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development and goal attainment (Robbins, 200I). This calls for a municipal management
that has competitive intelligence. In other words, municipal managers should be able to have
accurate information about competitors that allows them to anticipate competitors' actions
rather than merely react to them. Out of efficient and effective environmental scanning,
municipal managers are able to screen large amounts ofinformation to detect emerging trends
aJld create a set of scenarios as strategic options for the development of their respective
municipalities.
The investigation also concluded that developing the local economy has been identified as
very important to address the developmental concerns facing Ulundi. This model therefore
supports the findings ofthis investigation and acknowledges the spatial differences in patterns
and processes of development potentials between the study area and the surrounding
municipalities. Instead of competing with the latter, this model factors in an intermunicipal
partnership with much emphasis on tourism as the economic core competence of Ulundi. For
instance, Local Economic Development (LED), a vehicle for promoting tourism and job
creation is acknowledged.
The internal environment represents forces within the municipality with specific implications
for institutional performance. Components within the internal environment include:
• The human resource component which involves labour relations, recruitment
practices and policies, training and development policies, appraisal and incentive
systems and turnover and absenteeism statistics.
• The financial component that handles the availability or lack of resources, liquidity
and credit worthiness ofa municipality. Where the internal resources are available or
things that an organization does well become its strengths; and in cases where an
organization lacks the resources or activities that it does not do welL they become its
weaknesses. And any ofthose strengths that represent unique skills or resources that
can determine the organization's competitive edge are its core competency. The
strengths and weaknesses ofthe Ulundi Municipal area are shown in Table 7.1.
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