...1. Discuss how Meg Whitman’s leadership reflects transaction leadership? Transaction leadership entails motivating and directing people mainly through appealing to their own personal interest. Transaction leadership focuses on setting performance expectations and goals and providing feedback to followers. Performance goals are promoted by three primary components. These include providing contingent rewards, which leaders set and clarify the goals to reach the short-term and measurable results. Expectations are given, agreements are agreed upon, and you are rewarded for successful performance. Second component, Exhibits active management by exception, the leader actively monitors the work performed by the individual, and standards are set, if the individual does not perform the way they should, corrective actions are made and rules are enforced to prevent mistakes. Third, emphasizes passive management by exception, leaders take the necessary actions when performances or deviations fall short, resulting in corrective actions and some type of punishment for unacceptable performance. I see transaction leadership in Meg Whitman’s leadership style by Whitman utilizing statistics to obtain bottom-line results. She has high expectations that her employees are aware of and they are able to provide the plans, systems, numbers and results that she needs. 2. Identify the aspects of Meg Whitman’s leadership that reflect authentic leadership? “Authentic leadership refers...
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...Margaret Whitman Hewlett Packard is a multinational hardware and software corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The President and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett Packard is Margaret “Meg” Cushing Whitman. She assumed this role in September of 2011after serving on the Board of Directors for Hewlett Packard (HP). Meg Whitman was born and raised in Long Island, New York where she graduated from high school in just three years. After graduating, she went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Economics with honors from Princeton in 1977. She then went on to earn a Master of Business Administration degree in 1979 from Harvard University. Her career began as a Brand Manager for Procter and Gamble, and then she went on to rise from a consultant to a senior Vice President at Bain & Company. Next, she became a Vice President at The Walt Disney Company, a Vice President at Stride Rite Corporation and President and CEO of Florists’ Transworld Delivery. Her tenure at Hasbro had her bringing the British group, Teletubbies, to United States television. Meg Whitman’s major accomplishments came when in 1988 she became Chief Executive Officer of eBay where there were 30 employees and annual revenues of $4 million. Whitman was able to grow the company to about 15,000 employees and annual revenues in excess of $8 billion. A brief stint in politics, using her own money, Whitman ran for Governor of California where she lost the election. She then joined the Board of Directors of Hewlett...
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...he meeting had dragged on for more than an hour that rainy day in Seattle, and Jeff Bezos had heard enough. The CEO had rounded up 15 or so senior engineers and managers in one of Amazon’s offices to tackle a question buzzing inside the company: Should Amazon bust open the doors of its most prized data warehouse, containing its myriad databases, and let an eager world of entrepreneurs scavenge through its data jewels? For several years, scores of outsiders had been knocking on Amazon’s door to gain access to the underlying data that powers the $7 billion retailer: product descriptions, prices, sales rankings, customer reviews, inventory figures, and countless other layers of content. In all, it was a data vault that Amazon had spent more than 10 years and a billion dollars to build, organize, and safeguard. So why on earth would Bezos suddenly hand over the keys? Because in the hands of top Web innovators, some at the meeting argued, Amazon’s data could be the dynamo of new websites and businesses that would expand the company’s already gigantic online footprint and ultimately drive more sales. Others worried about the risks. A free-forall, one manager warned, would “change our business in ways we don’t understand.” Bezos ended the debate with characteristic gusto. He leaped from his seat, aping a flasher opening a trench coat. “We’re going to aggressively expose ourselves!” he declared. Today, there’s considerable reason to cheer Bezos’ exhibitionist...
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...Case Analysis 1: Meg Whitman at eBay Inc. Leadership Behaviors In reading over this Harvard case study about the first CEO of eBay, Meg Whitman we can easily point out several of the leadership behavior techniques that she had exhibited in her many years with eBay. Behaviors included specific task-, relations-, and change-oriented behaviors, and although we will be highlighting only a couple of these behaviors it is important to remember that Meg Whitman’s leadership went well beyond the examples that will be discussed in this analysis. Meg Whitman was hired by the founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar in March 1998 at a time when the company was still very young and experiencing a fast paced growth. It was the intention of Omidyar to hire someone who would be instrumental in helping eBay thrive during this time of expansion, as it changed from a small start up company into a large established one. In choosing Whitman to fill the position Omidyar will discover he made the right call, because Whitman was experienced enough to know that eBay had a unique culture already in place and that respecting that culture was of the utmost importance, Whitman also understood that implementing sweeping change could not only be demoralizing to current employees, but could also damage to the company’s reputation amongst its customers. For example, when Meg Whitman “scheduled appointments, she quickly developed an appreciation for how different the eBay culture was compared with those of...
