Research Articles Base: Anti-Trust Laws Examples

Sample Causes why PPM is significant to Organizations Essay

CONTENTS OF THE PAPER I. CAUSES WHY PPM IS SIGNIFICANT TO ORGANIZATIONS             1. Risks of Poor Management             2.  Inherent Complexity of Projects II. CASE STUDIES 1. Outsourced PPM 2. PPM Strategy Created Internally 3.  Project-Based Firm Thirsty for PPM Methodologies III. JUSTIFICATION IN USING MODERN PPM 1.  Why PPM should be continued and get away with traditional? 2.  Alliance concept to fill inadequacies of Partnering   CAUSES WHY PPM IS SIGNIFICANT TO ORGANIZATIONS This section defines the characteristic of projects in general with particular reference to the critical issues confronting organizations.  The difficulties that will emerge in this discussion can be readily implicates to the benefits of Program and Portfolio Management (PPM).  Since PPM has the ability to offer leadership structures and planning/ implementation strategies that are formidable for up-and-coming problems to penetrate, its use should be easily appreciated.   1. Risks of Poor Management Project life-cycle generally consists of four phases (in order); namely: concept and initiation, design and development, implementation or construction, and commission or handover (Burke, 2003, p. 24).  Planning and execution stage are likely synonymous to the second and third stages which situate them in the middle of the project life-cycle.  In this position, planning has the highest potential to add value as well as the level of influence throughout the whole project.  On the other hand, execution has the highest cost of change (p. 24).  Since the success of the latter is precedent to the success of the former, poor management in planning alone can cost one to several objectives of the project.  However, underestimating execution contingencies to support or enhance planning inadequacies and loopholes can cause the same.    Planning can also refer to several planning steps throughout the whole project not just a single or overlapping phase.  In fact, it is what the project participants used to build key objectives under project charter (p. 95).  As poor management takeovers this crucial undertaking, they may be installing over- or under-estimated value of the project.  Thus, irrational objectives could be created.  In addition, going further back into project selection, inability to carry-on key objectives that initially made the project acceptable as the project accelerates can entirely deter its value-adding potential.  For example, new technology (selected for customer-value centrism) is cheaply funded (cost-savings centrism) which resulted to sub-standard parts (defeats the former and supports the latter).    Theoretically, poor project management can be a cause of internal conflict and inadequate authority (1981, p. 9).  The former is characterized by poor schedule and budget control because of the absence of cooperation between the project team and functional organizations.  This readily explains how the planning stage under the project life-cycle can be ineffectively made with this situation.  As a result, time and cost objectives are at risk of distortion.  As the project team would want to keep the objectives, the conflict can induce bottlenecks especially in coordination.  In effect, the project team is bound to devise tactics to solve such bottlenecks which ultimately result in limiting the scope of the project, revising the original objectives and attempting to stand on their own.    The latter is highlighted by non-commitment of resources, personnel and facilities to the project as the top-management failed to provide backing on the project manager.  The negative symptom of this is likely to emerge in the execution phase where the planned schedule and resource proposals are not diligently followed.  There can be delays in issuing budgets to pay for supplier invoice or using project members to do other responsibilities that can hamper project efficiency.  As a result, output targets like cash flows or early completion are reduced on their probability to be obtained.  Task floats that can be used for flexibility to delay or expedite certain activities can be exhausted due to such symptoms.   However, with these circumstances, project objectives are not entirely unattainable because usually there are trade-offs.  Using the integrated risk management model, project objectives can be transcribed to three most crucial project elements which is time, cost and quality (Burke, 2003, p. 257).  Quality is the most complex and difficult to discern making it also difficult to evaluate.  The management can simply choose their best engineers and maybe in the right position to assume a quality output.  However, their assessment can only be figured out after testing and completion of the project.  As such, this situates cost and time in the forefront of project analysis and consideration to become the foundation of objectives.   The banana curve clearly shows the trade-off between time and cost (Burke, 2003, p. 207).  When project time is reduced, the cost usually escalates while the reverse is likely true.  For a project initiated by an average manufacturer, the curve is very useful to obtain optimal returns from the project.  This trade-off can be represented by two conflicting project objectives such as “To be able to finish the project as early as possible to position resources on their regular responsibilities and early inflows from the finished project” and “To implement the project efficiently to reduce the risk of loss and maximize project returns”.  From this, priority is necessary for effective decision-making.  This goes beyond time, cost or quality aspects but on how much the company believes on the feasibility of the project to provide benefits.  But the question is “What is the ultimate objective of the project?” As such, when a poor project management occurred in the planning phase, task schedules may not obtain their optimal levels (e.g. allow maximum floatation for flexibility and contingencies) but the conflict may as well teach project members to be resourceful and put the project to a greater level.  Thus, a certain project objective (maybe an implicit one) that contributes to other project management knowledge areas like information communications is achieved even though schedule optimization has been a failure.  This is the same for execution stage.  When a contingent action is proposed and there is no support from the top-management, governance mechanisms (maybe another implicit objective) are adopted.    It is necessary for project managers and top-management to provide an identity to the project at hand.  This will concretize the importance of the project objectives compared to organizational/ functional ones.  In this way, poor project management can be prevented in the planning and execution stages.  This will also limit the likelihood of the project to adversely affect implicit objectives that is beyond its scope.  Prioritization can be applied and trade-offs can be measured.  As this is in place, the final task is to prevent poor project management to emerge in both planning and execution stage.  The ideal situation is to filter planning problems and correct it under execution stage.  Otherwise, the project can face total failure of completion and all attached objectives will be bound also to demise.      2.  Inherent Complexity of Projects In reality, decisions are based from incomplete information and uncertainty about the outcome that gives rise to an intrinsic element of every project which is risks (Burke, 2003, p. 252).  As much as a project wants to avoid risks, it is unlikely to do so because the general rule is that higher (lower) risks post higher (lower) returns (Macmenamin, 1999).  This is concretized with the universal business doctrine to profit.  In addition, as the project not simply wants to have a partial competitive edge rather a sustainable one, complying with the four criteria on having sustainable competitive advantage necessarily accumulates greater risks (Hitt, 2003, p. 88-92).  When the project embraces valuable, costly-to-imitate, rare and non-substitutable capabilities, it already initiated to move its risks continuum towards total risks and away from no risk and limiting the assurance of the scope of risk management (Burke, 2003, p. 252).   For example, one of the root causes of a failed project is due to the level of innovation (p. 259).  A high level of innovation is a candidate of producing a competitive platform like Amazon’s website that acts like a human salesperson (Hitt et al 2003 p. 90).  The project is likely to result to high design costs as “one-click” technology should be developed including purchase of necessary rights/ license to execute the project.  On the other hand, a low level of innovation may emerge from Amazon’s homogeneity with industry standards that restrains project initiation because it does not have the willingness to exploit the absence of innovation in the industry.  Due to this, a project feature usually entails high level of innovation.  This necessarily requires huge funding, technical expertise and restructuring from the company.  In the contrary, as risks are high, the company has to gamble.  It has to rely with the untested procedures, technology and techniques by exposing its liquidity and strategy to complete the project and derive anticipated returns.                   In this situation, external and internal scanning including competitor intelligence is of little help because uncertainty goes beyond the risk management scope.  Risks are identifiable but are hardly quantifiable because there is yet to provide systematic trend of risk occurrence associated with the innovation.  Thus, probability and consequences/ impact of innovation risks (Burke, 2003, p. 261) are difficult to indicate.  This positions any risk response under a highly subjective framework.  In heuristic studies like that of (1983), information involving formal and probability characteristics that tend to obligate a person was less regarded than the more natural, informal and easier way of cognition (p. 293-315).  According to Burke (2003), other common reasons of project failure are port estimation, inadequate planning, insufficient control and lack of commitment (p. 260) which are the most probable consequences of non-objective approach.    As observed, a successful feasibility study regarding an innovation is not an assurance that the project will also be triumphant.  In concept phase, poor estimation will emerge in indirect costing. In the design phase, flexibility of task schedules is tightened by certain innovation dilemma like being the first-mover.  In the implementation phase, human resource aspect of the project can be neglected as managerial skills would be overly-focus on anticipating difficulties from new and ambiguous technology.  In the commission phase, innovation testing can result to persistent problems that require overtime and extension of the completion date.  The overall phases of the project post threats to costs, quality and time due to the presence of large amount of uncertainties and risks.  This particular phenomenon can be associated with innovation’s integrated approach to companies (2003).   Aside from innovation, projects typically affect a set of stakeholders which includes customers, employees, suppliers, the government and the public.  What the project team and the company want are to minimize the negative effects of the project to them and maximize positive effects to aid in profitability and longer product life.  This is where legitimacy theory takes place (1996, p. 53) where an entity is required to provide evidence that it is indeed legitimate to be operating within a societal framework.  Indication of failure to legitimize includes environmental pollution, employee abuse and fraudulent marketing.  But stakeholders have their way to counter the company through hostile lobbying, product boycott and employee strikes.                                In the contrary, the project is not perfectly funded, scheduled and customized according to specific needs of individual stakeholders.  The project requires prioritization as it cannot satisfy all of them (Hitt et al 2003 p. 25).  This is a rational strategy because the project has its own specific objectives that may not be intended to indirect stakeholders.  The inability to obtain this goal can also be caused by the lack of stakeholder focus.  As a result, most companies go on with stakeholder priority (e.g. customers) and leave others with minimum attention (e.g. environmentalists).  The latter, however, can pose project closure even when successfully completed if the product does not meet certain standards.  Due to this, environmental disclosures are used for corporate image-building (1996, p. 62).   Options to mitigate possible retaliation of non-priority stakeholders are available to the company.  However, such are in nature, are simply reactive tactics where ambiguity of success are minimally analyze throughout the life of the project.  