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Crisis management, Risk management and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) casestudy better are - – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, wage bills are increasing, increasing commodity prices, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
geopolitical disruptions, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the League Season, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which League Season 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 Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of League Season
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of League Season
Strengths Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of League Season in Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– League Season 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 Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Strong track record of project management
– League Season 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
– League Season has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the League Season 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.
Organizational Resilience of League Season
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that League Season does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Successful track record of launching new products
– League Season has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. League Season 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.
Innovation driven organization
– League Season is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) 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.
Ability to lead change in Leadership & Managing People field
– League Season 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 League Season in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Ability to recruit top talent
– League Season is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of League Season in the sector have low bargaining power. Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps League Season to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of League Season in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) 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 Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as League Season is planning to shift buying processes online.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, League Season 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, League Season is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) HBR case study mentions - League Season 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) 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 League Season 's lucrative customers.
Lack of clear differentiation of League Season products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, League Season needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, League Season 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. League Season 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) 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 League Season has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of League Season, firm in the HBR case study Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A), it seems that the employees of League Season 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 dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of League Season supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A), it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left League Season vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Opportunities Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) | 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 Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) are -
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for League Season in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Leadership & Managing People segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Buying journey improvements
– League Season can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, League Season 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, League Season can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that League Season operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.
Leveraging digital technologies
– League Season 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for League Season 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 League Season to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at League Season 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 Leadership & Managing People segment.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, League Season is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) 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.
Loyalty marketing
– League Season 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Leadership & Managing People industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. League Season can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– League Season 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 Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help League Season to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of League Season has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help League Season to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) case study. League Season can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for League Season 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.
Threats Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on League Season 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– League Season has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, League Season needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Leadership & Managing People 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.
Regulatory challenges
– League Season 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 Leadership & Managing People industry regulations.
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 wage structure of League Season
– 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 League Season.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– League Season 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.
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 League Season.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that League Season is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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. League Season needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A), League Season may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Leadership & Managing People .
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Leadership & Managing People field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. League Season 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. League Season 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– League Season 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) 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 Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) 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 Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) 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 Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) 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 Crisis Management: North American Sporting League Visits Mexico City (A) 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 League Season needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
