Industry Driving Forces, Resources and Capabilities, and Strategic Issues: A Critical Analysis

1) Briefly list your industry driving forces and industry success factors here.

2) This list consisting of your identification of industry driving forces and industry success factors will be the critical challenges that the Company faces. You may merge some factors together and make an updated list if they are referring the same content. Please list them as 1, 2, 3 and in your complete paper use “the first challenge is…”, “the second challenge is…” etc. for better clarity. Briefly describe and justify each challenge with 1-2 sentence.

1. Resources and Capabilities

1) List the resources and capabilities you analyzed with judgment (strong, moderate, weak, etc) below. Also add 1-2 sentences to justify your judgment for each of the resources and capabilities.

2) Conduct a fit analysis between the challenges and resources/capabilities by preparing a table similar to the one below. After the table, have a few sentences to support your major conclusions in the table.

2. Dynamic SWOT Analyses

Notes:

There are two types of SWOT analysis, this first is classical “SWOT analysis” and “dynamic SWOT analysis”. Please follow any of them accordingly based on your choice. You may use either method for this section. “How to Conduct SWOT” for some guidance. If a company has resources and capabilities to address the challenges (either be positive or negative) from analysis of industry driving forces and success factors, the particular challenge may be called an opportunity (O) and a company can be claimed to have the strength (S) in that particular area. On the other hand, if the challenge cannot be addressed with the firm’s resources and capabilities, the challenge may be called a threat (S) and the company would have a weakness (W) in that area.]

1) Based on your analysis in Section 5.2, make a table similar to the one below, but please merge them together. The table is intended to summarize your analysis on Section 5.2 and illuminate the process you generate SWOT for the Company.

2) Please use 1-2 sentences for each S/W/O/T you identified for better clarity.

3) [If you choose classical SWOT analysis] Please summarize from Sections 5.1 and 5.2 about S/W/O/T of the Company. Use 1-2 sentences to clarify and justify each of S/W/O/T

4) [If you choose classical SWOT analysis] Please make a table for strategy alternatives similar to the one below. Keep in mind this analysis is comparable to the fit analysis and the dynamic SWOT model. Use 1-2 short paragraphs to clarify and justify your proposed alternatives in the table.         

3.  Strategic Issues

1) Please summarize the Company’s current strategies in your Section 4.1.6:

2) Please assess the current strategies from the following aspects (using a few sentences for each of them):

How did/did not the current strategies fulfill the Company’s vision and mission statement?

How did/did not the strategies fully grasp the market opportunities in your SWOT by exploiting the Company’s core competencies and resources (i.e., strengths in your SWOT)? How do its strategies fit market and industrial conditions?

How did/did not the strategies properly handle the weakness in your SWOT and mitigate the existing and potential threats in your SWOT?

How are/are not the strategies clearly defined and implemented in a consistent way? (As Chapter 10 of our textbook discussed, strategy execution is also a source of competitive advantage.)

How does the Company’s strategies promote its sustainable competitive advantage?

Summarize the deficiencies with the current strategy you identified in A-E above. This will be a list of strategic issues you identified in this section.

List your references here (if any):

4. Summary: The Most Critical Issue Identified

1) Based on your analysis in Section 5.4, what are the 1-3 most critical issues that the Company is facing currently and not addressed well by the Company’s current strategies?