Profitability in a social business: an environmental analysis of the social sector in Portugal

• Author(s): van Steenbergen, Daisy Isabella
• Date: 2021
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10284/9568
• Origin: Repositório Institucional - Universidade Fernando Pessoa
• Document Type: Master thesis
• Language: English
• Contributor(s): Repositório Institucional da Fernando Pessoa; Ramos, Paulo

Description

As it is described by Henderson, the concept of strategy can be traced back to ancient times with the central idea being: to gain advantage over someone or something (Henderson, 1989). In order to build a successful strategy for any type of business, a strategic analysis needs to be performed. A strategic analysis exists of multiple elements, but it always starts with environmental scanning. This research focuses on that very first step by conducting an environmental analysis. It is a strategic tool that identifies all the external and internal elements, which could possibly affect the organization's performance. The analysis entails assessing the level of threat or opportunity that factors might present. To achieve this, a SWOT analysis was conducted in combination with other tools, such as PESTEL, Porter´s five forces and the Power-interest matrix. These tools were analysed by using the gathered research data. The data collection was divided into two parts: a desk research, where close attention was paid to literature review and a field research, where experts were interviewed. Both focused on analysing the Portuguese social sector. To structure this data collection five categories were determined: The benchmark between Portugal and the Netherlands; The financial mechanism; The Portuguese social care system; The target group and the critical success factors. The aim of this research was not to provide all the final and conclusive answers, it was merely to explore the research topic with varying levels of depth. Additionally, this research tended to tackle new problems on which little or no previous research has been done by combining and elaborating well known models, such as PESTEL, Porter´s 5 forces and SWOT. The research problem of this dissertation can be described as followed: to determine the possibilities of starting a successful commercial business within the social welfare sector of Portugal.