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...introduction:- The eBay platform offers an unprecedented opportunity to build a new eBay business or expand your current business, reach new customers, and create a potential new stream of revenue. Leverage the resources of the eBay Developers Program to tap into eBay's marketplace of over 200 million users with tools and services that meet the diverse needs of buyers and sellers on eBay. History of eBay:- eBay was founded in Pierre Omidyar's San Jose living room back in September 1995. It was from the start meant to be a marketplace for the sale of goods and services for individuals. In 1998, Pierre and his cofounder Jeff Skoll brought in Meg Whitman to sustain the success. Meg had studied at the Harvard Business School and had learned the importance of branding at companies such as Hasbro. Meg culled her senior staff from companies such as Pepsico and Disney, created an experienced management team with an average of 20 years of business experience and built a strong vision for the company -- that eBay is a company that's in the business of connecting people, not selling them things. They quickly shed the image of only auctioning collectibles and moved into an array of upscale markets where the average sale price (ASP) is higher. ASP is a key metric in determining eBay's transaction fees, so increasing the ASP became an important item. By forging partnerships with namebrands such as GM, Disney and Sun, eBay has managed to do exactly that. Sun has sold ...
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...HRM 87 Companies must evolve throughout the years to stay in business. They must keep up with technology demands, changes in the economy, as well as cultural changes when there is change in leadership. This paper is going to discuss. The changes that Home Depot and Hewlett Packard has gone through when they change the Chief Executive Officers and how it impacted the companies positively and negatively. Hewlett Packard announced in 2011 that they were replacing the then CEO Leo Apotheker with former EBay CEO Meg Whitman. [ (Chan, 2011) ]According to Whitman, “HP is investing in innovation, bringing cost in line with revenue, improving profits, lowering debt, optimizing cash flow, and exceeding financial performance.” [ (Takahashi, 2013) ] Instead changing the way that HP did things when Apotheker was CEO, Whitman seems to tweak the way HP will improve their businesses by investing more in business printers rather than expanding into tablets and smartphones as their competitors have done. Home Depot replaced CEO Robert Nordelli with Frank Blake in 2007 and is reported by Reuters an improvement in the culture of the business. When Nordelli was CEO Home Depot would focus on metric c sales b y making sure that the stores would all carry the same merchandise rather than allowing the stores to order what they need. In other words, if a store sold double the snow shovels than water hoses but another store sold more water hoses than snow shovels, under Nordelli both...
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...self-governance. The auction site devised a feedback forum to let users rate one another to discourage fraud. The users are constantly educated; eBay teaches people how to use the site. eBay also has its own banking system. eBay has been bounded by two things: a clear mission to be the world's largest person-to-person online auction company, and a focused strategy with five key elements expanding the user base, strengthening the eBay brand, broadening the trading platform by increasing product categories and promoting new ones, Fostering community affinity and enhancing site features and functionality. The arrival of Meg Whitman ( President and CEO of eBay since 1998) marked a watershed in the effort to build brand recognition at eBay. The company's early growth relied strictly on word of mouth. But as an old hand at consumer product marketing, Whitman made branding one of her first initiatives. In a series of meetings with the senior management team, she broke the problem into two parts. The first was clarifying what eBay stood for. In their judgment, it was a personal trading community where users could buy and sell almost anything. This definition set it apart from most existing auction competitors and the several that eventually followed. All market communications now reflect this unequivocal definition. Part two of Whitman's branding exercise came directly from Marketing 101: market segmentation. The user community was analyzed in terms of user segments. Serious...
