After the discussion at yesterday's ISD meeting about how to assist students working on SWOT analyses, I stopped by Louise's office to discuss the matter further. I believe we should probably do something other than just direct students to search Business Source Premier (and also Business Monitor Online) to see if there is a SWOT analysis for the company they are researching. (Louise and I agreed that at a future ISD meeting we should have more discussion about whether we point students to the Business Source Premier SWOTs at all, or if we do, how we should frame that recommendation.)
I'd like to share a couple of tips that Louise gave me in assisting students. First, students should always start by reading specific portions of the company's 10-K if the company is public: Item 1 (the "Business" section), Item 7 (the "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" section, and Item 7A ("Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures about Market Risk.")
Then students may want to look for analysts' reports in Investext Plus and industry reports in the usual databases. Once students have the necessary background information, then they are ready to look for articles on specific topics they might include in their SWOT analysis.
If students want in-depth instructions about how to do a SWOT analysis, a good source is Craig S. Fleisher's Strategic and competitive analysis : methods and techniques for analyzing business competition.
I also like to recommend a few notable websites offering instructions on how to do a SWOT analyses:
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