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Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution

Case Study Description of Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division


Describes a senior management team's strategic decision-making process. The division president faces three options for redesigning the process to address several key concerns. The president has extensive quantitative and qualitative data about the process to guide him as he and the senior team attempt to make improvements.

Authors :: David A. Garvin, Michael A. Roberto

Topics :: Leadership & Managing People

Tags :: Decision making, Developing employees, Leadership, Leading teams, Strategic planning, SWOT Analysis, SWOT Matrix, TOWS, Weighted SWOT Analysis

Swot Analysis of "Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division" written by David A. Garvin, Michael A. Roberto includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Division Process facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Decision making, Developing employees, Leadership, Leading teams, Strategic planning and Leadership & Managing People.


Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division casestudy better are - – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing energy prices, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing transportation and logistics costs, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc



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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division


SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Division Process, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Division Process 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 Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Division Process
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 Division Process




Strengths Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Division Process in Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division Harvard Business Review case study are -

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Division Process 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.

Digital Transformation in Leadership & Managing People segment

- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Division Process digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Division Process has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.

Strong track record of project management

– Division Process is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.

High switching costs

– The high switching costs that Division Process 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.

Innovation driven organization

– Division Process is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of Division Process in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

High brand equity

– Division Process has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Division Process to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.

Learning organization

- Division Process 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 Division Process is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy in the Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division 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 recruit top talent

– Division Process is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.

Organizational Resilience of Division Process

– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Division Process does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.

Highly skilled collaborators

– Division Process 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 Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.






Weaknesses Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division are -

Need for greater diversity

– Division Process has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Division Process 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.

Products dominated business model

– Even though Division Process has some of the most successful products in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. firm in the HBR case study - Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.

High operating costs

– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division 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 Division Process 's lucrative customers.

High cash cycle compare to competitors

Division Process 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.

High dependence on star products

– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division 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 Division Process has relatively successful track record of launching new products.

High bargaining power of channel partners

– Because of the regulatory requirements, David A. Garvin, Michael A. Roberto suggests that, Division Process 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.

Slow to harness new channels of communication

– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Division Process is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.

Aligning sales with marketing

– It come across in the case study Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division 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 Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Division Process is planning to shift buying processes online.

No frontier risks strategy

– After analyzing the HBR case study Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Leadership & Managing People 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.

Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy

– From the instances in the HBR case study Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division, it seems that the employees of Division Process 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.




Opportunities Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division | 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 Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division are -

Lowering marketing communication costs

– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Division Process 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.

Using analytics as competitive advantage

– Division Process 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 Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Division Process to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

– Consumer behavior has changed in the Leadership & Managing People industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Division Process 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. Division Process 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.

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Division Process 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 Division Process to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.

Low interest rates

– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Division Process 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.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Division Process 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

– Division Process 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.

Reforming the budgeting process

- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Division Process can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.

Leveraging digital technologies

– Division Process 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.

Developing new processes and practices

– Division Process can develop new processes and procedures in Leadership & Managing People 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.

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 Division Process 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.

Buying journey improvements

– Division Process can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division 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.

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. Division Process can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.




Threats Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis


The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division are -

Barriers of entry lowering

– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Division Process with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Division Process is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Division Process in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The Leadership & Managing People 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 Division Process business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, 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. Division Process needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

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. Division Process 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.

Environmental challenges

– Division Process 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. Division Process can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry.

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 Division Process.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division, Division Process 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 .

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.

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.

New competition

– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Division Process in the Leadership & Managing People sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Division Process has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Division Process 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.




Weighted SWOT Analysis of Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division 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 Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division 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 Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division 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 Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division 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 Decision Making at the Top: The All-Star Sports Catalog Division 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 Division Process needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.



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