Case Report: AT&T: Twenty Years of Change
AT&T Case depicts the history of 130 years old giant company, which served its customers in telecommunications area. From its foundation by Graham Bell in 1875 to the restructuring decision in 2000, the company had many key events to be studied in terms of several strategic management point of views. This paper mainly focuses on external environment issues and corporate-level strategies.
Analysis with respect to Corporate-Level Strategy
After the foundation of the Bell Telephone Company in 1875, the company diversified its business via the acquisition of Western Electric Company. With this vertical integration BTC had the opportunity to create wealth while transferring its corporate skills. Additionally, acquisitions of many licences also provided BTC huge market power. These horizontal integration enabled BTC to create economies of scope and enabling of operational relatedness. Another significant driving force of the company was the Bell laboratories, which continiously generated know-how and technology. These generated know-how and technology were the key corporate skills to be transferred to other divisions of BTC (First satellite etc.)
However, the monopoly status of the company caused many filed law suits, which finally led to the divestiture of the firm. After the divestature AT&T and the regional Bell operating companies, AT&T lost most of its market share and customers, due to competition and loss of its competitive advantage, namely the ability to reach its wires and bills to every American house. Consequently, since the company was still a huge cash generating company, it decided to diversify into new sectors. Indeed it took over the computer maker NCR, McCaw, some other...
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...licated as AT&T expand globally and faced governmental structures quite different from those within the United States.
Industry environmental analysis
The industry environment has a more significant effect on the firm’s strategic actions. By five forces analysis including threat of entry, the power of suppliers, the power of buyers, product substitutes and the intensity of rivalry among competitors, AT&T is to find its position in the industry. Mentioned before the company acts as the first mover in lots of segments of the industry environment it is competing in. Having an intensive rivalry because of the speedly developing high tech requirements of the environment and the R&D forces of the leader companies, new entrants are discouraged. Late movers have commonly less chance to be able to compete and gain advantage over to companies such as AT&T and its competitors.
Of particular importance is the deregulation of the telecommunications industry as mentioned in the act (“Implementation of the Telecommunications Act,” NTLA). This reflects a new thinking that service providers should not be limited by artificial and now antique regulatory categories but should be permitted to compete with each other in a robust marketplace that contains many diverse participants. Moreover the Act is evidence of governmental commitment to make sure that all citizens have access to advanced communication services at affordable prices through its “universal service” provisions even as competitive markets for the telecommunications industry expand. Prior to passage of this new Act, U.S. federal and state laws and a judicially established consent decree allowed some competition for certain services, most notably among long distance carriers. Universal service for basic telephony was a national objective, but one developed and shaped through federal and state regulations and case law (“Telecommunications Act of 1996,” Technology Law). The goal of universal service was referred to only in general terms in the Communications Act of 1934, the nation's basic telecommunications statute. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 among other things: (i) opens up competition by local telephone companies, long distance providers, and cable companies ...
... J. P. Morgan and Company to reflect his power. Morgan also got a stranglehold on several other industries by buying out Carnegie Steel, oil companies, and railroads. Morgan soon went back to his roots and started acquiring more banks, financial firms, and insurance providers. (Moritz 35-39) Today, J. P. Morgan and Company is known as JPMorgan Chase, easily the world's largest global financial services firm.
Many people turn to the AT&T and T-Mobile takeover that was turned down and do not understand why the Comcast and Time Warner merger would be allowed. The main reason this is allowed, is because the cable providers service different areas as shown in exhibit 2. Comcast and Time Warner will have control of their region, but they will not be taking away business from the other cable providers. Cell phone service providers service the entire country and have overlapping markets. If AT&T took over T-Mobile, they would gain more power and take away business from Verizon and Sprint. The merger had different implications and this is one of the reasons why Comcast and Time Warner can actually pull off this merger. The VP of Comcast stated “This transaction has the potential to slow the increase in prices. ... Consumers are going to be the big winners (Reuters 2)."
MCI Case Analysis INTRODUCTION MCI is at a critical point in their company history. After going public in 1972, they experienced several years of operating losses. Then in 1974 the FCC ordered MCI's largest competitor AT&T to supply interconnection to MCI and the rest of the long distance market. With a more even playing field, the opportunities to increase market share and revenue were significant. In order to maximize this opportunity, MCI requires capital.
Upon the acquisition and merger of legacy AT&T Wireless by Cingular Wireless and the solidification of SBC, BellSouth and Cingular Wireless, the New AT&T mobility business unit now leads in the current market share narrowly over Verizon Wireless.
