Ebay Case Meg Whitman Essay Example for Free

Ebay Case Meg Whitman Essay In 1995, Pierre Omidyar founded eBay, an on-line company whose purpose was to facilitate an environment where people could not only exchange goods, but also have discussions, make connections, and form relationships. He carefully crafted a culture based upon, â€Å"trust, respect, autonomy, empowerment, and equality,† and sought for the eBay community and company to be reflective of those principles. eBay was successful because Omidyar realized that a respectful, symbiotic relationship with this on-line community was critical, â€Å"because eBay wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for [the] community. In 1998, Meg Whitman was brought in as CEO to strengthen the eBay brand and to develop a stronger marketing strategy. In this, she was remarkably successful. In little over a year, eBay registrants grew from 88,000 to 3. 8 million users. The company successfully went public, revenue just about doubled every quarter, and acquisitions and partnerships were made to increase the customer base. However, the rapid growth under Whitman caused a major problem for eBay: it put a strain on the culture and the community upon which eBay was successfully founded. With growth came the need for more rules and policies. For instance, Whitman made the decision to ban the sale of firearms to keep the company free of legal liabilities. Many in the community and company were shocked and outraged by this policy because it violated the eBay values of open communication and trust. Also, the acquisition of Butterfield and Butterfield, a prestigious, high-end auction house, was taken as a slap in the face. It violated the eBay value of respect, and the community saw this purchase indicative of the company’s priorities being focused on higher profit margins, not building and maintaining relationships with its existing community. There are clear reasons why the eBay community felt its culture was being left behind in the wake of rapid growth. First, the strategic design of eBay dramatically changed under Whitman’s management. eBay was previously built upon a small, flat and flexible team of engineers who worked together without many formal chains of authority. This open work environment perfectly mirrored the community Omidyar sought to create online, and the internal company practiced its values of respect and trust on a daily basis. However, Whitman correctly recognized that as the company grew, more formal structures and positions would have to be put into place to bear the burden of greater demand. With expert consultation, she reorganized the engineers. She eventually added eleven different vice presidents in upper management. In little time, the company transformed from an informal, flat model to a formal functional structure. This enabled growth, but it also created tall hierarchies that diminished the culture of open communication. For instance, lower-level employees and the eBay community both back-lashed at the decision of banning firearms for largely the same reason: they had no idea such a policy was forthcoming. Upper management made this decision without outside consultation. Even though it was the right decision for the company, it was handled and presented in a way that violated the culture eBay was built upon. In 1999, Whitman formally created a Community Watch group to monitor the website for fraud. Initially, eBay â€Å"counted on its users to abide by its user agreement and take much of the responsibility for safeguarding the site themselves. But, the community had grown too large to be self-monitored. Again, the decision was appropriate, but so many structural changes implemented in so little time was too much for the community to absorb without reaction. Moreover, the political nature of eBay changed rapidly. Pierre Omidyar, eBay’s founder and developer, had the rare gift of leading with b oth referent and expert power. He used this power to create a strong sense of community throughout eBay. He also used his referent power to give Whitman legitimacy in both her position as CEO and in her consequential actions. His support was effective at getting the company to align behind her decisions, but the external community did not see this support and were more suspicious of the company’s new direction. Whitman’s decisions were all sound and applauded by Wall Street. But the community saw what was once a democratic forum turning into a big business. Her lack of consultation with the community lead one user to brand eBay as having a â€Å"cavalier attitude,† and a â€Å"political agenda. † Lower level employees also saw this lack of communication. Where there were once full company meetings weekly, now they were held, at most, once a quarter. Power was concentrating. Clearly, this power shift was positively causing growth but negatively affecting culture. In her defense, Whitman was not indifferent to the culture at eBay. She stressed hiring people who understood and wanted to expand the eBay culture. But at the same time she outsourced customer service to a location in Utah, far from where the gatekeepers of the eBay culture were to be found. Therefore, those directly working with the community may have been the least in tune with its values. Also, she applauded and maintained the â€Å"no penalty† culture where everyone could voice their opinions and feel free to change their minds. However, with the growth of the company, there were fewer opportunities for a voice to be heard, less direct contacts with upper management, and fewer voices involved in major decisions. This led to decisions being made that were sound individually but not corporately when placed in the eBay culture. It also proved difficult to spread this culture to the plethora of newly added users. And it is critical because it built the community, which built the company, and if it is removed, those elements that made eBay a unique success will be gone. Therefore, eBay needs to find a way to maintain its culture. One way to correct this problem would be to implement more cross-functional teams internally. These teams would recreate the initial eBay structure of being team-based, autonomous, and flat. They would allow different departments to address problems and offer valuable input into pending company policies. This lateral flow would lead to decisions that would keep more in line with the original eBay culture, thus satisfying the community at large. The downside to these teams is that it gives Whitman and others less authority to use in making decisions for the company. Another alternative would be to create a formal system of distributing information and gathering feedback from the eBay community. This would create an opportunity to communicate values as well as pending or upcoming policy changes. This system of polling through email would empower the community to have a cogent voice once again and would reestablish the feeling of one-to-one communication. The downside is that if the company decided to go in a direction different than that of the community, those polled and involved could lose faith and optimism in exercising their voice. Finally, Whitman could create a separate company under the eBay name where she could make mergers and acquisitions without alienating the base users and without directly affecting the company. This would help maintain the existing eBay culture, but it would do nothing to repair any damage done. Moreover, having a different arm will not expand their user community of eBay, which is eBay’s vision. Whitman should create a formal system of distributing information and gathering feedback from the eBay community. This mechanism would be two-fold in design. First, eBay would create a oalition of the â€Å"top sellers,† those truly engrossed in the eBay community and whose interests are aligned with both company and community. Upper management would formally integrate the opinions and responses of this group (on issues ranging from policy to community values) into its decision-making processes. Also, the use of widely sampled polls of eBay users on the same issues would help th e company get a feel for how the broader community at large feels about important issues. This would be positive for the community because it would give them a legitimate voice in the company again, just as it had at eBay’s inception. It is important to remember that eBay is unique in that the community it serves is the company itself. Soliciting, responding to, and implementing the voice of this community improve eBay; even with its now more functional structure, it will only help the company know the needs and opinions of its community, which will strengthen business. The downside to this move is that after hearing out the top sellers and looking at the data of a poll on a particular issue, Whitman and upper management may still feel that an unpopular direction needs to be taken. Some users may feel patronized and refuse to participate in future polls. Even so, many in the community will be appreciative to at least be involved in the process and to be forewarned of pending changes. Once again there will be a dialogue with the community that will attribute value, trust, and respect to its opinions, even in disagreement. In this manner, eBay can grow and still stay small.

