Swot Analysis of "Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries" written by Sandra J. Sucher includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Summaries Moral facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Influence, Leadership and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries casestudy better are - – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing energy prices, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, technology disruption,
wage bills are increasing, increasing commodity prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Summaries Moral, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Summaries Moral 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 Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Summaries Moral
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 Summaries Moral
Strengths Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Summaries Moral in Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries Harvard Business Review case study are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Summaries Moral in the sector have low bargaining power. Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Summaries Moral to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Summaries Moral has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Summaries Moral 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.
High brand equity
– Summaries Moral has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Summaries Moral to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Summaries Moral 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 Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Summaries Moral 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 Summaries Moral digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Summaries Moral 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Summaries Moral is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries 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 Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Summaries Moral is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Summaries Moral 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 Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Leadership & Managing People industry
– Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Summaries Moral to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Summaries Moral to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Summaries Moral 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.
Weaknesses Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries are -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries HBR case study mentions - Summaries Moral takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Summaries Moral 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Summaries Moral products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Summaries Moral needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Summaries Moral is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Leadership & Managing People segment. Summaries Moral needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Summaries Moral to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Sandra J. Sucher suggests that, Summaries Moral 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, Summaries Moral 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Summaries Moral 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries, 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries 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 Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Summaries Moral is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Summaries Moral is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Summaries Moral 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.
Opportunities Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries | 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 Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Summaries Moral 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Summaries Moral can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Summaries Moral operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Summaries Moral 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 Summaries Moral to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Summaries Moral to increase its market reach. Summaries Moral will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Summaries Moral 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 Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Summaries Moral to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Summaries Moral 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, Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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 Summaries Moral in the consumer business. Now Summaries Moral can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Summaries Moral 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Summaries Moral 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 Summaries Moral can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Buying journey improvements
– Summaries Moral can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries 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. Summaries Moral can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
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 Summaries Moral 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.
Threats Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries are -
Environmental challenges
– Summaries Moral 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. Summaries Moral can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry.
Increasing wage structure of Summaries Moral
– 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 Summaries Moral.
Regulatory challenges
– Summaries Moral 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Summaries Moral 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.
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. Summaries Moral needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Summaries Moral 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Summaries Moral has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Summaries Moral 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Summaries Moral 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 Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries .
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Summaries Moral with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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 Summaries Moral.
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. Summaries Moral can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
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 Summaries Moral business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries 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 Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries 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 Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries 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 Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries 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 Module III--Moral Leadership Class Summaries 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 Summaries Moral needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
