Written Case Analysis IBM Salient Case Facts at a Glance: John Akers became the CEO of IBM in 1985. By this time, IBM had registered a drop in earnings for the first time. This trend continued, creating various other problems till John Akers was forced to resign in 1993. IBM was perceived as a ruthless giant with tremendous growth. Naturally, it was singled out for criticism by the entire industry and the government. IBM also attracted anti-trust legislation as a result. IBM lost out once the Personal Computer industry began to boom. It found that the old paradigm of closed proprietary systems applicable to the mainframe business was not relevant to PCs. Reasons for decline of IBM in the late 80's and early 90's: · IBM's earlier investments were yet to pay dividends and the future investments planned were high. · IBM's products were treated as generic. PC parts were available cheap and assembly was also cheap. Therefore customers opted for cheap clones. A high cost manufacturer like IBM had an obvious disadvantage. · IBM failed to read the industry trends and was still banking on the mainframe business to earn major revenues. It was losing market share in PC and laptop segments, which were growing fast and had tremendous potential. · IBM had excess manpower which resulted in heavy overheads. · IBM was seen as a single entity by customers. So the splitting of the company into autonomous business units was not acceptable to the customers. The customers would find it difficult to deal with different divisions of IBM. · IBM also did not appreciate that software was becoming more important than hardware in the light of the IT revolution. Louis Gerstner took over as CEO in 1993. The major policy initiatives that he launched included a decision not to split up the company but to make it even more closely linked, concentrate on networking and minimizing bureaucracy. Under his leadership, IBM's earnings showed a remarkable turnaround in the next two years after registering a huge loss in 1993. PC Industry - Structural Analysis: (Using Michael Porter's Model) Based on the information provided in the case, we can do a structural analysis of the PC industry which will help us in better analysis of the case. Threat of New Entrants: Entry was easy in the industry due to its huge potential. However, the major market share was held only by a few players. Rivalry: Stiff competition among a few major players having equal strength and potential. This led to intensive rivalry. Bargaining Power of Customers: High bargaining power because of stiff competition, and a large number of suppliers offering similar products to choose from. Bargaining Power of Suppliers: Bargaining power of suppliers is
Jennifer Barr is a female, Caucasian, twenty-year-old college student living in Tallahassee, Florida. Currently, she resides on her own in an apartment, although her mother, father, and brother live locally in their home. Jennifer works as a waitress in a restaurant and is actively enrolled in courses at the college; however, due to recent circumstances, her attendance has declined. Jennifer describes herself as typically having the ability to manage her school responsibilities and as having relatively positive relationships with her professors, co-workers and restaurant manager. She maintains an ongoing relationship with her father, mother, and brother. She describes her relationship with her brother as the closest, her relationship with her mother as intermittently close, although hindered by her father, whom Jennifer has not maintained a close relationship with due to what she perceives as pressure and unrealistic expectations that her father consistently has placed upon her.
Ramona faces a difficult decision after her trip to the headquarters of Next Step Herbal Health. Next Step offered her a lucrative starting salary plus commissions, and a junior manager position. Ramona should not take the position with Next Step due to its questionable business practices, the dismissiveness of the Next Step recruiter when questioned regarding the company’s ethics code and the CEO exhibiting non-ethical and immoral behavior.
General Motors is a long established corporation, which has had a profound affect on the American people and the American economy. The corporation has prided themselves on producing automobiles at the lowest cost, while remaining a style leader of the industry. Bankruptcy with a government buy out in 2009 caused reorganization, a battle to transform, reinventing a new GM corporate culture. In 2014, Generals Motors topped the list as one of the nine most damaged brands. What caused General Motors to get such a tarnished reputation, was it a scandal-laden culture and mismanagement, putting profit over safety with massive cover-ups, or a combination of both?
During his absence, with John Sculley in power, the focus shifted to maximization of profit, and product design suffered. Steve Jobs theorized that is was one of the reasons companies decline. “My passion has been to build an enduring company where people… make great products… the products, not the profits, were the motivation. It’s a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything”.
When a case study is conducted, the researcher conducts an in-depth observation on a particular individual for an extended period of time. While observing the individual, the researcher records their observations which are then translated into case materials that are used to demonstrate a possible problem (American Psychological Association, 2009). Also, as mentioned before, case studies are solely focused on observations of a particular individual. However, even though the word individual is usually used to refer to a person, in this case, it can also be used to refer to a business, school, or neighborhood (Cozby & Bates, 2012).
