Having arrived on this web page you have probably surfed the Internet and scoured books and journals in search of the records of SWOT Analysis. The easy reply to the query What is SWOT? is that there is no easy answer, and one wants to exhibit a little tutorial knowledge in that no person took the bother to write the first definitive journal paper or e-book that introduced the delivery of SWOT Analysis.

A refocusing of SWOT used to be provided by means of Panagiotou (2003). He introduces a TELESCOPIC OBSERVATIONS strategic framework which in impact maps strengths, weaknesses, possibilities, and threats in opposition to his recommended acronym – TELESCOPIC OBSERVATIONS. So, for instance T = technological advancements, E= monetary considerations, L = felony and regulatory requirements, etc. The most beneficial element of Panagiotou’s article is that now not solely does he understand the subject in discovering the origins of SWOT, however he additionally manages to unearth some fascinating alternatives. In distinction to crediting the device to Stanford University’s Albert Humphrey, SWOT is credited to two Harvard Business School Policy Unit professors – George Albert Smith Jr and C Roland Christiensen for the duration of the early 1950s. Later in the Nineteen Fifties some other HBS Policy Unit professor Kenneth Andrews developed its utilization and application. All professors have been experts in the organizational methods as antagonistic to marketing. SWOT went on to be developed by means of the HBS at some stage in the Sixties till SWOT grew to become the device that we use today.

There are a wide variety of contrasting if no longer contradictory views on the foundation of SWOT. Here are a few of the main thinkers on the subject (and if you have extra please let us be aware of so that we can add them).

Stanford University’s Albert Humphrey led a lookup task in the 1960s-1970s primarily based upon the United States’ Fortune 500. Humphrey leads a lookup undertaking which finally developed his Team Action Model (TAM) which is an administration thought that permits companies of executives to manipulate change. SWOT was once to have originated from his ‘Stakeholders Concept and SWOT Analysis.’ However, if one proceeds to locate out greater about the creator in tutorial libraries there is nothing accepted to him. It is uncommon for such a prolifically referred to a piece of lookup now not to have an authentic definitive ebook as its centerpiece. The TAM strategy is one of a quantity that is used by way of trainers around the World, though for us the crediting to Humphrey as the creator of SWOT can't be supported.

King (2004) additionally recognized that it was once intricate to tune down the origins of the acronym SWOT. He cites Haberberg (2000) as declaring that SWOT was once thinking used with the aid of Harvard lecturers in the 1960s, and Turner (2002) attributing SWOT to Igor Ansoff (1987), of Ansoff’s Matrix fame. Koch (2000) regarded the contributions of Weihrich (1982), Dealtry (1992) and Wheelan and Hunger (1998). Again at the same time as these are the often established views of thinkers on the subject of SWOT, even the frequent observer would realize that Weihrich (1982) was once now not the originator of the thought however as a substitute an innovator of it. As Koch's (2004) feedback he has known that a collection of SWOT/TOWS analyses had the benefits of a single arbitrary matrix. Wheelan and Hunger (1998) used SWOT to seem to be for gaps and suits between competences and assets and the commercial enterprise environment. Dealtry (1992) regarded SWOT in phrases or corporations and vectors with frequent subject matters and interactions. Shinno et al (2006) amalgamated SWOT evaluation with an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) which ranked and prioritized every component of the usage of the software. Shinno et al (2006) do no longer genuinely deal with the apparent barriers of SWOT (see our SWOT lesson for a refresher).

Again regardless of their hobby in the notion of SWOT Analysis, none of these revered authors certainly cite its origins. It might also be that SWOT’s origins have been forgotten and are constrained to the nook of the library labeled ‘folklore.’ It may also be that SWOT originated in a wide variety of places, or grew to be a frequent area in the education rooms of company America in the Fifties and 1960s. One element is actual and that is if you behavior your personal assessment of the literature on SWOT that there is no apparent records of questioning on the theme i.e. that it has no documented epistemology. 
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