Sabahat Shireen

Numl-S20-22198
Assignment
SWOT Analysis
MPhil 1st Semester
20-April-2020

Dr. Saira Nudrat

Fundamentals of Education administration and Leadership Techniques
Department of Education
National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad
Discuss the causes, process, and consequences of SWOT analysis.

Causes of SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis can be needed at any stage of business.it gives a planform for future
planning. As this Analysis is needed in the identification of the internal strengths/weaknesses
and External opportunities/threats, which are closely connected and relevant to the objective of
an organization going to achieve, so it gives the necessary information about plans to design and
calculate proper strategies to attain the organizational objectives. The relevance of these plan
strategies is checked on either these identified objectives are achievable or not. So, if the
objectives of the organization are not achievable, the management repeats the process and
defined new objectives. By performing SWOT analysis an organization can know and evolve its
strengths, find and can work on their weak points, minimizes the chances of risks and threats so,
to take full edge of opportunities available. Thus, the pinpoint is that SWOT analysis helps to see
a clear picture of the organization that can have an impact on our achievement of objectives. So,
after knowing these an organization can grow and work better and can have focused decisions.
Another important cause of using SWOT analysis that organization can evaluate their
productivity and effectiveness of their functioning to decide how to control risks and to take full
advantage of opportunities coming.
The central process of the SWOT analysis is to identify strategies that align, fit or match
an organization’s resources and capabilities to the demands of the environment in which the
organization competes (Ritson, 2008).
To put it another way, the purpose of the strategic alternatives generated by a SWOT
analysis should to be built on organization strengths in order to exploit opportunities and counter
threats and to correct organizational weaknesses (Ritson, 2008).

A SWOT analysis involves an evaluation of your company's strengths, weaknesses,

opportunities, and threats. This tool is valuable when assessing your current position in the
marketplace and encourages a business owner to look ahead to identify the right strategies to
achieve goals. When effective, there are few drawbacks to a SWOT, but the time involved and
the potential bias in preparation are obstacles.
This analysis also needed by management to play defense. As the weaknesses are
characterized which can put the organization at a disadvantage over competitors so the
competitors can take benefit from this. Thus, identifying limitations of your organization helps
to develop enthralling plans and strategies that counterbalance weaknesses and focus on
strengths. Threats are those elements in an organization’s environment that can be the reason for
troubles, hinder to move forward to grow and stop stability. Besides these, there are many other
causes when an organization needs SWOT analysis like it can be used for decision making,
product evaluation, planning, problem identification, and solving them.

SWOT analysis can also be needed before starting any kind of new action, business,
project, launching new project, making partnerships either when to explore new initiatives,
changing planes in the mid-way before execution when there are new opportunities or renovating
policies of the organization. And it is the need to carry out a general SWOT analysis just to
examine the current position of the organization working to upgrade the operation as required
because this analysis can guide and show the pin areas in which organizations need
improvements and where the operations are working perfectly.

When you have an idea and you think it will work out but unless you do a research by
performing SWOT analysis, how could you know that it will be successful and accepted in
market.it will guarantee that the idea is practicable. When you are up to start a new project,
launching product, taking decisions for your organization/company, you should always do swot
analysis before spending big cash.

Therefore, a SWOT analysis helps the organization in the utilization of a proper method
which matches the opportunities and strengths; and to use appropriate methodology to transform
your threats and weak areas into opportunities and strengths. And also, SWOT causes
management to end what they are doing and to evaluate where the organization is moving. So, to
evaluate the present situation and when it is needed to plan new strategies for keeping in view
the opportunities and threats.

“Those with a keen understanding of their strengths and needs are in a much better position than
those with limited or faulty self-knowledge”.

Howard Gardner

Process of SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis have more focus on these two assessments:

 What is the present situation of organization?

 Where will be it standing in future?

So, in SWOT analysis these two assessments are done according to the vision and mission of
organization.
The following steps are involved in the process of conducting SWOT analysis.

