Discussion Questions for Business Management Week 4

Please respond to both learning activities below and respond to at least two classmates' postings. Be sure to include the learning activity number you are responding to. Use APA format for citations and include a reference list.

Topic 1:

Perform a SWOT analysis of the company you would like to launch (following up from last week's discussion) OR select any established company and perform a SWOT analysis.

Having identified the company's external opportunities and threats and its internal strengths and weaknesses, you need to consider what your findings mean. That is, you need to balance strengths and weaknesses against opportunities and threats. Is the company in an overall strong competitive position? Can it continue to pursue its current business- or corporate-level strategy profitably? What can the company do to turn weaknesses into strengths and threats into opportunities? Can it develop new functional, business, or corporate strategies to accomplish this change? 

Topic 2:

How do companies benefit from empowering their employees, and how do employees benefit from empowerment? Provide an example of a company that you have researched, or even a company you are familiar with, and discuss in detail the employee empowerment strategies used there. What motivation theories does the company appear to be using? How can the company do more for its employees?