SWOT analysis evaluates the strategic position of organizations and is often used in the preliminary stages of decision-making processes[2] to identify internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieving goals. Users of a SWOT analysis ask questions to generate answers for each category and identify competitive advantages.
SWOT has been described as a "tried-and-true" tool of strategic analysis,[3] but has also been criticized for limitations such as the static nature of the analysis, the influence of personal biases in identifying key factors, and the overemphasis on external factors, leading to reactive strategies. Consequently, alternative approaches to SWOT have been developed over the years.
Overview
The name is an acronym for four components:
Strengths: characteristics of the business or project that give it an advantage over others
Weaknesses: characteristics that place the business or project at a disadvantage relative to others
Opportunities: elements in the environment that the business or project could exploit to its advantage
Threats: elements in the environment that could cause trouble for the business or project
Results of the assessment are often presented in the form of a matrix.[4]
Internal and external factors
Strengths and weaknesses are usually considered internal, while opportunities and threats are usually considered external.[5] The degree to which an organization's internal strengths matches with its external opportunities is known as its strategic fit.[6][7][8]
SWOT analysis can be used to build organizational or personal strategy. Steps necessary to execute strategy-oriented analysis involve identifying internal and external factors, selecting and evaluating the most important factors, and identifying relationships between internal and external features.[14] For instance, strong relations between strengths and opportunities can suggest good conditions in the company and allow using an aggressive strategy. On the other hand, strong interactions between weaknesses and threats could be analyzed as a warning to use a defensive strategy.[15]
One form of SWOT analysis combines each of the four components with another to examine four distinct strategies:[10]
WT strategy (mini–mini): Faced with external threats and internal weaknesses, how to minimize both weaknesses and threats?
WO strategy (mini–maxi): Faced with external opportunities and internal weaknesses, how to minimize weaknesses and maximize opportunities?
ST strategy (maxi–mini): Faced with internal strengths and external threats, how to maximize strengths and minimize threats?
SO strategy (maxi–maxi): Faced with external opportunities and internal strengths, how to maximize both opportunities and strengths?
Matching and converting
A SWOT analysis can be used to generate matching and converting strategies.[16] Matching refers to seeking competitive advantage by matching strengths to opportunities. Conversion refers to converting weaknesses or threats into strengths or opportunities. An example of a conversion strategy is to buy off a threat through collaboration or merger.[16]
In competitor analysis, marketers can use SWOT analysis to detail and profile the competitive strengths and weaknesses of each competitor in the market. This process may involve analysing competitors' cost structures, sources of profits, resources and competencies, competitive positioning, product differentiation, degree of vertical integration, historical responses to industry developments, among other factors. Relevant marketing research methods may include:
Observational techniques such as ethnographic (on-site) observation
Marketing managers may also design and oversee various environmental scanning and competitive intelligence processes to help identify trends and inform the company's marketing analysis.