1. Build a team, first to pick a leader, who can guide and facilitate group. Then add people who
can be responsible for decision making, it may be small or large and divide the tasks among
the members also including someone outside the organization. Which can show new
perspectives.

2. In second step introduce SWOT to the members and give them brief explanation why it is
being used.so the leader explains about the organization current situation and about future.

3. Here and Now Situation

Give each member their task to individually brainstorm and come up with strengths,
weaknesses of the organization in the current scenario and list them. In strengths and
weaknesses ask questions from broad perspective like:
 what are the present strengths relative to the organization objective/mission?
What makes us different from other organizations?

What are the ongoing weaknesses the organization is facing regarding the mission of
organization?
What are the things we need to avoid?

What might be
In Opportunities and Threats, after clarifying the current situation, brainstorm about the
future of organization that will it be able to fulfill its mission, in the presence of certain
opportunities. What and how can new technological trends can give us advantage? Will the
organization will have the capacity to avail them. What kinds of threads are possible they can
face etc.?
Note all the opportunities which can exist in future. Then list the threats which they can
possibly face in future.

Note all these point with them, like one below:

SWOT USEFULL HARMFULL

Strengths Weaknesses
1. Teachers are well educated and 1. Area of the school is tight.
highly skilled.
Internal 2. Business minimized during summer
2. Collaboration among the vacations.
departments. 3. Inventory system is poor.
3. Cultural diversity. 4. Limited supplies for teachers.
4. Fully equipped labs. 5. Technology is limited.
6. Transportation issues
ExternalOpportunities Threats

1. Population growth 1. Complex processes of approval of

2. Improving quality and new programs.
changeable educational 2. Other schools in the area
environment. 3. Funding reduction
3. Scholarships 4. Rapid technological changes
4. Trends.

Example: SWOT Analysis of a School

5. In this step discusses the finding with each other. made consensus about the major finding in
every category and compare these results to the goals, objection, vision and mission of the
organization.

6. Action plan: Review the report by addressing each of the four areas.
At the last step summarize the report like;
 Strengths need to be continued, improve them as possible and take full advantage.
 Weaknesses need to be stopped.
 Opportunities need to be avail, figure out and optimized.
 Threats need to be figure out so to countered them.

Internal analysis External analysis

Internal strengths and External opportunities and

weaknesses threats

Identification of the key

Continual feedback Continual feedback Continual feedback
stragetic issue

Evaluation of the options and

selection of stragety

Implementation and
management of chosen strategy

Process of SWOT Analysis (Ritson, 2008).

Then make strategies and action plans based on the results of this SWOT Analysis.
Strategic choice is the process of choosing among the alternatives generated by a SWOW
analysis. The organization has to evaluate various alternatives against each other with respect
to their ability to achieve major goals. The process of strategic choice requires the
organization to identify the set of business-level, functional-level, and corporate-
level ,strategies that would best enable it to survive and prosper in the fast-changing
environment that is feature of modern business (Ritson, 2008).

Consequences of SWOT analysis

Development of a strong strategy is one of the major key to survive in today’s time of
uncertainty’s, so undoubtly Swot analysis is one of the most functional and helpful tool for
strategic planning’s Analysis disclose the organization present condition so make it easy to
develop a good action plans for the organization in future.it can be helpful for management to
reveal the opportunities to take full benefit of them and so by knowing threats and
weaknesses the can be eliminate in time and managed.to inspect competitors of an
organization through SWOT can be a cause of developing strategies which can help an
organization to make certain plans that can distinguish from competitors.
 SWOT analysis encourages group discussion among members about strategy
development by use of participatory methods like group meetings, brain storming and allow
to increase knowledge.it can be a factor for management to start a serious discussion for the
changes ,innovations and goals of the organizations by changing and moving beyond
everyday problems and present situation. This analysis contributes to the organization
growth, identification of new opportunities in the marketplace and also gives innovative
ways for better ways of growth and by knowing weak points, loss can be bring down.it will
impact strategic planning and risk reduction, like the both short-term and long-term plans are
dependent on that how much the management know about its organization and the
marketplace. This can lead to a strong and safe decisions.