5. Internal environmental assessment. The next step is an assessment of the organization itself in order to identify its strengths and weaknesses. Three assessment categories include-following a simple systems model-organizational resources (inputs), present strategy (process) and performance (outputs). Unfortunately, most organizations can tell you a
great deal about the resources they have, much less about their current strategy, and even less about how well they perform. The nature of accountability is changing, however, in that public and nonprofit organizations arc increasingly held accountable for their outputs as well as their inputs. A stakeholder analysis can help organizations adapt to this changed nature of accountability, because the analysis forces organizations to focus on the criteria stakcholders use to judge organizational performance. Those criteria are typically related to output. For example, stakcholders are increasingly concerned with whether or not state-financed schools are producing educated citizens. In many states in the United States, the ability of public schools to garner public financing is becoming contingent on the schools’ ability to demonstrate that they do an effective job of educating their students.