SWOT analysis of the market position of a small management consultancy with a specialism in human resource management[17]
Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats
Reputation in marketplace
Shortage of consultants at operating level rather than partner level
Well established position with a well-defined market niche
Large consultancies operating at a minor level
Expertise at partner level in HRM consultancy
Unable to deal with multidisciplinary assignments because of size or lack of ability
Identified market for consultancy in areas other than HRM
Other small consultancies looking to invade the marketplace
In community organizations
Although the SWOT analysis was originally designed for business and industries, it has been used in non-governmental organisations as a tool for identifying external and internal support to combat internal and external opposition for successful implementation of social services and social change efforts.[9] Understanding particular communities can come from public forums, listening campaigns, and informational interviews and other data collection.[9] SWOT analysis provides direction to the next stages of the change process.[18] It has been used by community organizers and community members to further social justice in the context of social work practice,[18] and can be applied directly to communities served by a specific nonprofit or community organization.[19]
Limitations and alternatives
SWOT analysis is intended as a starting point for discussion and not to, in itself, show managers how to achieve a competitive advantage.[20]
In a highly-cited 1997 critique, "SWOT Analysis: It's Time for a Product Recall", Terry Hill and Roy Westbrook observed that one among many problems of SWOT analysis as often practiced is that "no-one subsequently used the outputs [of SWOT analysis] within the later stages of the strategy".[21] Hill and Westbrook, among others, also criticized hastily designed SWOT lists.[21][22] Other limitations of SWOT practice include: preoccupation with a single strength, such as cost control, leading to a neglect of weaknesses, such as product quality;[20] and domination by one or two team members doing the SWOT analysis and devaluing possibly important contributions of other team members.[23] Many other limitations have been identified.[14]
Business professors have suggested various ways to remedy the common problems and limitations of SWOT analysis while retaining the SWOT framework.[12]
SOAR (strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results) is an alternative technique inspired by appreciative inquiry.[25][26] SOAR has been criticized as having similar limitations as SWOT, such as "the inability to identify the necessary data".[27]
SVOR
In project management, the alternative to SWOT known by the acronym SVOR (Strengths, Vulnerabilities, Opportunities, and Risks) compares the project elements along two axes: internal and external, and positive and negative.[28] It takes into account the mathematical link that exists between these various elements, considering also the role of infrastructures. The SVOR table provides an intricate understanding of the elements hypothesized to be at play in a given project:[28]: 9
Forces
Internal
Mathematical link
External
Positive
Total Forces
Total Forces given constraints = Infrastructures / Opportunities
Opportunities
Mathematical link
Vulnerabilities given constraints = 1 / Total Forces
constant k
Opportunities given constraints = 1 / Risks
Negative
Vulnerabilities
Risks given constraints = k / Vulnerabilities
Risks
Constraints consist of: calendar of tasks and activities, costs, and norms of quality. The "k" constant varies with each project (for example, it may be valued at 1.3).[28]: 9
History
In 1965, three colleagues at the Long Range Planning Service of Stanford Research Institute—Robert F. Stewart, Otis J. Benepe, and Arnold Mitchell—wrote a technical report titled Formal Planning: The Staff Planner's Role at Start-Up.[29] The report described how a person in the role of a company's staff planner would gather information from managers assessing operational issues grouped into four components represented by the acronym SOFT: the "satisfactory" in present operations, "opportunities" in future operations, "faults" in present operations, and "threats" to future operations.[29] Stewart et al. focused on internal operational assessment and divided the four components into present (satisfactory and fault) and future (opportunity and threat),[29] and not, as would later become common in SWOT analysis, into internal (strengths and weaknesses) and external (opportunities and threats).[6]
Also in 1965, four colleagues at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration—Edmund P. Learned, C. Roland Christensen, Kenneth R. Andrews, and William D. Guth—published the first of many editions of the textbook Business Policy: Text and Cases.[6] (Business policy was a term then current for what has come to be called strategic management.[30]) The first chapter of the textbook stated, without using the acronym, the four components of SWOT and their division into internal and external appraisal:
