3M Corporation Business Analysis
Company Background:
The Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Corporation (3M) was founded in 1902. It reported sales revenues of $16.7 billion during the year 2000. These revenues came from 3M's six business divisions: industrial; transportation, graphics, and safety; healthcare; consumer and office; electro and communications; and specialty materials. All business divisions were profitable in 2000. The same year, the company made more than 60,000 products and about $5.6 billion sales came from products that had been introduced during the prior four years and another $1.5 billion came from products introduced during 2000. Annually, more than 75,000 employees worked to create more than 500 new products. The company was recognized for its vertical organizational structure, with businesses established by technologies and markets. It was one of the most admired corporations in America and was awarded the National Medal for Technology, the U.S. government's top award for innovation, in 1995.
Business Goals and Strategy:
3M Corporation's each division is treated as a profit center with no interdivisional business between the six divisions. The business unit strategy is to "hold" as the company wants to maintain and increase profitability and market share. In terms of corporate strategy, 3M functions as an unrelated diversified corporation with the prime goal to innovate consistently, thereby offering a...
... middle of paper ...
...le the business units to prepare strategic plans and budget and submit them to senior management to review and approve. This will benefit the company because in an unrelated diversified corporation, business unit managers have a greater influence in developing their strategies and budgets as they, not the corporate office, possess most of the information about their respective product/market.
To conclude I would say that 3M Corporation's existing controls are very good and support their strategy. However, they should incorporate the above mentioned missing controls to ensure greater innovation power, profitability, and competitive advantage.
References
Anthony, Robert N., and Govindarajan, Vijay. (2005) Management Control Systems. McGraw Hill Companies Inc., New York, NY (pp. 654-655)
“CNS Inc. to regain control of Breathe Right international sales from 3M” The Business Journal Minneapolis-St.Paul: 11 Oct. 1999
The soft factors can make or break a successful change process, since new structures and strategies are difficult to build upon inappropriate cultures and values. These problems often come up in the dissatisfying results of spectacular mega-mergers. The lack of success and synergies in such mergers is often based in a clash of completely different cultures, values, and styles, which make it difficult to establish effective common systems and structuresBased on the case study, extensive research and annual reports of AT&T the writer has mapped AT&T in the different domains. AT&T should strive to attain a perfect circle as close to the centre as possible, which indicates total synergy, order and equilibrium. Where the circle is skewed drastic change is needed as it moves closer to the outer ring of chaos:
The defense of our nation and its allies across the globe is essential to the success of the world we live in. The methods in which this defense takes place varies in many different ways, in air, on land, and at sea. Within our nation lies some of the largest defense organizations on the face of the planet, most, if not all, of which strive to protect the United States of America in all arenas. One of these organizations is Northrop Grumman. Northrop Grumman is one of the largest global aerospace and defense technology companies in the world. The company employs over 68,000 employees worldwide, and was named as the fourth-largest defense contractor in the world in 2016 (Forbes, 2016). It grossed over $23.526 billion in 2015. Northrop Grumman
For many years, IBM succeeded in holding a very good market position. In fact, the company achieved a very high market share and huge profits. However, this situation did not last forever. In 1990, IBM experienced its first quarterly loss of $2billion due to some unexpected accounting charges. However, revenues increased from $62.7 billion in the previous year to $96 billion. In 1991, the c...
158). It is expected that a corporate-level strategy will help the firm earn above-average returns by creating value. The corporate level strategies that are used by Seprod are vertical integration and diversification.
Strategic managers think in terms of three levels of strategy; Corporate, Business and Functional Level strategy. Corporate-level strategy is concerned with the strategy of the organisation as a whole, and includes all the units and product lines that make up the corporation (Samson & Daft, 2012). AirA...
This strategy has three key elements, strong domestic markets, profitable Asian growth and an enterprise wide approach to operations and technology.
“Controlling: monitors progress and implements necessary changes where needed. Monitoring is an essential aspect of control” (Bateman & Snell, 2004, p. 18).
The report highlight’s the essential aspects of the control process. In terms of concurrent feedback as well as feed forward, that companies can use to implement so that they can have better outcomes in terms of efficiency of the business. Consequently the report underlines as well as emphasizes of the many contributing factors of these controls. The authors have contrasting views on the control models of an organization, they believe that in order to create an effective control process, and organization first needs to determine its strategic plans for instance in terms of what it is and where is it going.
Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Company (3M)" International Directory of Company Histories, Vol. 26. St. James Press, 1999. Reproduced in Business and Company Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale Group. 2006.
...ll those helps managers to know if the process control is working or not, while the control process is contributing to successful of the current strategy.
A successful business strategy will identify changes in the external trends in the market place. Plan out what the company’s future direction is. Set out the goals for the management team. It will identify a vision of where the company wants to be in the future. Keep all employees informed of the direction of the company.
Electrolux has a solid strategy focused on profitable growth. Those three strategies are: Stability and Focus, Sustainable Profitability, and Targeted Growth (Electrolux). These strategies are a key to growth, especially when entering new markets like China. Electrolux’s dedication to stability and focus is a key because they must remain stable, and focus on the
There are three categories of control: policies, programs and technical control. Controls can be classified as :
Controlling: The Company must function in optimum levels toward the achievement of the desirable objectives, discarding lower value activities and concentrating on higher value activities to ensure the optimum results in the use of rare resources such as time, money, space, market shares.