Organizational Resources and Capabilities: Applying Concepts and Tools

 

This week you have an excellent opportunity to apply the concepts and frameworks described in this module to a real-world situation.First, identify an organization that you know well. For example, it could be your place of work, your church, or an organization where you volunteer. You should not use a firm such as Hyundai or Starbucks, for instance, unless you work there and have personal insight into the internal organization. You may “code” your chosen organization’s name if you wish to protect its privacy (e.g., ABC Company; Bright Church; M1 Community Group).

There are three parts to complete in preparation for this Critical Thinking assignment:

• Use Porter’s value chain structure to identify the industry capabilities as found in Case Insight 3.3 as they relate to your real-world chosen organization. Porter’s framework of type of activity, generic value chain label, and Illustrative examples of capabilities will help you to complete an overview of the relevant industry. You may change the labels to fit your particular industry, if desired, but all the value chain areas should be considered. You will conduct research on the industry using the Library and the Internet to complete the overview.
• Using the Internal Factor Evaluation (IFE) tool found in the Module 5 lecture of this course, determine the strengths and weaknesses and their relationship to the industry capabilities. The IFE is discussed in the Module 5 lecture, which provides a solid framework to effectively use the tool.
• Using data from the IFE development, make an assessment as to your chosen organization’s vulnerable or weak areas and its positions of strength.

Once you have completed the above, in a well-written paper discuss the chosen organization’s weak areas and positions of strength as related to the organization’s mission and current state of resources. Citations from documents internal to the organization, such asmission statements, should be included, as well as outside credible sources. The completed value chain structureand IFE tableshould be presented as appendixes to the paper. Your paper should meet the following requirements:

• Be two to three pages in length.
• Be formatted according to academic writing standards and APA style guidelines, including the completed value chain structure and IFE table.
• Adhere to academic writing style throughout, including using third person, avoiding colloquialisms, eliminating anthropomorphic phrasing, and providing citations to give credit to sources of information.