In addition, they are also necessarily includes unethical execution (e.g. greasing and fraud) to address any stakeholder difficulty.  As a result, project members are squeezed in a challenging situation.  If they will not use these options, they may risk not exploiting opportunities because of the associated substantial costs, time and quality constraints of a project with diversified stakeholders.  On the other hand, not having second thoughts to refuse such options may lead to risking reputation and conscience that can have strategic and personal complications (e.g. Enron scandal).     CASE STUDIES In this section, it will highlight the ability of PPM in addressing strategic problems and issues of a firm.  Either it chooses to create its own PPM plan or outsource it, the results are positive.  This explains the real case scenarios where PPM application proved to be useful.   1. Outsourced PPM             PPM was used by a Fortune 100 finance subsidiary when confronted inconsistent project implementation, insufficient resource allocation for leading projects and minimal participation of actors in IT programs (Celerity. COM).  These bottlenecks disabled efforts to push funding to increase IT capabilities and be more competitive.  Thus, the subsidiary decided to get advice from opinion leaders in the industry.  The consultant had initially assessed environmental factors that face PPM of the client.  This is followed by creation of several frameworks on how to improve current PPM structure including appropriate leadership structure in PPM.     The focus of the engagement is human resource particularly recruitment of right personnel to head the chosen governance and PPM strategies (Celerity. COM).  This is also emphasized when the consultant mentioned the core role of developing commitment of the employees regarding changes in current PPM.  As a result of this effort, the client had accelerated the required platform for appropriate PPM to be accepted and integrated into operations.  Funding requirements are addressed triggering the renewed competitive vigor of the subsidiary.  In the management side, it learned how to prioritize projects emanated in establishing IT components.  The commitment resulted into increased cooperation and communication across departments which led to efficiently allocating budgets and resources.        2. PPM Strategy Created Internally In 2001, Gering and NCU merger initiated the cornerstone of the business combination through a project that will integrate their IT capabilities (1990).  This project is considered a crucial step to achieve synergy in three strategic dimensions such as strength of international network, range of product offering and size of market base.  In the onset, the success of the project can provide savings of over 15 Million Euros (i.e. 30% of combined IT budgets).  Since the companies are two of the biggest insurer in the world, the undertaking is taken seriously.  PPM strategy is focused on the alignment of IT strategy with business strategy.  This is assured by means of tapping external consultants, top-level management, pool of task groups and close coordination.  Time is the driving force in completing milestones and assessing results at each project stage.    There are three IT project phases (1990).  Due diligence is the evaluation of resources of two firms and addressing combination difficulties.  Pre-merger integration focused on anti-trust laws of the merger.  Post-merger integration is where IT development is actually held.  Results are phenomenal.  By time-boxing each activities, substantial time is saved.  For example, instead of consuming time and money in choosing a target IT system, the existing system of NCU was used not only because it is more strategic but also its integration with the system of Gering can save time.  Further, time-boxing also allows other benefits to ensue such as finding the right channels where consultant evaluators, task groups and management committees can communicate.  The project concept of time and cost trade-offs shown in the banana curve is adhered.  As a result, the merged firm enjoyed IT benefits and savings while recovered easily the investments needed to expedite the project.     3.  Project-Based Firm Thirsty for PPM Methodologies Option is a global manufacturer of quality hearing aids which is one of the pioneers of project-based organization.  In 1991, it adopted a project-based structure referred as spaghetti organization in an effort to retain leadership in the sector (Adam-Smith & Peacock 1994).  The primary goal of such move is to increase innovation by creating strategic circles and groups to prevent slipping under the competitive products being offered by other companies.  The basic tenet of each project is to “Find something to do or loose your job”.  Employees have the independence to choose at least one project group.  Rewards are highly based on contribution to the group and feedback from the project leader.  There are no specific leaders to report rather to focus on the project.  Each group has high flexibility in terms of time, place and nature of accomplishing targets.  The basis of group appraisal is based on results rather than processes.  There are minimal departments with administrative staff serving the significant part in assisting project teams regarding administrative issues.   Without PPM, project groups at Option would be unguided.  The absence of reporting manager can aggravate complexity attached in project management.  Lack of experience proved to be large contributory factor in managing projects.  PPM use is also eminent in the high heterogeneity of the composition of each group.  As employee would be exposed to various personalities and group work ethics, absence of project plan can detriment identification of member strengths and inability to anticipate attitude clashes.  Planning and taking course of action inherent to PPM is useful in these circumstances.  Setting the group goal to project results can minimize behavioral differences and focus effort according to project plan.  The structure is compatible with PPM because uncertainty is obvious when an employee enters a new group from time-to-time.  As a result, certainty measures become insignificant shaping innovative and individual ideas.  Members are not sure whether their ideas will be readily accepted but otherwise should push them as inactiveness can lead to lay-off.          JUSTIFICATION IN USING MODERN PPM             This section explains the advantages of using PPM continuously as it will absorb contemporary improvements in the field of project management.  Being satisfied with historical successes of current and past PPM schemes can undermine the ability of PPM to achieve new heights and exploit new opportunities that the organization has yet to discover.    1.  Why PPM should be continued and get away with traditional? There are various advantages that a firm can derive when it has an appropriate PPM (Dobbins 2004).  The world of today is exposed to abrupt changes that can disrupt business operations.  As the Newtonian view of the world focus on certainty and facts, it cannot address the problems posted by the environment.  If the firm will cease adoption of PPM, it may not adjust its decision-making framework based on modern view which embraces strategy, continuous change, various outlooks and leadership.  Pluralist environments are mitigated by PPM that results to development of capabilities and efficiency in operations.  Inherent to PPM, each project assessment is applied with systems thinking, complex theory and other combinations of field of knowledge to provide integrated conclusions.  Common applications of modern PPM are used in business areas such as defense, information technology, outsourcing and change management.    If PPM in a project-based firm will be discontinued, they will forever be trapped in a certainty-based scheme (Dobbins 2004).  They will not be able to appreciate the importance of risk-taking and learning curve.  For example, if a project is new to the firm, it will likely not take the project due to certainty limitations.  As a result, the opportunity is lost while the company aggravates its inexperience in the issues because of the lack of confidence and initiative to tackle substantial risks.  On the other hand, an alternative PPM route is tried by risk-averse firms.  Partnering enables them to commit on specific projects that could be new to them by spreading the risks to partners.  Although a creative position to replace PPM, incompatibility of organizational goals and complex contractual obligations posted challenges to success.  This is because traditional project management concepts are still in used.  As a result, certainty assumptions cannot fit because there are really no complete contracts as they are subject to incomplete information and opportunistic behavior.   Other feats to displace modern PPM include six sigma, evolutionary acquisition and strategies applied in IT adoption (Dobbins 2004). They are focused in minimizing the time required to finish the project for the purpose of maintaining certainty to acceptable level.  Thus, they are coinciding with traditional project management techniques.  However, they are highly tarnished by unexpected events during the short-term projects.  Although completion time is reduced, it is but right to conclude that they are not exempted from untoward incidents that can delay the project.  Further, leadership in these kinds of project is autocratic while disabling motivation to the workforce.  They are also prejudice to the learning of a core group rather the entire organization and undermine synergy implications.    Modern PPM such as Next Generation Project Management (NP) is a system rather a collection of procedures eminent in traditional PPM (Dobbins 2004).  In effect, limitations of myopic approach to project areas are mitigated by hastening the dogma, “the whole is more important than the sum of its parts”.  It appreciates not only complexity of social systems within an organization rather its evolving mechanisms.  It adheres to the idea that people changes over time and governance structures must adjust accordingly.  Process governance, thus is created, which is applied to expecting emergent situations as opposed to static environments.  It is to note that this appreciation of NP automatically undermines certainty and facts in favor of vigilance to emerging events within the organization.  Autocratic leadership is dissolved as opposing views are studied, accepted and applied with managerial voluntarism.  This approach ultimately falsifies “complex panic” and send message to organizational actors to relax because they have simplified the impact to determine solutions easily.            2.  Alliance concept to fill inadequacies of Partnering Alliance concept is gaining ground in project management in Australia (Cowen & Davis ?).  It is flexible as it can be used in both simple and complex situations.  As observed in the earlier adoption of the concept by major utilities company in the country, one of its advantages is the “last voice” engrained in the relationship between the former and contractors.  However, in the latter stages of the adoption by several Councils, issues such as limited resources and inability to impose provisions for litigation against contractors in case of failure to deliver triggered the upgrade of some features.  Some modifications are the following; contractors can optimize the purchasing system accordingly, open communication of Council to its limited resources, exchange of employees between Contractor and Council and Contractor is responsible to the delivery of intended results.  As the insurance market had experienced downturn in recent years, this structure had become the framework of alliances.    The case above shows the importance of embracing PPM continuously as operations, contractor relationships and environment undergo significant change.  If a company wants to be successful, it has to keep its planning and implementation framework vigilant to the contemporary demands to business model.  PPM is not static and inability to incorporate realistic events that have shaken past knowledge would lead to inefficiency of its use.  Organizations that see the ineffectiveness of PPM in their operations as they cannot see tangible results can be categorized on those organizations using traditional project management techniques.  Aggravatingly, when PPM will cease use, it can forever lock the firm “inside the box” and hide potential from being tapped.  It will continue to calculate and measure all possibilities until the time of its collapse where it finds it does nothing to tackle the issues that attack the firm.  Early in its conception, organizations existed due to ideas generated by its founders.  It will not be established if they are risk-averse of untoward events.  Through PPM, this thrust will continuously be prevalent in operations as the organization is not afraid of risks and have plans on how to face or address them when attacked. Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com

