Discussion Assignment In the discussion forum, you are expected to participate often and engage in deep levels of discourse. Please post your initial response as early as possible and continue participating throughout the unit. In this question, you will consider two theoretical views of an organization's internal environment. First, explain the resource-based theory from the textbook and its relevance to strategic management. Then, select one of the other theories to research on your own (enactment, environmental determinism, institutional theory, or transaction cost economics) and compare and contrast it to the resource-based view. Which do you think best explains the internal environment? Why?

Reading Assignment The text for this course, Strategic Management: Evaluation and Execution, provides the foundation for many of the concepts in the course. It will be supplemented with a case study from MIT this week. Kennedy, R. (2020). Strategic management. Virginia Tech Publishing. https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919/99282 This book is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA license. Chapter 4 Chapter 5

Introduction In Unit Three, the external environment was the main focus. This week's material is about the internal factors which affect organizational strategy. A strategist must balance all the internal components to achieve maximum results. This is exceptionally challenging given the turbulent external environments we studied last week. Typical internal resources include labor, proprietary technology, processes, access to raw materials, and strong leadership. In the case study this week, you will apply a value chain analysis and then simultaneously evaluate the internal and external environments in a SWOT.