Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,0, University of Applied Sciences Deggendorf, course: Management Tools, language: English, abstract: The growing influence of customers on product design, increasing market dynamics, the negotiating power of suppliers, the decreasing half-life of product life cycles or political-legal and macroeconomic changes present companies with enormous challenges. In addition, the pressure of time, success and turnover tempt senior management to take ill-considered individual measures which may promise success in the short term, but are doomed to failure in the long term. Instead, before decisions are made, a well-founded analysis process is necessary that continuously weighs up opportunities and risks or strengths and weaknesses and embeds them in a corporate strategy that promises success. The explosiveness and necessity of an instrument for the analysis of opportunities and risks or strengths and weaknesses can be well illustrated by current economic and political events, especially in the automotive industry, before the management tool of the SWOT analysis is explicitly discussed. [...] At the beginning of this work a classification of the SWOT analysis in the process of the strategic management takes place, before then more near on the basic idea of this management tool is dealt with. The information from the environmental analysis in chapter 2.4 and enterprise analysis in chapter 2.5 flows into the illustration of a combined SWOT portfolio in chapter 2.6. After the presentation of the objectives and the consideration of advantages and disadvantages in chapter 2.8, a short summary of the results is given at the end of the thesis, as well as an assessment of the author with regard to the future relevance of the analysis tool as a starting point for strategic decisions in companies.