Sample Causes why PPM is significant to Organizations Essay

CONTENTS OF THE PAPER I. CAUSES WHY PPM IS SIGNIFICANT TO ORGANIZATIONS 1. Risks of Poor Management 2. Inhere...

Sample Success in any Company that Operates for Marketing Essay

SONY Strategic Analysis     INTRODUCTION   Success in any company that operates for marketing and profit acquisition lies on the ability of the management in positioning and establishing the products/services being offered. Furthermore, the ability of the company and its management to compete and maintain a competitive edge among its competitor is another basis to say that it is successful. The constant development and innovation on the product line and the growing number of clientele also define the corporate standing of a company. This paper analyses the strategic capability of a company in an electronic industry, SONY Corporation. In analysing how SONY Corporation is competitive, the study utilised SWOT, resource audit, core competencies and value chain analyses for the industry attractiveness. Practical and strategic recommendations are elicited in relation to some pitfalls observed in the case study. Furthermore, analysis on the possible steps taken by SONY are also discussed.   SWOT ANALYSIS                Strengths.  One of Sony’s most potent strength is that they are one of the world’s best known brands. As they have been in the business for 62 years now, the experience that they have in manufacturing cannot be overemphasised. They already have built a solid reputation for being a dependable electronics brand. Additionally, they have the strength of being diverse with respect to their product lines, having taken in many companies in the different aspects on electronics production. These subsidiaries are: Sony Electronics, Sony Computer, Entertainment, Sony Ericsson (50%), Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony BMG (50%), Sony Marketing, Sony Life, Sony Assurance, Sony Bank. The wide range of subsidiaries give the clients a wide range of choices within the SONY corporation. Furthermore, the company is not limited to electronic products, though this is their major product line, they also venture to other fields such as the entertainment industry, and the insurance and banking industry. They are also known to be supportive of societal causes, particularly education. SONY has been known to have invested in many foundations and scholarships that bear its name.  Traditionally Sony’s international operations were a source of that allowed the company to maintain its position as the  one of the largest electronic conglomerates in the world and to respond to other company’s competitive moves. During the worst years of the Japanese Bubble economy  in 1980s, the company invested in the entertainment industry. That move  provided the cash that saved the company from falling out such as other companies in Japan, and gave it key products that were essential to stem its competitors’ moves while it invested in new product development. Today, and even if its western operations still represent the bulk of Sony’s total operations and world assets, its foreign operations still make substantial contributions to the company’s strong performance and leadership in the industry.                  Weaknesses. The company’s organisational structure has become inefficient as the company became more complex. This hindered Sony’s ability to manage its international network of subsidiaries, branches, and companies.  Additionally, there are a lot of speculations over the likely performance of SONY in the future, as the company’s financing section is swamped down by hefty outstanding debts. The firm is not in risk of bankruptcy, but the SONY management is in a tight spot, and has to be extremely vigilant to not make it any tighter. There is also a notable management issues within the company, with the ousting of former COE Nobuyuki Idea, replaced by Howard Stringer in the SONY helm. Moreover, due to the dependence of SONY to its former glory and accomplishments, it has remained stuck in its place. Many companies have taken over its spot due to its inability to come up with more innovative products. Also, due to indecisiveness, it is now forced to copy the LCD technology from other leading companies. Finally, because of the increasing competition, the company has witnessed a decline in overall sales, a weakness on their part as they have somehow failed to overcome the challenges that additional competition brings.                  Opportunities.  SONY Corporation has the distinct opportunity to have better and more innovative products, in order to gain back the trust and liking of their clients. Since SONY already has the name, the only thing it needs to do is to make up for its loss in the past few years. Furthermore, it should foster innovation within its mobile phone division. Mobile phones remain a craze not only in Asia, but around the world. SONY should increase its production of “needed and wanted” products within this division. Phones with cameras, stereos and MP3 players are a hit. If SONY could utilize their expertise in making good built-in MP3 and stereos in mobile phones, they could once again pull their audience back. SONY could further widen the scope of their opportunities through specialising and rationalising its worldwide operations on a regional basis and to develop a network organisation in which its subsidiaries would increase their transactional linkages. Besides SONY learning about the possibilities of producing quality electronic products in their areas of operation at a comparative cost advantage, other relevant factors could bring about new opportunities for exporting vehicles: the parent company’s efficiency-seeking strategy; its competitive disadvantage in the TV/LCD/Flat-screen segment of the market and the competitors’ moves in this market-segment; and the new more flexible regulations in the respective countries in which they have manufacturing plants. Further, with Sony’s existing capability to innovate on electronic products, they have the opportunity to penetrate a still larger scope of market.         Threats. As with any firm in the electronics industry, Ford faces very tight competitive rivalry in the electronics market. Competition is escalating, with the threat of new entrants continuously flowing into the market from South Korea, China and Eastern Europe. SONY is also exposed to the risk of movement in the price of raw materials. The key economies in the US, Europe and the Pacific are also experiencing slow downs lately. These economic factors are latent threats for the company under analysis. While SONY strategies responded to the local opportunities and competitive advantages that were built over time in different national markets, the competitiveness of foreign operations was also dependent upon the company’s management capabilities and its overall position in the industry worldwide. If such factors were to perform under expectation, their competitiveness in the international scene would suffer seriously.   RESOURCE AUDIT A resource is a basic element that a firm controls in order to best organise its operational processes. A resource, or set of resources, can be used to create competitive advantage (2002), that is why an audit of the resources of a firm is a must if it is to utilise them to create the latter. The sustainability of a company’s competitive advantage depends upon the ease with which the resources can be imitated or substituted (1993). When resources are combined they can lead to the formation of competencies and capabilities (1990).   Financial Resources. Although Sony’s 2007 financial results showed a full-year gross profit of $ 1,761,943.0,  their track record during the 62 years that they have been operating shows that they are the type of firm who is able to rebound from such downturn in profits. The increase in results reflected profits at the many areas in Sony’s subsidiaries (Financial statement, 2007). The electronics sector’s revenue, income and cash are generated primarily from sales of electronic products to SONY dealers and distributors, while their financial services sector’s revenue is generated primarily from interest on finance receivables, net of certain deferred origination costs that are included as a reduction of financing revenue. To improve the business and its profitability, SONY plans to reduce their costs through material cost actions, health care cost reductions and capacity and personnel reductions .          Human Resources. The approximate number of individuals employed by Ford and their consolidated entities (including entities that they do not control) as of 2007 is at 163,000.             Physical Resources. To date, they have over a hundred subsidiaries worldwide which houses more than 300,000 employees that they have in their payroll. SONY did not choose to expand its manufacturing operations in low-cost production sites or rationalise its operations (closing more plants, downsizing the labour force further, or increasing the movement of parts and components between various locations) on a worldwide basis . Intangible Resources. Finally, a discussion of Sony’s global strategy would be incomplete if no reference were made to the strategic alliances and international joint ventures with other electronics companies (most notably with Ericsson, to which it creates its mobile phones arm) that have been established in order jointly to develop, engineer, design, market, and even produce other electronics product lines in Japan and abroad. These associations, which preceded SONY 2000, have proliferated and have become vital in maintaining a competitive position for a company not only in specific local markets but also at the global level. They also represent a marked change both from Sony’s previous practices that maintained full ownership of their operations and protected know-how and other ownership advantages, and from the US anti-trust laws that prohibited large firms from entering into such associations. Through them, SONY was able to serve local and global markets, to reduce production, development, and marketing costs, and to cope with excess capacity in the industry. These partnerships also contributed to the geographic dispersion and inter-regional integration of different functions of the value-chain of production. While this integration took place outside the borders of the corporation, it complemented Sony’s efforts to design a global configuration for its organisation and network of subsidiaries.   VALUE CHAIN MANAGEMENT ANALYSIS Firms respond to conditions in their marketplaces by modifying their competencies such as internal capabilities and linkages with suppliers and associates and the ways in which they position themselves in relation to their competitors specifically their strategic direction (2002). The value chain also is useful in retailing decision-making. Understanding the linkages between activities can lead to more optimal make–or–buy decisions that can result in either a cost advantage or a differentiation advantage. The goal of these activities is to create value that exceeds the cost of providing the product or service, thus generating a profit (2000). In the case of Ford Motor Company, the entire operation of the business should be examined and evaluated in order to determine the service delivery processes that strengthen as well as weaken the business. This will result to managerial options to eliminate the liabilities that detract the business or the need to developed and intensify some aspects of the operations.  Meanwhile, Hardy and Clegg (1996) believe that modern organisations passed by the guild structures and as organisations grew larger, skills become increasingly fragmented and specialised and positions become more functionally differentiated. Stakeholders are defined as the individuals or organisations which can either gain or lose from the success or failure of a system (Boutelle 2004). Cohen and Moore (2000) said balance between enhanced company processes and renewed objectives should be critically appraised in order to ensure the success of the company. As such, stakeholder analysis reminds management that it is important to evaluate the interests of the individuals or organisations who can influence or can be affected by the activities of the company. Porter (1985) in his seminal work of value chain proposed it as a tool to identify and to analyse the origins of competitive advantages and suggested that the activities of the business could be grouped into two: primary and support activities. What activities a business undertakes is linked to achieving its competitive advantage, and SONY seemed to be best prepared to implement a global strategy, because of the superior competitive advantages of its foreign operations compared with other companies.  Paradoxically, Sony’s rivals showed a greater disposition to use resources from outside of Japan. It was not until the 80′s that Ford focused on developing a global strategy as a means to enhance its competitive position in the industry. Before then, SONY largely focused on building a strategy that would allow the company to recover its competitive position in its own home market, which was essential for survival. An analysis of the structural and institutional factors that shaped Sony’s strategic response both to the new industry rules and the short-term challenges posed by other industry competitors explains this paradox. A number of broad sustainability challenges set the context for all of the value chain activities (see appendix 2). These issues apply across the value chain: (1) Population growth; (2) Urbanisation; (3) Child mortality; (4) Maternal health; (5) Infectious diseases; (6) Biodiversity; (7) Loss of ecosystem services; (8) Poverty; (9) Education; and (10) Gender Equality. All these issues are attended to by the Ford Motor Company in alignment with their efforts to maintain sustainable competitive advantage through preserving the good public image that their clients expect from them.   CORE COMPETENCIES SONY has several core competencies which they could utilise to further gain advantage over their competitors, and if possible, overtake LG and other companies in its market leadership in the automotive industry. One core competency of the company is their brand management. The strength of their automotive marketing has been such that their brand is known even in the parts of the world where cars are not the common medium of transportation. Another core competency is their supply chain management, which links to their ability to maintain a steady stream of raw materials coming in for production because of their long-term good standing with their raw materials supplier. Their highly coordinated logistics system handled by outsourced firms also form part of their core competencies, leading to excellent inventory management and always on schedule production activities. Another marked core competency is their ability at the moving assembly line. Being the pioneer of such mass production system, they were able to get ahead of the competitors manufacturing processes-wise and were also able to save on costs and time. Yet another core competency is Sony’s focusing on its product development technology under a single product-information-management program through standardising and incorporating them. If sustainable development is to achieve its potential, it must be integrated into the planning and measurement systems of business enterprises. And for that to happen, the concept must be articulated in terms that are familiar to business leaders. Many observers believe that more stakeholders — investors, consumers, nongovernmental organisations and others — will insist that companies to take environmental and social costs as seriously as they take purely financial costs. In addition, investors are expected to increasingly seek out sustainable companies and avoid firms with poor environmental performance, judging the sustainable companies as better risks over the long term. Likewise, consumers are expected to search for products that perform well environmentally.   CONCLUSION             Today, most companies like SONY Corporation find it impossible to create any kind of sustainable competitive advantage based on product alone. It is common knowledge that every one of the successful companies sought and found a precise understanding of how it could create a customer-cantered competitive advantage. Thus, there are numerous aspects that every management should tackle. In SONY Corporation, the key internal strengths are the appropriate and effective marketing strategies used. On the other hand, the flaws of the marketing strategies implemented by the company serve as its major internal setback. Then again, the continuous effort of every company likes SONY Corporation to improve its operational standards is the ultimate solution to emerging conditions brought about by different occurrences such as stiff competition, globalisation, technological innovations and others. Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com

