Porter's Five Forces Model Analysis

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Porter’s five forces model has been advocated and very influential for a long time in the field of strategy development within business schools. However compared to SWOT analysis, there is still little awareness of the model amongst mainstream managers. It has been criticised for being relatively abstract, lacking practicalities and highly prescriptive etc. (Grundy, 2006). In addition, according to this model a company is able to choose how it wants to compete based on the match between its competitive advantage and the target market. However, there is an assumption made by the model that an organisation is successfully operating in their competitive environment. The generic strategies of the model do not provide management with the additional …show more content…

This model not only takes into account employees, but the wider stakeholder group such as customers, suppliers, communities etc. It achieved popularity due to its visual scheme and simplicity. However, due to this simplicity and reductive character it has come in for criticism (Fassin, 2010). According to (Beaver, 2004) whilst companies will not be inconsiderate of their other stakeholders, their unease will take the back seat compared to those of their …show more content…

An advantage is that it can be used on one or more identified issues that need to be remedied. It is used to examine the seven key elements that when co-jointly considered and combined make up a successful organisation: strategy, structure, systems, shared values, style, staff and skills. It is helpful in comparing where the company currently stands in each of these areas and where it would like to be. It can help bring about transformational change within an organisation through all elements being interlinked (Singh, 2013) and an integrated congruence among the three hard S’s (strategy, structure and systems) and the four soft S’s (skills, staff, style and shared values) being achieved (Kaplan, 2005). The chances of a successful strategy execution are markedly improved when the three hard S’s are tightly unified. The seven S model is very internally focused in order to ensure that there is complement alignment within all aspects of an organisation to ensure its successful functioning. In order to guarantee that an organisation is operating and competing in the right way in the right market, one also needs to undertake an external environmental analysis. According to (Sull et al., 2015), if there is too much focus on improving alignment, there is a risk for companies of falling into the alignment trap

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