Dear Mama :: Personal Narrative Writing

Dear Mama By the same token I leave you, I leave myself (with you) Wong May, "Dear Mama" Wong May, poet extraordinaire, transnational writer, post-colonial female subject, unphotographed, barely reviewed, past unknown, present undocumented, and for all intents and purposes disappeared after 1978 somewhere in Western Europe. Things I do know about her, mostly from an entry found in Contemporary Poets, edited by Thomas Riggs: She is Chinese by birth, born November 16, 1944 in Chungking, China. She is/was/is not anymore a Singaporean citizen. 1965, Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature, University of Singapore 1968, Master of Fine Arts, University of Iowa, 1969, first book of poetry A Bad Girlà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s Book of Animals published by Harcourt, Brace and Jovanich while working as Assistant Editor for United Business Publications. This is her only documented professional appointment. 1972, second book Reports. 1975, she is translated into German and receives a German Academic Exchange Service fellowship (Deutsch Akademisch Austauch Dienst). 1973, marries a certain Michael Coey, who is referred to as a travelling companion in her last and final book, 1978 Superstitions. With all this information, she fills one page of my notebook. Then she disappears. Or rather, in the spaces between her poetry, she was never there in the first place. My obsession is with her absence, her absence in reviews, her absence in critical studies, her absence in official conversations about Singaporean poetry. On the inner book sleeve of her second book her quote reads, "My poems are about wordlessness..." So I decide I want to write about her, a substitution for writing to her, because it is to her that I would rather write. But since there is no way of doing this, I pick the second best, I write, I investigate, I fixate. The last lines of her last book read, O Travellers, travelling anywhere the world is beautiful Our windows get dirty Her books are all dedicated to her mother, "DEAR MAMA," "To My Mother," "To my mother." Her poems are the only chronicles I have of her life. In the second book we learn that she started writing it in the winter of 1968 in New York and finished it in Winnipeg in September 1971. Her third book is begun in Berlin that same year and finishes in France, in between she continues in Hebrides, Singapore, Steglitz, Meylan, Budapest, Iona, Cracow, Prague, Poland, Malaysia, Paris.