Sample Success in any Company that Operates for Marketing Essay

SONY Strategic Analysis INTRODUCTION Success in any company that operates for marketing and profit acquisition...

Program and Portfolio Management

CONTENTS OF THE PAPER I. CAUSES WHY PPM IS SIGNIFICANT TO ORGANIZATIONS             1. Risks of Poor Management             2.  Inherent Complexity of Projects II. CASE STUDIES 1. Outsourced PPM 2. PPM Strategy Created Internally 3.  Project-Based Firm Thirsty for PPM Methodologies III. JUSTIFICATION IN USING MODERN PPM 1.  Why PPM should be continued and get away with traditional? 2.  Alliance concept to fill inadequacies of Partnering   CAUSES WHY PPM IS SIGNIFICANT TO ORGANIZATIONS This section defines the characteristic of projects in general with particular reference to the critical issues confronting organizations.  The difficulties that will emerge in this discussion can be readily implicates to the benefits of Program and Portfolio Management (PPM).  Since PPM has the ability to offer leadership structures and planning/ implementation strategies that are formidable for up-and-coming problems to penetrate, its use should be easily appreciated.   1. Risks of Poor Management Project life-cycle generally consists of four phases (in order); namely: concept and initiation, design and development, implementation or construction, and commission or handover (2003, ).  Planning and execution stage are likely synonymous to the second and third stages which situate them in the middle of the project life-cycle.  In this position, planning has the highest potential to add value as well as the level of influence throughout the whole project.  On the other hand, execution has the highest cost of change   Since the success of the latter is precedent to the success of the former, poor management in planning alone can cost one to several objectives of the project.  However, underestimating execution contingencies to support or enhance planning inadequacies and loopholes can cause the same.    Planning can also refer to several planning steps throughout the whole project not just a single or overlapping phase.  In fact, it is what the project participants used to build key objectives under project charter   As poor management takeovers this crucial undertaking, they may be installing over- or under-estimated value of the project.  Thus, irrational objectives could be created.  In addition, going further back into project selection, inability to carry-on key objectives that initially made the project acceptable as the project accelerates can entirely deter its value-adding potential.  For example, new technology (selected for customer-value centrism) is cheaply funded (cost-savings centrism) which resulted to sub-standard parts (defeats the former and supports the latter).    Theoretically, poor project management can be a cause of internal conflict and inadequate authority ( 1981).  The former is characterized by poor schedule and budget control because of the absence of cooperation between the project team and functional organizations.  This readily explains how the planning stage under the project life-cycle can be ineffectively made with this situation.  As a result, time and cost objectives are at risk of distortion.  As the project team would want to keep the objectives, the conflict can induce bottlenecks especially in coordination.  In effect, the project team is bound to devise tactics to solve such bottlenecks which ultimately result in limiting the scope of the project, revising the original objectives and attempting to stand on their own.    The latter is highlighted by non-commitment of resources, personnel and facilities to the project as the top-management failed to provide backing on the project manager.  The negative symptom of this is likely to emerge in the execution phase where the planned schedule and resource proposals are not diligently followed.  There can be delays in issuing budgets to pay for supplier invoice or using project members to do other responsibilities that can hamper project efficiency.  As a result, output targets like cash flows or early completion are reduced on their probability to be obtained.  Task floats that can be used for flexibility to delay or expedite certain activities can be exhausted due to such symptoms.   However, with these circumstances, project objectives are not entirely unattainable because usually there are trade-offs.  Using the integrated risk management model, project objectives can be transcribed to three most crucial project elements which is time, cost and quality 2003,).  Quality is the most complex and difficult to discern making it also difficult to evaluate.  The management can simply choose their best engineers and maybe in the right position to assume a quality output.  However, their assessment can only be figured out after testing and completion of the project.  As such, this situates cost and time in the forefront of project analysis and consideration to become the foundation of objectives.   The banana curve clearly shows the trade-off between time and cost ( 2003).  When project time is reduced, the cost usually escalates while the reverse is likely true.  For a project initiated by an average manufacturer, the curve is very useful to obtain optimal returns from the project.  This trade-off can be represented by two conflicting project objectives such as “To be able to finish the project as early as possible to position resources on their regular responsibilities and early inflows from the finished project” and “To implement the project efficiently to reduce the risk of loss and maximize project returns”.  From this, priority is necessary for effective decision-making.  This goes beyond time, cost or quality aspects but on how much the company believes on the feasibility of the project to provide benefits.  But the question is “What is the ultimate objective of the project?” As such, when a poor project management occurred in the planning phase, task schedules may not obtain their optimal levels (e.g. allow maximum floatation for flexibility and contingencies) but the conflict may as well teach project members to be resourceful and put the project to a greater level.  Thus, a certain project objective (maybe an implicit one) that contributes to other project management knowledge areas like information communications is achieved even though schedule optimization has been a failure.  This is the same for execution stage.  When a contingent action is proposed and there is no support from the top-management, governance mechanisms (maybe another implicit objective) are adopted.    It is necessary for project managers and top-management to provide an identity to the project at hand.  This will concretize the importance of the project objectives compared to organizational/ functional ones.  In this way, poor project management can be prevented in the planning and execution stages.  This will also limit the likelihood of the project to adversely affect implicit objectives that is beyond its scope.  Prioritization can be applied and trade-offs can be measured.  As this is in place, the final task is to prevent poor project management to emerge in both planning and execution stage.  The ideal situation is to filter planning problems and correct it under execution stage.  Otherwise, the project can face total failure of completion and all attached objectives will be bound also to demise.      2.  Inherent Complexity of Projects In reality, decisions are based from incomplete information and uncertainty about the outcome that gives rise to an intrinsic element of every project which is risks ( 2003).  As much as a project wants to avoid risks, it is unlikely to do so because the general rule is that higher (lower) risks post higher (lower) returns ( 1999).  This is concretized with the universal business doctrine to profit.  In addition, as the project not simply wants to have a partial competitive edge rather a sustainable one, complying with the four criteria on having sustainable competitive advantage necessarily accumulates greater risks ( 2003,).  When the project embraces valuable, costly-to-imitate, rare and non-substitutable capabilities, it already initiated to move its risks continuum towards total risks and away from no risk and limiting the assurance of the scope of risk management (2003).   For example, one of the root causes of a failed project is due to the level of innovation .  A high level of innovation is a candidate of producing a competitive platform like Amazon’s website that acts like a human salesperson (2003 ).  The project is likely to result to high design costs as “one-click” technology should be developed including purchase of necessary rights/ license to execute the project.  On the other hand, a low level of innovation may emerge from Amazon’s homogeneity with industry standards that restrains project initiation because it does not have the willingness to exploit the absence of innovation in the industry.  Due to this, a project feature usually entails high level of innovation.  This necessarily requires huge funding, technical expertise and restructuring from the company.  In the contrary, as risks are high, the company has to gamble.  It has to rely with the untested procedures, technology and techniques by exposing its liquidity and strategy to complete the project and derive anticipated returns.                   In this situation, external and internal scanning including competitor intelligence is of little help because uncertainty goes beyond the risk management scope.  Risks are identifiable but are hardly quantifiable because there is yet to provide systematic trend of risk occurrence associated with the innovation.  Thus, probability and consequences/ impact of innovation risks ( 2003) are difficult to indicate.  This positions any risk response under a highly subjective framework.  In heuristic studies like that of  (1983), information involving formal and probability characteristics that tend to obligate a person was less regarded than the more natural, informal and easier way of cognition.  According to  (2003), other common reasons of project failure are port estimation, inadequate planning, insufficient control and lack of commitment  which are the most probable consequences of non-objective approach.    As observed, a successful feasibility study regarding an innovation is not an assurance that the project will also be triumphant.  In concept phase, poor estimation will emerge in indirect costing. In the design phase, flexibility of task schedules is tightened by certain innovation dilemma like being the first-mover.  In the implementation phase, human resource aspect of the project can be neglected as managerial skills would be overly-focus on anticipating difficulties from new and ambiguous technology.  In the commission phase, innovation testing can result to persistent problems that require overtime and extension of the completion date.  The overall phases of the project post threats to costs, quality and time due to the presence of large amount of uncertainties and risks.  This particular phenomenon can be associated with innovation’s integrated approach to companies ( 2003).   Aside from innovation, projects typically affect a set of stakeholders which includes customers, employees, suppliers, the government and the public.  What the project team and the company want are to minimize the negative effects of the project to them and maximize positive effects to aid in profitability and longer product life.  This is where legitimacy theory takes place (1996,) where an entity is required to provide evidence that it is indeed legitimate to be operating within a societal framework.  Indication of failure to legitimize includes environmental pollution, employee abuse and fraudulent marketing.  But stakeholders have their way to counter the company through hostile lobbying, product boycott and employee strikes.                                In the contrary, the project is not perfectly funded, scheduled and customized according to specific needs of individual stakeholders.  The project requires prioritization as it cannot satisfy all of them (2003 ).  This is a rational strategy because the project has its own specific objectives that may not be intended to indirect stakeholders.  The inability to obtain this goal can also be caused by the lack of stakeholder focus.  As a result, most companies go on with stakeholder priority (e.g. customers) and leave others with minimum attention (e.g. environmentalists).  The latter, however, can pose project closure even when successfully completed if the product does not meet certain standards.  Due to this, environmental disclosures are used for corporate image-building ( 1996).   Options to mitigate possible retaliation of non-priority stakeholders are available to the company.  However, such are in nature, are simply reactive tactics where ambiguity of success are minimally analyze throughout the life of the project.  In addition, they are also necessarily includes unethical execution (e.g. greasing and fraud) to address any stakeholder difficulty.  