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...HP and Autonomy: A Strategic Misfire Rob Hemsath Strayer University Contemporary Business BS508 Dr. Antoinette Bridges May 19, 2014 Abstract Hewlett Packard’s 2011 Acquisition of Autonomy Corporation proved to be disastrous for the company’s financial status and reputation. While many have cited it as a poor decision, it was poor execution and HP’s internal conflicts that created a situation that resulted in HP writing of $8.8 Billion dollars of Autonomy’s value. HP’s relationships with its employees, shareholders, and partners have been damaged. The acquisition, therefore, has proven an example of poor execution. If the purpose of a merger or acquisition is to increase the economic value of the resulting consolidated corporate enterprise, the 2011 acquisition of British software company Autonomy Corporation by Hewlett Packard failed on several levels. HP’s corporate culture was such that even the decision for the purchase was fraught with internal conflict and began on an inauspicious note. When Autonomy was folded into HP, HP’s management structure did not fully integrate the new asset into the corporate line, quickly losing any industry advantage the acquisition would have brought. In the end, HP wrote down $8.8 Billion of the value of Autonomy and is struggling to reassert it’s once dominate position in the industry. The acquisition of Autonomy, therefore, was poorly executed and caused severe damage for the future of HP. HP had seen several years of internal...
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...Hewlett-Packard Hewlett-Packard Hewlett-Packard Corporation has proven that innovation is key, and even with a few years of a steady, and sometimes drastic, decline in revenue and profit, there can be light at the end of the tunnel. HP has gone through 4 CEOs in 8 years which has caused changes in environment, culture, and the trust of stockholders and investors. However, current CEO Meg Whitman has a positive outlook. In the last year since her start with HP, she has implemented a four year restructuring plan. The restructuring plan will be discussed in detail in this paper as it is a vital part of Hewlett-Packards situation financially and in the Market. When the economy is in a recession, all industries suffer. For a company like HP, the down market mixed with the increasing rate of technological advances, it is a double hit. HP has been the leader in PC manufacturing for over 70 years and is still one of the top in the industry. The future of HP looks promising. Faith in HP has been shaken over the last 5 years but with Meg Whitman on board, her experience and knowledge will be a much needed change for the company. In this paper, the strategic innovations for a changing market will be discussed in detail with what HP has in store for its future and how the company will rise in hard times. Also discussed will be the tactics that have already been put in place by HP including new products that will, in hopes, positively change their image. Human Resource...
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...E-bay’s Downfalls with Asian Markets It has been said that E-bay has not been very successful with the Asian markets. Should E-bay have gone on a mission to expand into the Asian markets? There a lot of things to consider when trying to succeed outside of our country. E-bay was not prepared for the Asian market. More research should have been done prior to trying to expand in Asian marketing. When E-bay decided to expand in the Asian market, they did not take everything into consideration. More research should have been done in order for E-bay to know how to gain the attention of the Asian marketers. An example of that would be the fact that even though E-bay’s CEO Meg Whitman had spent time in China, she was not prepared to cater to their needs. The Chinese executives had more experience in dealing with the specific needs of Chinese consumers shopping online. Another problem that E-bay didn’t expect was Internet accessibility and the inability of local networks to connect to their site outside of Asian countries. E-bay may have been alright had they just did more research prior to jumping into the market. Because E-bay was having problems with the Internet accessibilities, Chinese students opted to use local companies instead. E-bay is not the only brand image. There are more brands out there, such as Google. When you are competing with others, you want to try and beat their price just enough that you won’t shoot yourself in the foot. E-bay did...
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...company, Autonomy, was identified as a good candidate and in August 2011 HP published their intent to acquire it. Apotheker was not a popular HP CEO and was criticized about his famous failure with the Palm acquisition which cost USD 1.5 billion. He persuaded HP Board of Directors to proceed with a merger and the result was a disaster: USD 8 billion write down. History of deal. HP had a string of high level executive changes that led to a hasty decision to spend a colossal amount of USD 11 billion to buy a software company that used accounting standards different from the USA. Carly Fiorina then Mike Hurd then Leo Apotheker and now Meg Whitman constituted the ever-changing CEO position. HP CEO Apotheker overruled the opinion of the HP CFO and persuaded the HP Board of Directors to proceed with the acquisition. New and current HP CEO, Meg Whitman, was on the HP Board of Directors that approved the deal and has survived the fallout. A deal was made with the Autonomy founder and CEO, Mike Lynch. Soon afterwards, problems emerged and the entire Autonomy management team departed including Mike Lynch, albeit USD 500 million wealthier. Synergies and benefits originally planned. Both companies announced that a merger would bring together data search technologies. HP technology could search structured data; whereas, Autonomy technology could search unstructured data. Autonomy sales deals were usually very large, i.e. over USD 100,000, and to large companies or...