Historically the personal computer (PC) industry has sold its products at reasonably high prices yet garnered only small profit margins. One reason for this is the high competition in the PC industry which led to competitive pricing among producers. Analyzing the competitive environment of the PC industry, it is evident that there is very little barrier to entry in this market. PC's have very low physical uniqueness and are made of standard components that require very little expertise to assemble.
Ms. Swicegood arrived early to her apartment accompanied by her father. She appeared her stated age of 20 years old. She was well groomed wearing casual clothes, blue shorts, plain T-shirt and sneakers. Her height is 5’2” and weight 116.6 LB. The client’s father said that at times she is argumentative however, there was no sign of this behavior during the interview. She presented cooperative and distracted at times. Her ears were pierced but she had no tattoos or scars. She denied the use of alcohol, drugs or cigar. The interaction between the client and her father was active and
Dell had to solve the problem of balancing the production of laptops, desktops and servers. On the laptop market, which Dell was committed to re-enter due to its growing customer base, there were a number of technological problems. Dell had hired John Medica, lead developer of Apple computer’s Powerbook line, and according to him, only one of the laptops being developed would be able to compete on the market. However, it would take some time before it was fully developed, so Dell had to reject their customer’s demand for laptops. In doing so, Dell made the customers understand that it would not take forever. Dell’s way to approach the fact that the company was not able to fulfil the customers wishes, was through honesty. The question was whether this strategy was an advantage for Dell or not.
We shall apply the Porter's 5 Forces model to examine the PC market and see how forces of competition influence the profitability of the market players.
Dell Inc. weakness was cell manufacturing because their assembled computers were being shipped five to six days after the order was placed. It is an inconvenience for the customers to always send their computer away to have it repaired. First, they are left without internet access. Second, the time it reaches Austin, Texas, have it repaired, and shipped back can take days. The company opportunities were the Dell U.K. that open business in 1987 and in that country it was a lot of companies selling cheap computers. Dell Inc. strides on loyalty among customers and employees, and that could only be derived from having the highest level of service and performing products. Segmentation within the company enables them to measure the efficiency of the business in terms of assets use. Dell Inc. evaluates their return on invested capital in each segment, compare it with other segments, and target what the performance of each should be.
Medical and medication errors and adverse events are well known issues in the health care industry, regardless of country. Errors are either the correct implementation of the wrong procedure or the wrong implementation of the correct procedure (IOM, 1999 pp23-25). Adverse events are considered unintended injuries and/or harm that are caused to the patient but not necessarily due to human error. This proposal will present a technical solution, using case based reasoning, to help prevent the occurrence of errors, thus reduce adverse events, and to make suggestions to the line staff as to what to do when such an event or error happens.
Know one would of forecast the success of IBM. It was obvious that they would be successfully because computers are extremely important in todays world. Without computers society wouldn’t be advance in technology and other areas.
Primark is a subsidiary company of the Associated British Foods (ABF). It was first opened in Dublin in June 1969, which under the name Penneys. Four more stores were launched within a year in Ireland afterward. Currently, Primark operates in over 270 stores in 9 different countries in Europe such as United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, etc. Primark capitalised on the fast-fashion tendency that began in the 1990s as well as the capability to produce garments cheaply in Asia where clothing values fell dramatically (Shawcross, 2014). It offers a diverse range of products which includes kids clothing, menswear, womenswear, accessories, home ware, beauty products and confectionary. According to TNS market research ranking, Primark ranks the second
...market share, Intel progressively reduced licensee and developed process and manufacturing infrastructure to manufacture chips by itself. Thus, it contained the “profit pool” in its value chain. Thereafter, successful tie-ups with ‘horizontal’ complementors like Compaq 7 Microsoft led to wrecking of IBM’s hegemony. With established leadership in microprocessor industry, Intel strategically started ‘Intel Inside’ and ‘Runs better on Pentium processor’ programs to improve brand recognition. As more and more end-customers identified Intel and microprocessor as the most important component in a PC, Intel could now command higher power and bargaining position with OEM and software manufacturers. This ensures demand-side control.
In the 1960s we saw that IBM was getting majority of its income from the System 360. This was a very good time for IBM because sales were booming and it was growing. Eventually sales begin to decline and the company nearly died because its plans and strategies did not change with the circumstance. Then Louis V. Gerstner comes in as the new CEO and turns the company around over time through his leadership. He does this by changing the company’s plans and the way the company operated because circumstances were now different. This shows that leaders play a huge role in the fate of its people and organization. In the IBM book we see Lou shares the same opinion because he says, “It’s been said that every institution is nothing but the extended shadow of one person”. This person Lou refers to is the