As a result, project members are squeezed in a challenging situation.  If they will not use these options, they may risk not exploiting opportunities because of the associated substantial costs, time and quality constraints of a project with diversified stakeholders.  On the other hand, not having second thoughts to refuse such options may lead to risking reputation and conscience that can have strategic and personal complications     CASE STUDIES In this section, it will highlight the ability of PPM in addressing strategic problems and issues of a firm.  Either it chooses to create its own PPM plan or outsource it, the results are positive.  This explains the real case scenarios where PPM application proved to be useful.   1. Outsourced PPM             PPM was used by a Fortune 100 finance subsidiary when confronted inconsistent project implementation, insufficient resource allocation for leading projects and minimal participation of actors in IT programs .  These bottlenecks disabled efforts to push funding to increase IT capabilities and be more competitive.  Thus, the subsidiary decided to get advice from opinion leaders in the industry.  The consultant had initially assessed environmental factors that face PPM of the client.  This is followed by creation of several frameworks on how to improve current PPM structure including appropriate leadership structure in PPM.     The focus of the engagement is human resource particularly recruitment of right personnel to head the chosen governance and PPM strategies   This is also emphasized when the consultant mentioned the core role of developing commitment of the employees regarding changes in current PPM.  As a result of this effort, the client had accelerated the required platform for appropriate PPM to be accepted and integrated into operations.  Funding requirements are addressed triggering the renewed competitive vigor of the subsidiary.  In the management side, it learned how to prioritize projects emanated in establishing IT components.  The commitment resulted into increased cooperation and communication across departments which led to efficiently allocating budgets and resources.        2. PPM Strategy Created Internally In 2001, Gerling and NCM merger initiated the cornerstone of the business combination through a project that will integrate their IT capabilities (1990).  This project is considered a crucial step to achieve synergy in three strategic dimensions such as strength of international network, range of product offering and size of market base.  In the onset, the success of the project can provide savings of over 15 Million Euros (i.e. 30% of combined IT budgets).  Since the companies are two of the biggest insurer in the world, the undertaking is taken seriously.  PPM strategy is focused on the alignment of IT strategy with business strategy.  This is assured by means of tapping external consultants, top-level management, pool of task groups and close coordination.  Time is the driving force in completing milestones and assessing results at each project stage.    There are three IT project phases ( 1990).  Due diligence is the evaluation of resources of two firms and addressing combination difficulties.  Pre-merger integration focused on anti-trust laws of the merger.  Post-merger integration is where IT development is actually held.  Results are phenomenal.  By time-boxing each activities, substantial time is saved.  For example, instead of consuming time and money in choosing a target IT system, the existing system of NCM was used not only because it is more strategic but also its integration with the system of Gerling can save time.  Further, time-boxing also allows other benefits to ensue such as finding the right channels where consultant evaluators, task groups and management committees can communicate.  The project concept of time and cost trade-offs shown in the banana curve is adhered.  As a result, the merged firm enjoyed IT benefits and savings while recovered easily the investments needed to expedite the project.     3.  Project-Based Firm Thirsty for PPM Methodologies Oticon is a global manufacturer of quality hearing aids which is one of the pioneers of project-based organization.  In 1991, it adopted a project-based structure referred as spaghetti organization in an effort to retain leadership in the sector (1994).  The primary goal of such move is to increase innovation by creating strategic circles and groups to prevent slipping under the competitive products being offered by other companies.  The basic tenet of each project is to “Find something to do or loose your job”.  Employees have the independence to choose at least one project group.  Rewards are highly based on contribution to the group and feedback from the project leader.  There are no specific leaders to report rather to focus on the project.  Each group has high flexibility in terms of time, place and nature of accomplishing targets.  The basis of group appraisal is based on results rather than processes.  There are minimal departments with administrative staff serving the significant part in assisting project teams regarding administrative issues.   Without PPM, project groups at Oticon would be unguided.  The absence of reporting manager can aggravate complexity attached in project management.  Lack of experience proved to be large contributory factor in managing projects.  PPM use is also eminent in the high heterogeneity of the composition of each group.  As employee would be exposed to various personalities and group work ethics, absence of project plan can detriment identification of member strengths and inability to anticipate attitude clashes.  Planning and taking course of action inherent to PPM is useful in these circumstances.  Setting the group goal to project results can minimize behavioral differences and focus effort according to project plan.  The structure is compatible with PPM because uncertainty is obvious when an employee enters a new group from time-to-time.  As a result, certainty measures become insignificant shaping innovative and individual ideas.  Members are not sure whether their ideas will be readily accepted but otherwise should push them as inactiveness can lead to lay-off.          JUSTIFICATION IN USING MODERN PPM             This section explains the advantages of using PPM continuously as it will absorb contemporary improvements in the field of project management.  Being satisfied with historical successes of current and past PPM schemes can undermine the ability of PPM to achieve new heights and exploit new opportunities that the organization has yet to discover.    1.  Why PPM should be continued and get away with traditional? There are various advantages that a firm can derive when it has an appropriate PPM (2004).  The world of today is exposed to abrupt changes that can disrupt business operations.  As the Newtonian view of the world focus on certainty and facts, it cannot address the problems posted by the environment.  If the firm will cease adoption of PPM, it may not adjust its decision-making framework based on modern view which embraces strategy, continuous change, various outlooks and leadership.  Pluralist environments are mitigated by PPM that results to development of capabilities and efficiency in operations.  Inherent to PPM, each project assessment is applied with systems thinking, complex theory and other combinations of field of knowledge to provide integrated conclusions.  Common applications of modern PPM are used in business areas such as defense, information technology, outsourcing and change management.    If PPM in a project-based firm will be discontinued, they will forever be trapped in a certainty-based scheme (2004).  They will not be able to appreciate the importance of risk-taking and learning curve.  For example, if a project is new to the firm, it will likely not take the project due to certainty limitations.  As a result, the opportunity is lost while the company aggravates its inexperience in the issues because of the lack of confidence and initiative to tackle substantial risks.  On the other hand, an alternative PPM route is tried by risk-averse firms.  Partnering enables them to commit on specific projects that could be new to them by spreading the risks to partners.  Although a creative position to replace PPM, incompatibility of organizational goals and complex contractual obligations posted challenges to success.  This is because traditional project management concepts are still in used.  As a result, certainty assumptions cannot fit because there are really no complete contracts as they are subject to incomplete information and opportunistic behavior.   Other feats to displace modern PPM include six sigma, evolutionary acquisition and strategies applied in IT adoption ( 2004). They are focused in minimizing the time required to finish the project for the purpose of maintaining certainty to acceptable level.  Thus, they are coinciding with traditional project management techniques.  However, they are highly tarnished by unexpected events during the short-term projects.  Although completion time is reduced, it is but right to conclude that they are not exempted from untoward incidents that can delay the project.  Further, leadership in these kinds of project is autocratic while disabling motivation to the workforce.  They are also prejudice to the learning of a core group rather the entire organization and undermine synergy implications.    Modern PPM such as Next Generation Project Management (NGPM) is a system rather a collection of procedures eminent in traditional PPM ( 2004).  In effect, limitations of myopic approach to project areas are mitigated by hastening the dogma, “the whole is more important than the sum of its parts”.  It appreciates not only complexity of social systems within an organization rather its evolving mechanisms.  It adheres to the idea that people changes over time and governance structures must adjust accordingly.  Process governance, thus is created, which is applied to expecting emergent situations as opposed to static environments.  It is to note that this appreciation of NGPM automatically undermines certainty and facts in favor of vigilance to emerging events within the organization.  Autocratic leadership is dissolved as opposing views are studied, accepted and applied with managerial voluntarism.  This approach ultimately falsifies “complex panic” and send message to organizational actors to relax because they have simplified the impact to determine solutions easily.            2.  Alliance concept to fill inadequacies of Partnering Alliance concept is gaining ground in project management in Australia ().  It is flexible as it can be used in both simple and complex situations.  As observed in the earlier adoption of the concept by major utilities company in the country, one of its advantages is the “last voice” engrained in the relationship between the former and contractors.  However, in the latter stages of the adoption by several Councils, issues such as limited resources and inability to impose provisions for litigation against contractors in case of failure to deliver triggered the upgrade of some features.  Some modifications are the following; contractors can optimize the purchasing system accordingly, open communication of Council to its limited resources, exchange of employees between Contractor and Council and Contractor is responsible to the delivery of intended results.  As the insurance market had experienced downturn in recent years, this structure had become the framework of alliances.    The case above shows the importance of embracing PPM continuously as operations, contractor relationships and environment undergo significant change.  If a company wants to be successful, it has to keep its planning and implementation framework vigilant to the contemporary demands to business model.  PPM is not static and inability to incorporate realistic events that have shaken past knowledge would lead to inefficiency of its use.  Organizations that see the ineffectiveness of PPM in their operations as they cannot see tangible results can be categorized on those organizations using traditional project management techniques.  Aggravatingly, when PPM will cease use, it can forever lock the firm “inside the box” and hide potential from being tapped.  It will continue to calculate and measure all possibilities until the time of its collapse where it finds it does nothing to tackle the issues that attack the firm.  Early in its conception, organizations existed due to ideas generated by its founders.  It will not be established if they are risk-averse of untoward events.  Through PPM, this thrust will continuously be prevalent in operations as the organization is not afraid of risks and have plans on how to face or address them when attacked. Bibliography   Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com

Program and Portfolio Management

CONTENTS OF THE PAPER I. CAUSES WHY PPM IS SIGNIFICANT TO ORGANIZATIONS 1. Risks of Poor Management 2. Inhere...