Deciding what strategy should be is, at least ideally, a rational undertaking. Its principal subactivities include identifying opportunities and threats in the company's environment and attaching some estimate of risk to the discernible alternatives. Before a choice can be made, the company's strengths and weaknesses must be appraised.[6]
Looking back from three decades later, in the book Strategy Safari (1998), management scholar Henry Mintzberg and colleagues said that Business Policy: Text and Cases "quickly became the most popular classroom book in the field", widely diffusing its authors' ideas, which Mintzberg et al. called the "design school" model (in contrast to nine other schools that they identified) of strategic management, "with its famous notion of SWOT" emphasizing assessment of a company's internal and external situations.[8][31][30] However, the textbook contains neither a 2 × 2 SWOT matrix nor any detailed procedure for doing a SWOT assessment.[6]Strategy Safari and other books identified Kenneth R. Andrews as the co-author of Business Policy: Text and Cases who was responsible for writing the theoretical part of the book containing the SWOT components.[8][32][33] More generally, Mintzberg et al. attributed some conceptual influences on what they called the "design school" (of which they were strongly critical) to earlier books by Philip Selznick (Leadership in Administration, 1957) and Alfred D. Chandler Jr. (Strategy and Structure, 1962),[8] with other possible influences going back to the McKinsey consulting firm in the 1930s.[31][34]
By the end of the 1960s, the four components of SWOT (without using the acronym) had appeared in other publications on strategic planning by various authors,[35] and by 1972 the acronym had appeared in the title of a journal article by Norman Stait, a management consultant at the British firm Urwick, Orr and Partners.[36] By 1973, the acronym was well-known enough that accountant William W. Fea, in a published lecture, mentioned "the mnemonic, familiar to students, of S.W.O.T., namely strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats".[37] An early example of a 2 × 2 SWOT matrix is found in a 1980 article by management professor Igor Ansoff (but Ansoff used the acronym T/O/S/W instead of SWOT).[4]
In popular culture
Television: In the 2015 Silicon Valley episode "Homicide" (Season 2, Episode 6), Jared Dunn (Zach Woods) introduces the Pied Piper team to SWOT analysis. Later in that episode Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani) and Gilfoyle (Martin Starr) employ the method when deciding whether or not to inform a stunt driver that the calculations for his upcoming jump were performed incorrectly.[38]
^Nutt, Paul C.; Backoff, Robert W. (Summer 1993). "Transforming public organizations with strategic management and strategic leadership". Journal of Management. 19 (2): 299–347 (316). doi:10.1016/0149-2063(93)90056-S. The SWOTs perspective is often used to pose questions for strategic management (e.g., Ansoff, 1980). Steiner's (1979) 'WOTS' approach, Rowe, Mason and Dickel's (1982) WOTS-UP, and Delbecq's (1989) 'TOWS' framework identify three of many derivations. See also: Weihrich 1982, p. 54: "For convenience, the matrix that will be introduced is called TOWS, or situational analysis"; Sevier 2001, p. 46.
Sevier, Robert A. (2001). "Not SWOT, but OTSW". Thinking outside the box: some (fairly) radical thoughts on how colleges and universities should think, act, and communicate in a very busy marketplace. Hiawatha, Iowa: Strategy Pub. p. 46. ISBN0971059705. OCLC48165005. Few people realize that there is an inherent danger in conducting a situational analysis using the old tried and true SWOT. The danger is this: When you look inside the organization first, you create a set of glasses through which you will look at the world. In doing so, you are highly likely to overlook significant opportunities and threats. See also Minsky & Aron 2021.
Staples, Lee (2004). Roots to power: a manual for grassroots organizing (2nd ed.). Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishing. p. 136. ISBN0275969975. OCLC56085984. The tried and true SWOT Assessment examines positive and negative factors as does a Force Field Analysis, but a SWOT has a particular focus on the upsides and downsides for the action group itself.
Lambert, Ron; Parker, Tom (2006). Is that your hand in my pocket?: the sales professional's guide to negotiating. Nashville: Nelson Business. p. 132. ISBN0785218777. OCLC63125604. Before you as a salesperson can develop a strategy, you have to assess the situation. We recommend the tried-and-true SWOT analysis. You start by taking a look at your Strengths and Weaknesses, your Opportunities and any Threats. Then you do exactly the same thing from the perspective of each of your competitors.
^ abMinsky, Laurence; Aron, David (23 February 2021). "Are you doing the SWOT analysis backwards?". Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 7 November 2021. The results of a SWOT analysis can be (and almost always are) presented simply as a 2 × 2 grid, with one dimension representing the internal versus external factors, and the other depicting positive versus negative valence. ... To improve the inventory collection, you should start with the external factors, then turn your attention to the firm's internal ones. See also Sevier 2001.
