SWOT Analysis as an OB Process in a College of Pharmacy
This paper examines SWOT analysis as a key organizational behavior (OB) process applied to a College of Pharmacy in South Florida. Drawing on an internal SWOT analysis and a faculty interview, the paper assesses the college's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and evaluates how well the OB process is functioning. The paper argues that SWOT analysis should be treated as an ongoing, institutionalized component of strategic planning rather than a one-time exercise. It further recommends greater staff involvement in strategic planning to reduce resistance to change, foster creative ideas, and improve organizational effectiveness and long-term performance.
- Introduction to SWOT as an OB Process: Defines SWOT analysis and its organizational importance
- SWOT Analysis Findings for the College of Pharmacy: Key strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities identified
- Faculty Interview: Assessing the OB Process: Faculty perspectives on SWOT value and strategic planning
- Recommendations for Sustaining the SWOT Process: SWOT as ongoing, institutionalized organizational practice
- Staff Involvement in Strategic Planning: Why inclusive staff participation improves strategic outcomes
- Executive Summary: Concise synthesis of findings and key recommendations
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What makes this paper effective
- Grounds abstract OB concepts in a concrete institutional case, making the analysis tangible and applied.
- Integrates a primary source — a faculty interview — alongside published academic references, lending both authority and real-world credibility to its claims.
- Moves logically from analysis to evaluation to prescription, maintaining a clear argumentative thread throughout.
- Balances internal and external environmental factors without privileging one over the other.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates applied organizational analysis: it takes a recognized strategic framework (SWOT) and uses it not merely as a descriptive checklist but as a diagnostic tool, connecting the college's specific capabilities and gaps to actionable strategic recommendations. The use of interview data to validate or challenge academic claims is a good model for mixing primary and secondary evidence in a business or management paper.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by establishing the theoretical importance of SWOT analysis, then applies it to a specific institution. A faculty interview section evaluates how well the process is functioning in practice. The paper then pivots to forward-looking recommendations — treating SWOT as ongoing, embedding it in organizational culture, and expanding staff participation. An executive summary closes the paper with a concise synthesis. This structure mirrors a standard consulting or organizational analysis report.
Introduction to SWOT as an OB Process
SWOT analysis is an important organizational behavior (OB) process — one that an organization cannot afford to ignore or treat casually. For an organization to succeed in the long term, it must be constantly aware of its strengths, weaknesses, and threats, as well as the opportunities available to it (Hill & Jones, 2012). These four factors significantly influence an organization's future performance. A SWOT analysis enables an organization to understand its overall health, utilize resources more efficiently, improve its operations, discover opportunities, identify and manage risks, and enhance its competitive positioning.
SWOT Analysis Findings for the College of Pharmacy
A SWOT analysis of the College of Pharmacy revealed important insights about the college's internal and external environments. The analysis provided an understanding of the organization's resources, competencies, and capabilities — including its role as a pioneer in pharmacy education in South Florida, its commitment to quality teaching and research, its ownership of a full-fledged community pharmacy, and the diversity of its faculty and student body. It also identified key weaknesses, particularly the lack of baccalaureate programs and ongoing resource constraints.
The analysis further showed that the college can leverage its resources and competencies to reintroduce undergraduate programs in response to increased demand for pharmacy education. According to Walton et al. (2011), this growth in demand is one of the major trends affecting pharmacy schools in the United States. Reintroducing such programs would strengthen the college's positioning within the broader field of pharmacy education.
Faculty Interview: Assessing the OB Process
It was important to determine whether the OB process was working effectively. To this end, an interview was conducted with a senior faculty member who also holds a significant administrative role at the college, making them a key decision maker in the college's operations. The interview focused specifically on the interviewee's perceptions of the OB process.
The interviewee strongly affirmed that the OB process would have significant value for the college (personal communication, February 10, 2017). According to the interviewee, the process would provide a major boost to the college's strategic planning efforts. The interviewee indicated that the process yielded valuable insights capable of informing organizational decisions in the near future, particularly in relation to student enrollment, program expansion, and curriculum review.
The fundamental aim of any OB process is to improve organizational effectiveness and efficiency. More specifically, an organization evaluates its resources and capabilities to determine how it may utilize those capabilities to improve its core offerings and day-to-day processes (Hill & Jones, 2012). For the College of Pharmacy, the interviewee expressed a strong conviction that the OB process would set the college on a path of improved organizational performance — enhancing operational efficiency, the quality of teaching and research, student satisfaction, academic performance, and the employability of its graduates (personal communication, February 10, 2017). This further suggests that the process is working well.
References
Hayes, J. (2014). The theory and practice of change management. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hill, C., & Jones, G. (2012). Essentials of strategic management (3rd ed.). Boston: Cengage Learning.
Mullins, L., & Christy, G. (2010). Management & organizational behavior. London: Pearson Education.
Smollan, R. (2011). Engaging with resistance to change. University of Auckland Business Review, 13(1), 12–15.
Van Dijk, R., & Van Dick, R. (2009). Navigating organizational change: Change leaders, employee resistance and work-based identities. Journal of Change Management, 9(2), 143–163.
Walton, S., Mott, D., Knapp, K., & Fisher, G. (2011). Association between increased number of US pharmacy graduates and pharmacist counts by state from 2000–2009. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 75(4), 76.
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