AT& T is the largest communications company in the world. The company is the leading U.S. provider of wireless, high speed Internet access, local and long distance voice, and directory publishing and advertising services. They have even expanded to include entertainment with television services called UVERSE TV. With the many accomplishments of this media giant its portrayal of evidenced practice of some successful organizational behavior concepts reveal clear understanding of leadership. AT & T has proven success through effective organizational behaviors that include focusing on organizational structure, organizational culture and communication.
This did not last long because just a quickly as they rose so did they fall. Within a year their stocks were down to little of nothing, and their name was not one someone wanted to be associated with. The downward spiral can be contributed to the organization culture and improper checks and balances.
The world is experiencing a communications revolution. The Internet, e-Commerce and other developments (including the convergence of communication technologies) are profoundly reshaping economic and social life. AT&T must position itself to meet the challenge of this revolution. The strategic development of information-based industries is a key to the future social and economic development of the world.
The strategic recommendations provided will improve and enable the business to cope with the competitors, while the implementation of the strategy section will outline the way to go about achieving these alternatives in the business setting. Lastly, we put up a discussion on the evaluation procedures and necessary controls for the business. In the case study, it was discovered that there were sources of opportunities in which the company would invest.
In a world of free trade, growing competition and accessibility to foreign markets, the need for methodical market analysis and assumptions is steadily rising in today’s business environment. It is just a normal way of thinking to primarily intent to eliminate the financial before entering a new and foreign market. This suggests that enterprises have to develop an overall strategy for their business in order to gain competitive advantage and consequently market share. With the words of Michael E. Porter, professor at Harvard University and leading authority on competitive strategy, this desirable market success is indirectly linked to the individual structure of a market. The unique structure of a single market influences the strategic behaviour and the development of a competitive strategy within a firm. The competitive strategy finally decides whether a company performs successfully on the market or not. Referring to this interpretation of business success, M. E. Porter established his five forces framework that enables directives to gather useful information about the business environment and the competitive forces in industries.
In order to achieve the goals which is being most successful in the telecommunication industry, AT&T have concern about their external environment. The external environment can influence their guideline while running their business because it can be the bench mark for the company to gain more profit and becoming better than the others. Consequently, the AT&T company had analyze and focusing on the external environment to understanding their market and condition of the company. Therefore, the six segment such as technological, global, sociocultural, economic, demographic and political/legal are the segment that help the company to have better understanding about their general environment.
By 2001 the telecommunications market was softening; meaning prices were falling due to an excess of supply and a decrease in demand as the dot com boom ended. WorldCom had already signed contracts with third party telecommunication companies promising to complete their calls. These multi billion dollar contracts were actually costing more in expenses than what the company would or was receiving in revenue (Sandberg, Solomon, & Blumenstein, 2002).
Nokia focused on building and sustaining its current competency in the early 1990s. NMP created valuable alliances across the industry and made key acquisitions to increase economies of scale, market share, and access to R&D resources. The management believed in the growing acceptance of digital technology as the uniform communication standard in the future. Nokia formed partnerships with AT&T, Alcatel, and AEG to further the development of a digital telephone and network.
For assessing the industry profitability, Porter 5 Forces analysis tools were used to analyze one organization evaluation. In this case, the technique were used to analyze 7-Eleven Convenience Store specifically in Malaysia. Porter 5 Forces consists of 5 important area which is Threat of New Entrants, Bargaining Power of customers, Threat of substitute Products and services, Bargaining Power of suppliers, and competitive rivalry within the industry. Theoretically, the more powerful these forces in an industry, the lower its profit potential. The strength of each force differs by industry and changes over time. The competitive advantage that 7-Eleven has using these five forces is it has raised the barrier of entry for other competitors to enter the convenience store market as new competitors will require a huge capital investment in order to implement the information technology in their business in order to be competitive. Also, hypothetically being the first in the market, 7-Eleven could have made contracts with the Malaysia government to not allow other 24-hour convenience stores in the market for a certain time period, such as Astro had done, thus having a monopoly market in the beginning of their operations which will allow them to target a bigger market share.
Apple, Inc is a well known name in the computer technology world; Apple, Inc leads the computer industry in innovation thanks to the award winning desktop and notebook computer known as OS X operating system (Yoffie & Slind, 2008). This paper will focus on Apple Inc., strategic management and why is it critical to the success of the organization in meeting its goals and mission. It is therefore important to define strategic management, according to Certo, Peter & Ottensmeyer, (2005), strategic management is a continuous process that directs an organization to be appropriately suited to its internal and external environment. Strategic management benefits organizations by providing personnel, capital, helps to set standards and most importantly activates people. For an organization to have a successful strategic management plan, the mangers must learn to think strategically and have the ability to evaluate their environment and develop new ideas. Steve Jobs one of the founding fathers of Apple Inc used strategic planning to his advantage by making Apple’s mission a simple one- bringing easy to use computers to the general market, revolutionizing the computer market.