Business Strategy and Policy

Assignment #4

Perform an Internal Factor Evaluation on your chosen firm. The critical thing to remember about this
analysis is that you should develop a thorough understanding of the factors
chosen. Your analysis should include a
chart similar to the one shown in GHA: Assignment #3 with the notable exception
that categories should be “Strengths” and “Weaknesses” instead of opportunities
and threats. Weights and ratings are to be assigned in a similar fashion.

It is important to understand here that you are looking for
those elements that truly separate your firm from its rivals…What does your
firm do better than other firms in its industry? THESE are your firm’s
strengths. For example, if you include “Advertising and promotion” as a
marketing strength, your firm needs to be truly exceptional in this regard.
Perhaps they have won awards, or are acknowledged by industry observers as
being superior in this way. That they
simply happen to do advertising is not interesting as ALL firms likely do the
same. Review the material on core
competencies in OCR Ch. 3 and apply that analysis to your firm’s internal
factors; are the strengths in question rare, costly to imitate,
non-substitutable, and/or valuable? Use Table 3.5 as a useful guide here.

IFE

Teco is the business

·
Do a chart identical to the EFE, except of
course that the factors will be Strengths and Weaknesses.

·
Choose 8-10 internal factors for analysis (or as
many as you can discover).

·
Less than Four pages (excluding chart)

·
Double spaced, Typed

·
For each factor write a paragraph or two as
necessary discussing the nature of the factor, how it will impact the firm, and
its importance to the future strategy of the firm (i.e., tell me why you
assigned the weight and rating score that you did).

·
Make sure that you provide citations

You
should by now have a reasonable idea what the primary strengths and core
competencies of your firm are. Weakness, however, can be a little more
difficult to find. Aside from the more obvious research sites about which you
are already familiar, a useful website for you to take a look at here is .glassdoor.com/”>www.glassdoor.com. This is a website where
employees dish on their firms…spilling both the good and bad.

Go
to the site, sign up (it’s easy and non-invasive), and peruse the employee
reviews. If you find that common themes
are discussed and presented by many reviewers, then you have a hit and should
use that in your piece as cited evidence. If, however, only one or two
employees mention an item, there is less likelihood that you have a usable
factor.

Due Date: Saturday August 30, 11:59pm (Two Weeks)