HOW THE AMERICAN BUSINESS CULTURE IS BEING RESHAPED BY MERGERS, ACQUISITIONS AND OTHER QUESTIONABLE BUSINESS PRACTICES

HOW THE AMERICAN BUSINESS CULTURE IS BEING RESHAPED BY MERGERS, ACQUISITIONS AND OTHER QUESTIONABLE BUSINESS PRACTICES     A Final Paper Presented to the Faculty of the School of Business Administration     In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science in Business Management       ABSTRACT               The business world keeps on changing through the years, dictated by technological advancements and evolving market needs. Business principles and strategies may be formulated as a method of adapting to these changes, and the development of these strategies results in more transformation to the business environment; the cycle goes on. The phenomenon of Merger and Acquisition (M&A) is one of the revolutionary driving force standing at the forefront. In the US, M&A has initiated metamorphosis of the business structure. The fact that it has been categorized as a potentially questionable practice reinforces the need to explore its twist and turns.                This paper aims to emphasize the seriousness of M&A concerns regarding the direction it is leading American businesses. In a minor way, other questionable business practices that complicate the ethical way of doing business were given attention too. The main discussions however are inclined to be more on M&A transactions. To do this, this paper collected the details of M&A transactions and litigations, enough number of actual examples that would cover as much ground of the concept as possible. From these case studies, a general view can be deducted. It has been shown that M&A belongs to the issues trying to be solved by the Anti-trust laws enacted since 1890. However, the merger wave continued and still going strong. It seems that the attraction of stability and growth is greater than the fear of the possible legal attention.               The legal implication of M&A transaction is not without basis. A lot of legal suit has been filed due to allegations that a particular merger or acquisition transaction violated the provisions of the anti-trust laws. This shady side of M&A transaction arises from the possibility that the combined company becomes too big an opponent for the rivals to compete with. Aside from legal threat, the risk of failure after the merger or acquisition cannot be guaranteed. M&A transactions don’t usually go through smoothly. A lot of problems can occur throughout this period, from the conception of the plan to the actual completion of the transaction. There may not always be agreement and cooperation between the parties involved. It was observed that a real merger of equal seems to be rare, if not impossible. A common differentiation between acquisition and merger lies in this cooperation and agreement issue: Mergers are generally viewed as mutual decision of equal party while acquisitions are often associated with hostility of a small firm towards the big acquiring firm.   TABLE OF CONTENTS   CHAPTER 1    INTRODUCTION………………………………………………1                            Statement of the Problem…………………………………….2                            Purpose of the Study………………………………………….3                            Importance of the Study………………………………………3                            Scope of the Study……………………………………………                            Rationale of the Study………………………………………..                            Definition of Terms……………………………………………                            Overview of the Study………………………………………..   CHAPTER 2    REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE……………..……..                            Overview of the Anti-trust Laws………………….                            Overview of M&A…………………………………………….                            Overview of Other Questionable Business Practices                            The Enforcement of Anti-trust Laws..……………….…….                            The Impact of M&A Activities…………………….………..   CHAPTER 3    METHODOLOGY……………………………………………                            Approach………………………………………………………                            Data Gathering Method……………………………………..                            Database of the Study………………………………………                            Validity of Data………………………………………………                            Originality and Limitations of Data…………………………   CHAPTER 4    DATA ANALYSIS……………………………………………   CHAPTER 5    SUMMARY, RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS………………………………………   BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………                       CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION               The business world of today can be compared to a battle field. And the battle is fierce. Globalization started out as colonial conquest, turned into cultural imperialism, and in the present times, the term is now related to global business competitiveness. Large business competitors strive for domination, while small entities on the sidelines just aim for survival. Just as warfare techniques and strategies are being formulated by high military officials, business executives are always searching for more business practices that will help them gain competitive edge over “opponents”.   Different business principles pops out one by one like mushrooms; some were effective, some significantly improved the firm’s performance, some brought a lot of firms to their downfall, some disappeared from management vocabulary, and some are here to stay. Examples of business philosophies that became mainstream tools in business arsenal are Cost Leadership, Product Differentiation, Business Process Reengineering/Restructuring (BPR), Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Total Quality Management (TQM), and Merger and Acquisition (M&A), etc.   When reviewing the implementation of different business practices popular among firms in the United States, one would see that mergers and acquisitions takes more than a fair share of attention from US laws governing businesses. But this paper does not focus solely on the legal aspect. The observation was stated merely to point out that the concept of merger and acquisition is indeed a big issue. The mere fact that the government concerns itself with M&A activities shows that its impact is broader than most business actions. One would assume that companies might steer clear of such processes mired in legal complexities, but ironically, the statistics are up.   Most companies think that the advantage outweighs the difficulties and other negative implications. In fact, the recent years showed that the “merger wave” in America keeps growing, both in the number of transactions and the financial size of the merger. The discussions that will be presented in this paper focus on the observations, changes, and other issues arising from the increase in M&A activities in the U.S., covering the business, legal and social views.       Statement of the Problem   It cannot be denied that the new trend in merger activities is changing the face of business world in the U.S., in ways more than just skin deep. As New York Times has pointed out, the corporate environment of America is being reshaped today by merger activities in a way never seen since the boom of industrial takeovers in auto and steel firms occurred at the start of the century ( 1998, p.1). Indeed, acquisition strategy played a major part in the structural changes that US businesses had undergone in the 80s and 90s (, 2002). It is immediately evident that the larger scope of concern is due to the number of deciding party: most business strategy requires the decision of just one firm, but in the case of M&A, two businesses decide on the issue. But it could be more than that.   The effects of merger deals goes deeper than company management level, it reaches down to the smallest employee, to the streets, and to the courts. This paper does not contradict the observation that US merger deals are on the rise and transforming everything in its path; rather, this paper will reinforce it by elaborating on the nature of this “business face-lift”. In general, this paper aims to make a clear impression to the reader regarding the validity of the statement that M&A activities transform the way that U.S. firms are doing business, and that it motivates top management to rethink their business strategies.   Purpose of the Study               Revolutionary business principles are considered regular news in today’s trade environment. Some might say there’s no reason to get all excited. Some might say these are just fads that will wear off in time, or if it won’t, everybody’s going to get used to it, adapt, and will take it for granted. So when opinions say that this one is different, the question “how so?” needs to be cleared up. For this paper, the specific questions to be answered are: <ul style="margin-top: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in" type="disc"> <li class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 200%"> What is the magnitude of the merger wave?</li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 200%"> For some of these firms who did engage in M&A deals, what was the result for the company? For the employees?</li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 200%"> When does the impact manifest? Upon announcement? After closing the deal? Or both?</li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 200%"> How did the laws on business changed to accommodate any issues from those actual and expected results?</li> </ul> The overall purpose of the paper can be realized through the following sub-objectives: 1.      Provide statistical data that shows the magnitude of the merger and acquisition practices in the US 2.      Present details of some well known merger and acquisition deals, preferably, by large companies that have been around for many years. 3.      Trace the changes in US laws related to merger and acquisition activities. In relation to this objective, the influence of M&A situation/results on the amendments or creation of new laws regarding mergers and acquisition will be investigated. 4.      Present details of some examples of how merger laws are being enforced.   Importance of the Study               M&A cannot be taken for granted. It is not like those simple “projects” that a firm may launch in order to change some aspect of the business for improvement. It is not like a TQM approach where significant changes could be seen in company service and output, and yet, the firm stays basically the same. It is different from business process reengineering where the hierarchy, structure and core operation were modified but the company retain its identity. M&A will not be defined in this section, but it is worth pointing out that it requires a lot of adaptation from everyone connected to the company, it involves a lot of risk, and sacrifices, and thus, the study of how it makes life different for everyone involved is very important in deciding whether it’s all worth it in its current state.   This is a controversial concept, and as such, there is no uniform opinion, but instead, a diversity of perspectives. Like other revolutionary business strategy, the advantages and disadvantages of M&A activities are subject of debate. It is therefore important that arguments that supports and arguments that criticize M&A activities are presented to ensure that balance of view is maintained and prejudice is eliminated.   Scope of the Study               The scope of this paper covers the common questionable business practices, but since M&A activities are more numerous, financially significant, and popular, it is expected that more focus would be given on merger and acquisition details. This paper would concentrate on the actual application of M&A and less on the theoretical description and analysis of principles. This paper will not devote a full section on how it stated, nor discuss intensively the evolution of M&A. This paper will discuss the way that organizations evolved, but the development and stages of the process will not be traced out.    In the legal matters, the area of concern is the effect of M&A deals on the state of business laws, and not the other way around. Although the business laws control and regulate the execution of M&A transactions, the purpose of this paper is to show the way that M&A changes things, and not the way that M&A trends are being affected by external factors. In this regard, no in-depth analysis of theoretical explanation for the rise (and/or fall) in M&A transaction would be presented.   Rationale of the Study   The issue of merger and acquisition in the US is a relevant subject to be discussed, not only due to the sheer volume of M&A transactions, but also due to the nature of the reverberations that occur after such transactions are completed. The media attention that big merger plans attracts tells us of the significance of this study. In recent business literatures, it is very likely that a section would be devoted to discussion of merger and acquisition practices. The M&A concept is not a management concern only. Employees and consumers are likewise affected, thus a need for a closer look at the intricacies of the M&A issue exists.   