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...Between March and July 2000, Intel’s stock price rose rapidly, to the point where in July Intel’s market capitalization was above $500 billion, making it the largest firm in the world. Then on Thursday, September 21, 2000, Intel issued a press release indicating that its revenue for the third quarter would grow between 3 percent and 5 percent, not the 8 to 12 percent that analysts had been forecasting. In response to this news, Intel’s stock price dropped by 30 percent over the next five days. Intel’s chairman, Craig Barrett, commented on the reaction, stating: “I don’t know what you call it but an overreaction and the market feeding on itself.” An academic study found that at the time, virtually none of the analysts following Intel used discounted cash flow analysis to estimate the fundamental value of Intel’s stock. Instead, the study points out that analysts react to bad news in the same way that a bond-rating agency reacts to bad news. Just as a bond-rating agency would downgrade the firm’s debt, analysts downgrade their stock recommendations. After Intel’s press release, approximately one-third of the analysts following the firm downgraded their recommendations. Some of the recommendation changes were extreme. Notably, the cumulative return to Intel’s stock, relative to the S&P 500, displayed a negative trend for the period September 2000 through September 2002. In what some might see as a replay of history, consider an event that took place at the online firm eBay...
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...1. Why would someone like Meg Whitman give up the comfort of working for someone else and taking home a nice salary and fringe benefits for the stress of running a new kind of business that may or may not succeed? (8 marks) Meg Whitman would choose the stress of running a different kind of business that might or might not worked out rather than her previous comfortable, stable and high paid job maybe because she don’t want to get controlled while doing her own work. People nowadays prefer more personal space or freedom so that they would feel comfortable while working. She doesn’t want to get controlled by the managers or her bosses. She might also get bored for doing the same work every day, repeating the same thing over and over again that’s why she would think to try doing or running something new and she wanted to change a new working environment. She also want to have her own working time compared to company’s fixed working schedule so that she can have more time to spend with her family, or extra entertainment time rather than keep working in the office. By joining eBay, she can arrange her own working timetable. She might also like to challenge herself so she is willing to accept the challenges and quit her current job for new challenges. Although running a new kind of business has huge risks and also a lot of new challenges, but she can at least do what she want and show what she can do. By running a new business, she also get to interact with...
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...Module 1 Case Assignment International Business E-bay in Asian Markets The international American company eBay has suffered significant financial loses in the Asian markets due to the industrial powerful country of China which has an unmatched presence on the website Asian markets. The solution for eBay’s company is come up with strategic selling plan to overcome and beat down China’s on line selling leading industry, in addition, it would be extremely beneficial for eBay’s company to lower down the purchase fees and create unique shopping features on line to make it more attractive to Asian shoppers. Currently some statistics suggest that Chinese consumers are willing to pay for internet services that they deem worthwhile. For example, Chinese consumers purchased several hundred million dollars worth of virtual currency last year from companies such as Tencent to upgrade online personal games and buy custom ring tones for their for their mobile phones. Chinese youth have shown their willingness to make online purchases and pay for Internet services. According to the China Internet Development Research Center under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, e-commerce sales grew 58%, to almost $70 billion, over the last two years, with almost $3 billion of that in consumer-to-consumer sales. E-commerce growth has remained steady, as the number of Internet users in China has grown from 90 million to 130 million since 2004. When eBay entered China, their Paypal payment method...
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...In was around the mid-2000s when many Internet-based sales companies started eyeing China as the big economic prize. With a rapidly expanding middle class and over one billion people, the country had—and still has—enormous purchasing power. eBay, the San Jose, California-based online consumer-to-consumer corporation, nearing its 10th birthday at the time, entered the country in 2004 with hopes of beating competitors to the reward. Two short years later, then Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman flew to Shanghai to announce the company’s exit from China’s online auction market. So why did eBay fail in one of the world’s most populous countries when it had succeeded so successfully here in the United States? Researchers think they have finally found the answer by analyzing the sales data from TaoBao, an eBay-like operation founded by Jack Ma; TaoBao currently holds 96 percent market share in China. “There is only one big winner, so eBay has failed,” said Paul A. Pavlou, professor of management information systems at Temple University’s Fox School of Business. Along with Tilburg University’s Carol Xiaojuan Ou and Robert M. Davison of City University of Hong Kong, Pavlou found that TaoBao had a better grasp of what makes Chinese consumers tick. “Those buyers really want to get to know the sellers,” Pavlou said. The use of technology to accommodate a worldview such as guanxi could mean more savings for consumers all over the world, not just those in China. TaoBao helps buyers...
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