Away With SWOT Analysis: Use Defensive/Offensive Evaluation Instead
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The Journal of Applied Business Research – Spring 2005 Volume 21, Number 2
91
Away With SWOT Analysis:
Use Defensive/Offensive Evaluation Instead
Erhard K.
Valentin, Weber State University
ABSTRACT
SWOT analysis, which delves into a...
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The Journal of Applied Business Research – Spring 2005 Volume 21, Number 2
91
Away With SWOT Analysis:
Use Defensive/Offensive Evaluation Instead
Erhard K.
Valentin, Weber State University
ABSTRACT
SWOT analysis, which delves into a business strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, is
used widely in firms and classrooms to distill fragmentary facts and figures into concise
depictions of the strategic landscape.
Yet despite its popularity and longevity, the SWOT
approach to situation assessment often is ineffective.
This article begins with a brief critique of
the SWOT framework and typical SWOT analysis guidelines.
Thereafter, Defensive/Offensive
Evaluation (DOE) is advanced as an effective alternative to SWOT analysis.
Because DOE is
more theory-driven, it poses keener questions and promises more illuminating answers.
1.
0 INTRODUCTION
WOT analysis entails portraying a business internal context in terms of strengths and weaknesses and
scouring its external context for opportunities and threats.
It is meant to spark strategic insight and distill
fragmentary facts and figures into coherent backdrops for strategic planning (Mintzberg 1994).
Superior
strategic insights are scarce intellectual assets that facilitate securing competitive advantages, while ignorance and
strategic misconceptions often comprise costly deficits (Barney 2002; Glazer 1991; Srivastava, Shervani, and Fahey
1998).
SWOT analysis is used widely in firms and classrooms; frequently it is the centerpiece of situation
assessment (Day 1984).
However, despite its popularity and longevity, SWOT analysis yields banal or misleading
results so frequently that Hill and Westbrook (1997) advised scrapping it.
Troublesome implicit premises that underlie
the SWOT framework and typical SWOT analysis guidelines are addressed briefly in this article.
Thereafter,
Defensive/Offensive Evaluation is advanced as a more systematic and more effective approach to situation assessment.
2.
0 THE TROUBLE WITH SWOT ANALYSIS
SWOT analysis has shallow theoretical roots.
They run no deeper than the tenet that, like any living
organism, a business can prosper only if it achieves a good fit between itself and its environment.
Although this
assertion is eminently plausible, SWOT analysis also rests on the rather shaky suppositions that every strategically
significant feature of a business internal and external context can be categorized neatly as favorable or unfavorable and
such categorizing affords strategic insight.
While neither the SWOT matrix, shown in Figure 1, nor its conceptual
underpinnings shed light on how noteworthy particulars are to be identified and classified correctly or how strategic
implications are to be derived, supplemental guidelines abound.
They usually are fortified with checklists, which enumerate myriad factors and forces that might affect a business.
Unfortunately, conventional SWOT guidelines offer little more than menus of assorted generic strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOTs).
Further:
Figure 1: The SWOT Matrix
Internal Factors External Factors
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