Coman, Alex; Ronen, Boaz (October 2009). "Focused SWOT: diagnosing critical strengths and weaknesses". International Journal of Production Research. 47 (20): 5677–5689. doi:10.1080/00207540802146130. S2CID109603771.
Helms, Marilyn M.; Nixon, Judy (August 2010). "Exploring SWOT analysis—where are we now? A review of academic research from the last decade". Journal of Strategy and Management. 3 (3): 215–251. doi:10.1108/17554251011064837.
Agarwal, Ravi; Grassl, Wolfgang; Pahl, Joy (January 2012). "Meta‐SWOT: introducing a new strategic planning tool". Journal of Business Strategy. 33 (2): 12–21. doi:10.1108/02756661211206708.
Bell, Geoffrey G.; Rochford, Linda (November 2016). "Rediscovering SWOT's integrative nature: a new understanding of an old framework". The International Journal of Management Education. 14 (3): 310–326. doi:10.1016/j.ijme.2016.06.003.
^ abBirkenmaier, Julie; Berg-Weger, Marla (2017). "Organizational engagement, assessment, and planning". The practice of generalist social work (4th ed.). New York: Routledge. pp. 552–577. ISBN9781138057852. OCLC971892636.
^Chermack, Thomas J.; Kasshanna, Bernadette K. (December 2007). "The use of and misuse of SWOT analysis and implications for HRD professionals". Human Resource Development International. 10 (4): 383–399. doi:10.1080/13678860701718760. S2CID145098663.
^Porter, Michael; Argyres, Nicholas; McGahan, Anita M. (2002). "An interview with Michael Porter". The Academy of Management Executive (1993–2005). 16 (2): 43–52. JSTOR4165839.
^Stavros, Jacqueline M.; Hinrichs, Gina (2009). The thin book of SOAR: building strengths-based strategy. Bend, OR: Thin Book Pub. Co. ISBN9780982206805. OCLC662578328.
^McLean, Gary N. (Winter 2017). "Will SOAR really help organization development soar?: an invited reaction to Zarestky and Cole, 2017". New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development. 29 (1): 25–28. doi:10.1002/nha3.20168.
^Kiechel, Walter (2010). The lords of strategy: the secret intellectual history of the new corporate world. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press. p. 121. ISBN9781591397823. OCLC259247279. What Andrews and his colleagues in the Business Policy course resolutely refused to do—and the main reason his ideas largely disappear from the subsequent history of strategy—was to agree that there were standard frameworks or constructs that could be applied to analyzing a business and its competitive situation. Oh, they might allow one, perhaps because they had helped develop it: so-called SWOT analysis, which called for looking at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats besetting an enterprise.
^Hill & Westbrook 1997, p. 47: "The work of Kenneth Andrews has been especially influential in popularizing the idea that good strategy means ensuring a fit between the external situation a firm faces (threats and opportunities) and its own internal qualities or characteristics (strengths and weaknesses)."
Hargreaves, D. (March 1969). "Corporate planning: a chairman's guide". Long Range Planning. 1 (3): 28–37. doi:10.1016/0024-6301(69)90069-7.
Humble, John W. (June 1969). "Corporate planning and management by objectives". Long Range Planning. 1 (4): 36–43. doi:10.1016/0024-6301(69)90044-2.
Ringbakk, Kjell-Arne (December 1969). "Organised planning in major U.S. companies". Long Range Planning. 2 (2): 46–57. doi:10.1016/0024-6301(69)90009-0.
Steiner, George A. (1969). Top management planning. Studies of the modern corporation. New York: Macmillan. OCLC220043.
^Stait, Norman H. (July 1972). "Management training and the smaller company: SWOT analysis". Industrial and Commercial Training. 4 (7): 325–330. doi:10.1108/eb003232.
SWOT analysis is described in very many publications. A few examples of books that describe SWOT analysis and are widely held by WorldCat member libraries and available in the Internet Archive are: