Billabong Business Culture Essay

Business culture factors influencing Billabong’s operations, include values, rituals, rites and celebrations. Billabong has various values shaping the business. The company has a code of conduct that all employees must abide by. The code of conduct includes values such as integrity, honesty, trust and teamwork.

All Billabong stores require across the board structure plans and regulations. Each store runs slightly different depending on the manager as long as across the board code of conducts are followed. Each store will have different rituals, rites and celebrations due to the manager and work team. Majority of stores will celebrate events in different ways and congregate to discuss the business. This all depends on how each store runs and

how the work team likes to celebrate, discuss and brainstorm.

The life cycle of Billabong
Billabong appears to be in the post-maturity stage.

There are three possible outcomes of a post-maturity company, including steady state, decline and renewal. Billabong has grown globally and diversified their products by successfully integrating with companies such as Vonzipper Glasses, Element Skateboards, Kustom Footwear and Nixon Watches. Keeping the business at a steady state can be difficult due to unforeseeable and unreliable sales and expenses. Despite the company’s successful growth and diversification, Billabong has faced major decline as it has had a huge net-loss and has been forced into having a serious amount of debt. In order for Billabong to renew the business, the owner has to make crucial decisions to ensure businesses future survival.

Future challenges
There are 4 main factors of challenges the Billabong could face in the future. These factors include financial, social, political and economical. A financial challenge that Billabong has to face is the challenge of reducing major debt. An article written by Sue Mitchell in the Financial Review reveals Billabong’s debt of $186 million, recorded in February 2017. Debt is a huge weight on Billabong, which reduces their ability to be agile and flexible.

A social challenge that Billabong could possibly have to face in the future is the issue of having enough women in the workforce. Currently Billabong is meeting their objective of there 17% women in the company. The amount of women in the company could easily decrease

for various reasons. Billabong has to come up with tactics and solutions on how the company will face this issue.

A political challenge for Billabong to face in the future is dealing with taxation challenges. Previously, Billabong struggled with a large net-loss of $23.7 million, after their tax credit benefits weren’t repeated from a previous year. It is possible for Billabong to come across this issue again and it is important for the company to prepare themselves for this and evaluate what they did wrong in the past.

An economical challenge Billabong could possibly face in the future is the issue of downturns and recession. Most businesses will experience this but all businesses try to avoid it. Billabong has to consider ways they can avoid downturns in the business in order to keep out of large debt and net-loss.