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.
Imagine if nobody had a cellphone in today’s world. That’s why today everybody has some form of a cellphone contract with the four major companies (AT&T, Sprint, Verizon or T-Mobile) or a less know cellphone provider. AT&T and Verizon Wireless provide more than the other two major companies.
Corporation like Sprint Wireless provider industry which provides cell phone coverage and data. Sprint is one of the largest corporations in the U.S with competitors such as Verizon and AT&T. Sprint has a lot of control in the wireless provider market. Being Independent Corporation, still has to considerate the reactions of their competitors before making business decisions such as chan...
...tical decisions that Starr talks so much about. The decision by AT&T and the federal government to regulate AT&T is the most noticeable instance of this, as well as possibly part of the cause for the legislation concerning the post office. We also saw that sometimes organizations could form symbiotic relationships with the socio-technical system where both the user and the system itself greatly benefit from mutual cooperation. The telegraph showcases this principle with its relationships with railroads and, most notably, the Associated Press. In the end though, the point is that it is never a single factor that determines the growth of institutions as influential and as widespread as the post office, telegraph, and telephone. Systems such as these must always be analyzed from multiple perspectives in order to really see why their development occurred the way it did.
Outsiders wondered how each company’s internal changes would affect their endless competitive battle in the industry. The case illustrates how global competitiveness depends on the organizational capability, the difficulty of overcoming deeply rooted administrative heritage, and the limitations of both classic multinational and global models.
Employee motivation is one of the keys to success in any business, especially in a retail sales environment. It is particularly important to understand how employee motivation can be impacted by the strengths and weaknesses of AT&T’s retail sales consultant position (RSC). A series of interviews and surveys were conducted over a two-week period with employees of AT&T in the RSC position as well as retail management positions to determine how the employees really feel about this position as well as internal strengths and weaknesses that contribute to employee motivation. Although there are a lot of positive factors that keep the employees motivated within AT&T, there are some weaknesses that can cause employees to become demotivated.
In today standards people look at Comcast they see the largest mass media and communication company in the world by revenue. Also people see it as a huge conglomerate because Comcast is the largest cable and home internet service in the United States of America while having the third largest home telephone service provider. This is why people fear Comcast because they are the ones who basically control the market in those three areas. Now looking at what Comcast has become people need to understand how this all started by first looking into the history. Then look into their five main subsidiaries and whether the company has a global presence. Next look at see what new big acquisitions the company has acquired. After looking at these reasons the conclusion can be made that synergy is of real concern through this company.
AT&T had developed a reputation for providing high-quality long distance telephone services. It moved rapidly to exploit this reputation in the newly competitive long distance market by aggressively marketing its services against MCI, Sprint, and other carriers. Also, AT&T had traditional strengths in research and development with its Bell Labs subsidiary. To exploit these strengths in its new global competitive context, AT&T shifted Bell Labs' mission from basic research to applied research, and then leveraged those skills by forming numerous joint ventures, acquiring NCR, and other actions. Through this process, AT&T has been able to use some of its historically important capabilities to try to position itself as a major actor in the global telecommunications and computing industry.
billion dollars dept and had to decide to sell some of its business to carry
The controversial topic of whether or not AT&T should merge with Time Warner Cable is based on two perspectives. The first outlook onto the situation is based
Today, the technology sector has been dominated by various companies all competing to gain the huge market share that has created great rivalry amongst many organizations even leading to the acquisition and rebranding of some like Nokia and Motorola. Under the defensive strategy, most companies employ this technique to discourage new
DIFFERENTIATION- AT&T’s exclusive agreement to market and sell the iPhone with Apple Corporation has differentiated itself from its competitors. Utilization of its vast spectrum to offer video conferencing service (video share).
In fact, some of the biggest threats to the company’s growth are the government’s regulation that increases the risk to the underlying business. In addition, the risk of losing the exclusive contract for the iPhone would be a major loss for AT&T. Most of the consumers choose AT&T because of their exclusive contract for the iPhone. Hence, this loss of business will significantly influence the AT&T's profitability and revenue. Moreover, the antitrust authorities play an important role on approved the merger of AT&T.
WorldCom began as a small provider of long distance telephone service. During the 1990s, the firm made a series of acquisitions of other telecommunications firms that boosted its reported revenues from $154 million in 1990 to $39.2 billion in 2001 (Lyke and Jickling, 2002).
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.
...d to learn from the chess game in terms of the ground rules and specific strategic management points of views. There are three common strategic principles and management expertises that the corporations need to be aware of and follow. First of all, it is highly advisable for them to conduct a macro environment evaluation through resorting to the PESTLE Analysis and the Porter’s Five Forces Model. Second, it is of significance to carry out self evaluation analysis with a view to better understanding the firms’ own advantages and capabilities through using SWOT Analysis. Last but not least, the corporation is advisable to conduct an all rounded competitor analysis in order to gain a detailed acknowledgement of the current circumstance possessed by the major competitors so as to assist them to generate a better corresponding strategies in the future business operation.