There are times that M&A activities are categorized as questionable business practice. It may not always mean negative, but the term “questionable” gives merger and acquisition the impression of being a strategy that needs more thought and analysis before implementing. After all, humanity tends to be a moral individual and thus there are things considered as more valuable than mere financial advantage.   Definition of Terms   ·         ACQUISITION Acquisition has a similarity and difference from merger transactions. They are both a business process that involves two organizations. They both result in a single organization after the transaction is completed. However, in acquisition, one of the involved parties buys out the other firm, and absorbs it. The purchased company will no longer be recognized as an independent or individual company. The absorbed company will be a part of the buying firm, a subsidiary of the latter.   ·         ANTI-TRUST LAWS These are series of U.S. laws in trade and commerce regulation, designed to enhance business competition and to protect public interest by restricting monopolies in business. As the name implies, these laws oppose “trust” (see definition of trust), more commonly known today as “cartel”.   ·         BUNDLING Pure bundling involves selling two products together, that is, neither of the two products is available to be purchased alone. It may also be set that the bundled product can only be purchased in particular proportion to each other. In mixed bundling, both product may be sold individually but at a higher price than if they were part of the bundle.   ·         CARTEL Cartel is a group of business organizations united for a common cause: to regulate the price and production quantity of the goods offered by the members in order to control the market against other non-member competitors.   ·         CELLER-KEFAUVER ANTIMERGER  ACT Passed in 1950, the Celler-Kefauver Act amended the Clayton Act of 1914. The purpose of the act is to prohibit a firm from acquiring the assets of its competitor if it would result in competition reduction.   ·         CLAYTON ACT Enacted in 1914, the Clayton Act is an amendment to the Sherman Anti-trust Act. It added provisions for addressing four specific business issues: price discrimination, tying contracts, inter-corporate stockholding, and interlocking directorates (Martin, 1959, p. 3.   ·         CONGLOMERATE MERGER Conglomerate merger involves the merger between two firms which operates in unrelated industry, and are not competitors.   ·         EXCLUSIVITY Synonymous with “tying transactions”, exclusivity refers to a term in contract which requires one party to deal exclusively with the other party with respect to a specific function.   ·         HORIZONTAL MERGER It is a merger deal (see definition of merger) between two firms that are producing the same product or offering the same service.   ·         HOLDING COMPANY A holding company is firm that has the ability to control and influence the operation of another company by possessing sufficient voting stocks in the latter.   ·         INTER-CORPORATE  STOCKHOLDING A practice in which one firm possesses stocks in another company and utilizes those stockholdings to control and limit the other firm’s competitiveness.   ·         INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATE Interlocking directorate pertains to the relationship between two different company’s boards of director when some of the board members of one company also sit as members of the other company’s board of directors; thus raising the possibility that the two firms are not acting independently from each other.   ·         MERGER Merger is similar to acquisition (see definition of acquisition) in that two firms combine and one entity remains at the end. They differ from each other in the sense that in merger, no party is considered dominant. Both firms agree on integrating their operation co-equally (, 2003, p. 215). By co-equally, it is implied that both the individual firm would be disassociated with their current identity and be identified with the resulting union.   ·         MONOPOLY A monopoly exists when a firm possesses the whole or almost whole of the market for a particular service or product due to the absence of competitor or severely restricted competition.   ·         MULTI-HOME It refers to consumers’ attitude by which they do not look at a single source nor settle for a single brand (or platform) for services or goods that they need.   ·         OLIGOPOLY It is a business situation where a market is controlled by more than one firm (as opposed to monopoly), but still few enough so that a business move by any one of them could have a very significant impact on the other competitors.   ·         PRICE DISCRIMINATION Price discrimination is a practice by which a vendor assigns a different price for the same goods depending on who is buying the goods.   ·         ROBINSON-PATMAN ACT Robinson-Patman act was a statute passed in 1936 to amend the Clayton Act of 1914. It prohibits all sellers or suppliers to sell the same goods to different purchasers at unequal prices (see definition of price discrimination) if it results in stifling of competition.   ·         SHERMAN ANTI-TRUST ACT First among the series of anti trust laws, it was passed by the US Congress in 1890 to prevent economic power from being concentrated in large corporations, as well as restrict the execution of other questionable contracts which restrains trade or commerce (, 2004, p. 43512).   ·         TRUST Trust refers to corporate monopolies in the late nineteenth century. The term was derived from the word trusteeship, wherein industry control is being maintained by mutual agreement between industry giants to fix the prices and production outputs. The modern form of this concept is the “cartel”.   ·         TYING A practice by which a customer, in order to buy a particular product, is required to buy another product.   ·         TYING CONTRACTS Also called exclusive dealing contracts or exclusivity, this refers to a deal wherein a vendor, agrees to sell goods or offer other incentives, on the condition that the buyer will cease doing transactions with the vendor’s competitors.   ·         VERTICAL MERGER It is a merger deal (see definition of merger) where in the two firms involved, one is the supplier and the other is the customer prior to merging.                             CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE   The area of business management is a well developed field of industry. New business phenomenon undergoes a wait-and-see period, after which the reaction of the market becomes predictable enough to make conclusions and logical inferences. These observations become standard and     anyone interested may refer to them at anytime, given that information is now readily stored and distributed, thanks to the modern times. For any business aspect of interest, related literatures are sure to exist.   This paper tackles a delicate subject which requires the inclusion of contemporary ideas in order to reinforce objectivity and reliability. Relevant papers were searched to look deeper into the nature of anti-trust laws, which governs the whole process of M&A and other business practice. Business literatures that provide an overview of M&A practices were also cited. Even though M&A activities takes more of the limelight than other questionable business practices, it is also important to refer on other sources that touches the latter concept. Authors have written about the application of the law regarding M&A practices, and some of their works are included here, as well as opinions on the impact of M&A deals.   Overview of the Anti-Trust Laws               Prior to the enactment of the Anti-trust laws, there were existing statutes and common laws that governs business but due to conflicts in interpretation, the inability to regulate business organization in a national scope, and the uneasiness of the people towards the concentration of economic power, the Sherman Anti-trust act was enacted on July 2, 1890 (, 1929, p. 26). This was the first federal action against formation of business monopolies and trusts that threatens the fairness of trade. Trusteeship refers to the practice by which firms group together and agree to set a standard, controlled price among them selves.               The book “Merger and the Law” was a result of the investigation conducted by the National Industrial Conference Board to study the relationship between the Anti-trust act and business conduct. It was an old publication but relevant since it provides first-hand insights about the early years of the anti-trust laws. The book describes the Sherman Anti-trust act as flexible since Congress used common-law terms in defining the policy, allowing a variety of practices to fit into the general prohibited business methods: trade agreements, predatory business practices, and corporate mergers (., 1929, p. 27).  The book pointed out that several more legislation followed which in one way or another, affects the anti-trust laws’ applicability (., p. 101). Among them was the Clayton Act.   The Clayton Act of 1914 was an amendment to the Sherman Act. After the Sherman Act, the concept of holding company replaced the practice of combination by trust (, 1959, p. 4). However, the new provisions in the Clayton Act were not solely for the purpose of addressing merger issues, but for prevention of the negative consequences associated with intercorporate stockholding (., p. 20).  In section VI of the Clayton Act, exemption of agricultural cooperative organization and trade unions from the anti-trust law (with limitation) was indicated (, 1929, p. 105).     Aside from the exemption, four sections of the Clayton Act proposed that four specific practices, which were (1) price discrimination, (2) exclusive dealing and tying contracts, (3) holding companies, and (4) interlocking directorates, be declared illegal (, 1959, p. 31).   (1959, p. 7) noted that in a conference called out by the Civic Federation of Chicago in 1899, a legislation proposal very similar to the Clayton Act was presented. Still, a need to further strengthen the Clayton Act resulted to the passing of Robinson-Patman Act in 1936 and the Celler-Kefauver Act in 1950.   The Robinson-Patman Act was enacted to supplement the Clayton Act, and the main purpose is to prevent price discrimination when the intention of the seller is to create a monopoly or reduce the competition (, 2004, p. 40722). Selling the same product at different price to different buyers is considered illegal if no actual savings in cost is reflected, or if there is no valid need to compete with the lower price of a rival (, 1995, p. 164).   On December 29, 1950, the Celler-Kefauver Act was enacted. The change in the wordings of section 7 of the Clayton Act is the most significant modification by Celler-Kefauver amendment (, 1995, p.20). The change was necessary so that in addition to acquisition of intangible shares, purchasing the hard assets of the competitor may also be subject to the act.  Ironically, instead of minimizing merger activities, another larger merger movement occurred within the period 1951 to 1968, following the enactment of the Celler-Kefauver Act (., p. 21).     Overview of M&A               Merger and acquisition has been clearly defined in the multitude of business literatures. From simple definitions, the literal meaning can be grasped, but a deeper appreciation of the concept was given by a journal article written by . He used the metaphor of “family” to illustrate the M&A experience (, 2004). In his metaphor, mergers were compared to marriage, acquisitions were likened to adoption, and businesses were associated with artificial life (.).               The comparison was sensible and logical. Like marriage, a straight merger is a combination of equals, two firms agreeing to enjoy equal privileges, make equal sacrifices, accept equal liability, and exercise equal control after they combine their companies. Under friendly terms, they may agree that one party may cease its existence (.) or both of them would leave previous identity and be identified as a new entity. Acquisition, like adoption, is not the joining of equals. One of the companies would assume a parent status to the adopted firm (.) This inequality is evident since the parent firm is usually a larger company than the adopted, and the acquired company becomes a mere subsidiary  of the acquiring firm (.).       Overview of Other Questionable Business Practices               Mergers and acquisition takes more attention among other business practices that promotes or has the potential to promote monopoly and/or restraint of trade. Still, some business strategies pose enough threat to business fairness, that provisions in business laws had been initiated to address them. Some of the practices that will be discussed in this section include price discrimination, tying transactions, tying, and bundling. The reader should refer to the definition of terms for the said practices as additional information.               The variance in views of price discrimination was discussed in detail by s’ article “Teaching Price Discrimination”. The majority of literatures reviewed by the authors define price discrimination as a situation wherein a particular good is sold at a price that is not related to differences in production cost (, 1999, p. 466). The purpose of that article is to provide some suggestions as to how the concept of price discrimination should be taught to students in the face of the differences and inconsistencies of literatures that discuss it.               The inconsistencies are evident from the way that authors point out the existence of price discrimination. For example,  (1998,p. 361) and  (1997, p. 305) shows that the mere difference in price for an identical good by a particular vendor is enough to show price discrimination, while  (1997) insist that it cannot be shown by price variance alone.  In addition,  believe that price discrimination is a phenomenon exclusively associated with monopoly, while  (1999) observed that differential pricing can also be implemented by firms which has small market power, and thus it may exist in both oligopoly and monopoly.               Price discrimination had been classified into first, second and third degree ( 1997). It can be considered as first degree if the vendor sets the price of the good to the extent of the buyer’s willingness and ability to pay; Second degree involves different schemes of pricing by which consumers are induced to pay higher if they have high valuation; and the third degree occurs when the pricing varies according to consumer groups formed by difference in characteristics and traits (.). Although it is not always the case, the threat seen from price discrimination is due to the fact that it can be used extensively by monopolies since they are in a better position to control product price, and that it might be used to take advantage of the consumers..               “Tying transaction” is another business concept that has been viewed as an anti-competitive move. It has also been called by such terms as  “exclusivity” and “exclusive deals”.  Aside from pressuring the buyer of a good to refrain from buying the same from other manufacturers, firms exercising exclusivity may also prevent the customer from going to independent service operators providing after-sale services (, 2005).                         Exclusivity may be achieved indirectly by other means, for example a manufacturing firm may refuse to communicate technical specifications to spare parts producers so that they will not be able to create compatible component (.) Tying, wherein consumers have to buy a “tied” product before it can buy a “tying” product, may also contribute to indirect exclusion of competition. There are factors that decide whether tying would result in minor impact to competition in the tied product or a major consequence to the point that competitors are totally excluded (.).  These factors include 1) The tied product’s marginal production cost, 2) the ability of the rivals to implement vertical or horizontal differentiation in the tied product, and 3) consumers’ flexibility to multi-home. Related to tying is the concept of bundling, another innocuous practice that could easily be utilized to bring about a pseudo-monopoly effect.               The difference between pure bundling and tying is that pure bundled products cannot be bought separately, while the tied product in tying is available for individual purchase (.). Mixed bundling may allow the individual sale of the bundle components, but a sufficiently high price set for these individual components effectively simulates a pure bundle situation (, 2003). Bundling, after all cannot always be forced to a consumer, that is, a consumer may actually use the both the bundled goods or discard one. In this regard, bundling can be viewed as either contractual bundling or technological bundling. One may opt not to avail of the bundled goods in contractual bundling, but doing so in a technological bundle may cause one of the bundled goods to be unsatisfactory (.).   Like most common practices targeted by business laws, bundling have purposes which can be considered valid and some which falls into the questionable category (.). For example, if the object of bundling is to create artificial scale economies or to raise competitors’ cost, then it is questionable (.).   The Impact of M&A Activities                                                   The Enforcement of Anti-trust Laws                                             CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY   Approach               Research, on the basis of objective, may be pure or applied. A pure research involves a new discovery; its main goal is to investigate and bring out a knowledge not known before. Clearly, that is not the case in this paper since the issues being tackled here have existed for a long time and has been the center of numerous studies before. Applied research pertains to the usage of existing research in order to develop, extend, and clarify the existing knowledge and applications. This paper would take the form of applied research.                         Based on orientation of analysis, a research may be quantitative or qualitative. Quantitative research is more inclined to use statistical data, and strict research instruments. Qualitative research does not focus on using numbers and equations. It tends to be philosophical in orientation (, 1992, p.9).            The qualitative approach will be adopted in this paper.   There are different ways that a research can be conducted, but the four major research methods are: Historical/Case Study Method, Descriptive Survey Method, Analytical Survey, and the Experimental Method. The research method that would be used for this paper is the Historical/Case Study method. It was defined as Yin defines the case study research method as an empirical investigation wherein a phenomenon is analyzed within the context of reality and actual events using different sources of evidence (, 1984, p. 23).Case study simplifies the understanding of complex issues by means of these actual examples.   Data Gathering Method               Instead of collecting new information through initiating a survey or questionnaire distribution, statistical data to be used in this paper would be retrieved from existing sources. It will not be feasible to initiate a new data collection method for a phenomenon that may take a long time to observe. As mentioned in the “Approach” section of this paper, this paper is an applied research and thus, previous reports and findings may be used to illustrate this paper’s main thought.  In a way, the method used is similar to a meta-analysis. A meta-analysis research method refers to a process by which previous research findings were collected and analyzed, thus it was often called “analysis of analyses”. The similarity ends there since meta-analysis is more of a quantitative research, making use of mathematical formulas and numbers, while the case study approach used in this paper utilize interpretative analysis.   Numerous examples and observation has been done already and there is only a need to collect them and bring them together to accomplish a single aim: illustrate the complete metamorphosis in all aspect that firms deciding to join the M&A fray undergoes.   Database of the Study   The information and data required for analysis would be taken from academic journals, reference books, magazine articles, news clippings, and official statistical reports. Some of these literatures may be hard copies (print materials) or electronic versions from the web. For the case studies, the details are taken from existing accounts of the events instead of the researcher’s notes and observation because the aim is to collect as much illustrations/examples as possible, and it would be more feasible to study the past company experiences and business events rather than follow up a new ongoing situation.   Since this paper makes intensive use of case study methodology, the sample population is not as large as a sample that quantitative survey method requires. It is only required to choose the cases that portray M&A transactions at a wide variety of situations so that the interpretation and analysis of this database could be considered applicable to a broader scope of the topic.   Validity of Data               The information and statistical data obtained and presented in this paper can be considered reliable because great care is taken in the selection of sources. For printed materials, only academic books and journals were considered as authoritative sources. For references that came from the internet, editable sites (like ), forum, non-copyrighted   contents, web contents that are being updated from time to time and sites that accepts open contribution were avoided to ensure that information are factual and opinions are significant.   Originality and Limitations of Study               Since this is an applied research, originality and uniqueness of this study is indeed a concern. A line must be drawn to separate which came from other’s view points and which is original. The cases and arguments presented here may have been reported by previous sources. For accuracy of details, data has to be taken from actual, reliable sources; however, the paper makes its own interpretation and analysis of the data. In cases where use of other opinions cannot be avoided, all efforts were made to cite them properly.   As mentioned before, the main method to be used in the analysis is gathering and presentation of examples and case studies. Despite the fact that these events may have been common knowledge to most, the outline and objective of this paper makes it somewhat unique from some previous studies. Since this paper aims to collect and integrate the findings of individual cases, the inclusion of different examples with similar thought (and even those with conflicting ideas) promotes diversity in point of view so that a more objective and unbiased conclusion can be made. The usual aim of previous reports of individual cases illustrates a single point, whereas here in this paper, the collective ideas will reinforce the point.   It is admitted that diversity of data may be limited by unreported merger events. There may be M&A activities not given much publicity because the transaction value may not be high enough or the participant not prestigious enough to attract attention. On one side, this may make it easier for readers to relate with such examples if they recognize the companies involved. However, it is better to provide examples that cover a broader field, from small organizations to the largest, in order that analysis and conclusion may be generalized confidently.                         CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS Under construction………..   The exact instructions for this section is as follows……   To be properly formatted and meet existing requirements Chapter 4 must include the following: Heading: Chapter 4: Data Analysis Subheadings: none required   Content Requirements – Bachelor of Science In Chapter 4 of the final paper, students will need to present an overview of their analysis including such items as factors that can limit the data, where possible omissions/errors could occur and the reliability of the data. In addition, any significant findings should be presented without discussion of the conclusions drawn. Chapter 4 must be written in such a way that there is no use of first person, the findings are completely objective (focused on fact and devoid of subjectivity) and the findings presented must be accurate, unbiased and exclusive of trivia. Students should view this chapter as a specific analysis of all data required for the summary and conclusion in Chapter 5   CHAPTER 5: SUMMARY, RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS Under construction………..   The specific instruction for this section is as follows…………   Format Requirements To be properly formatted and meet existing requirements Chapter 5 must include the following: Heading: Chapter 5: Summary, Conclusions and Recommendations Subheadings: none required   Content Requirements – Bachelor of Science Chapter 5 of the final paper will consist of summaries and conclusions as well as the proposed recommendations for resolution. The results should not be generalized or interpreted beyond that which the data supports. Students should view Chapter 5 as the answer to the problem statement set forth in Chapter 1. Students need to seriously consider and answer all of the following questions in Chapter 5.     Does the study support or reject the hypothesis?  Does the study support or contradict previous research?  Is the study conclusive or is further research needed?  What are the implications of this research to the discipline?  Should relative practices be redefined?  Do the findings support or reject the hypothesis?                               BIBLIOGRAPHY   Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com

HOW THE AMERICAN BUSINESS CULTURE IS BEING RESHAPED BY MERGERS, ACQUISITIONS AND OTHER QUESTIONABLE BUSINESS PRACTICES

HOW THE AMERICAN BUSINESS CULTURE IS BEING RESHAPED BY MERGERS, ACQUISITIONS AND OTHER QUESTIONABLE BUSINESS PRACTICES A Final Pape...