Bridgeton Industries Case

The dynamics of the automobile industry have been very volatile in the last few decades, and the case depicts how the changing environment has affected the Bridgestone Industries. The Bridgestone Industries is a supplier of components and parts for the three main automobile manufacturing companies in the United States. The increase in the fuel prices as well as the technological evolution and the ease of availability of cheaper, cost efficient imported European and Japanese automobiles have taken a significant section of the demand from the US based manufacturers.As a result there is less demand for products and components from the Bridgestone Industries who are facing low volume of sales and therefore low profitability. In addition to this the increasing costs and overheads in the company are aggravating the cost position of the Bridgestone Industries by decreasing the profit margins per sale. The paper provides an analysis of the cost position of the Bridgestone Industries and the overheads associated with the production lines being manufactured by Bridgestone Industries at the ACF.The overhead burden rate for the company is determined to be 437% in 1988, 434% in 1989, 577% in 1989 and 562% in 1990. A budget is also drafted for the year 1991 which considers outsourcing the manifold production line. The budget has depicted that through the outsourcing of the manifold production line significant cost savings in the expenses for direct labor, direct material and the overheads can be achieved which can result in the lowered overhead burden rate of 307% only.As a result it is proposed that the Bridgestone Industries should seek to outsource the manifold production line as it can be highly advantageous for the cost position of the company. Bridgeton Industries Case Overview of Bridgeton Industries The Harvard Business review case depicts the problems that were faced by the Bridgeton Industries due to technological evolution, changes in the internal and external env ironments of the businesses and the changing consumer preferences for automobiles. The company Bridgeton Industries is a major supplier of the complements of the parts and components for the United States automotive industry.The automotive component and fabrication plant in question in this case was originally founded in 1840 but was acquired by the Bridgeton Industries in the early 1900s. Since then the plant was used to manufacture complements for the main automotive manufacturers in the region. However increasing costs of manufacturing the components and increasing overhead costs caused the plant to shut down. The products that were mainly manufactured by the Bridgeton Industries pertained to components of automobiles that were required by the main manufacturers of automobiles in the industry.The main product lines that were manufactured at the automotive component and fabrication plant by the Bridgeton Industries for its customers included fuel tanks for automobiles, stainless s teel exhaust manifolds, the front and rear doors of the automobiles, the muffler exhaust systems for the cars as well as the steel oil pans that are incorporated in manufacturing an automobile. These products were custom made according to the requirements of the customers in the United States market for automobile manufactures only.The target market of the Bridgeton Industries included the three main bid automobile manufactures that operated in the United States. These automobile manufacturers had a large percentage of the market share of the US automobile market and therefore consumed almost the entire production generated by the automotive component and fabrication plant by Bridgeton Industries. The nature of the business at the Bridgeton Industries was such that a business to business customer/ client model was adopted by the company as the customers of the products manufactured by the Bridgeton Industries were not the end users of the products.The case presents that the Bridgeto n Industries was a highly successful manufacture of components and the automotive component and fabrication plant churned out components and products under the product lines of fuel tanks, exhaust manifolds, doors, mufflers and exhausts as well as oil plans that were entirely purchased by the three big manufactures of the automobiles in the country. However with the advent of the Japanese car manufactures in the United States, the company was forced to operate at reduced costs in order to be effici9nt and appeal to the changing markets.Despite the changes that were made to control the costs and stream line operations in the plant, the automotive component and fabrication plant was shut down as it was reporting incrementally increasing overhead levels that could not be contained regardless of the effort put into managing the overheads. This case analysis how the company fared and what initiatives could have been taken to better manage the overheads to reduce costs and make the automo tive component and fabrication plant more cost effective. Cost Position EvolutionThe cost position of the company has developed over the time of its operations due to the internal as well as the external factors that include the demand for automobiles and how much the customers are willing to pay for them in the market. The changing requirements of the customers for cheaper and more affordable cars that provided high mileage increased in the 1970s in the US automobile industry and this impacted the cost bearing capability of the automobile manufacturers. These manufacturers in turn started purchasing the components at cheaper costs.This meant that companies like the Bridgeton Industries that were in the business of making components and parts for the big three manufacturers in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s were faced with the challenge of reducing their cost of production and operations in order to be more affective. The strategy was adopted by the Bridgeton Industries to reduce the value and the volume of the overheads that existed for the manufacture of the product lines of fuel tanks, exhaust manifolds, doors, mufflers and exhausts as well as oil plans in order to reduce the costs associated with operations.This strategy was focused on reducing the cost in order to increase the margin on the sales made to the big three automobile manufacturers in the market for increased profitability to sustain operations of the Bridgeton Industries The Bridgeton Industries underwent significant changes and evolution in its cost positions. The company first wrote off the physical machinery, the equipment and the buildings from the automotive component and fabrication plant’s financial books to reduce the costs associated with the depreciation expenses for these items.Then the company employed the costing strategy for its product lines that was based on the three elements of materials, direct labor, and overheads. The research undertaken to determine the h igh levels of costs at the Bridgeton Industries and the factors contributing to these costs provided that the overhead burden was one of the main factors that was forcing the automotive component and fabrication plant to be least cost effective when it came to generating profit. The results provided that the overhead burden existed on a ratio of 435 percent of the direct labor cost (Patricia & Cooper, 1993).This was a significant percentage of the total costs being attributed as an expense for overheads which was forcing Bridgestone Industries into a negative cost position with its customers. The cost position evolution saw that the Bridgestone Industries were gradually facing increasing costs in the form of incremental overhead expenses, increasing spend on the manufacture and processing of the product lines as well as the costs associated with the management and the operation of the automotive component and fabrication plant.This decreased the appeal of the products being produced at high costs for the customers of the Bridgestone Industries which forced the Bridgestone Industries to reduce shut down the automotive component and fabrication plant as it was continuously depicting increasing costs that reduced the profit margins for the Bridgestone Industries on the products that its sold to the big three automobile manufactures in the Unites States automobile industry.Internal and External Factors Effecting the Cost Position The increased imports of the European as well as the Japanese make of automobiles in the United States significantly impacted the demand of the automobiles manufactured by the US manufacturers. â€Å"Imports of sub-compact cars from Europe and Japan rose steadily in the 1950s, often as families’ second cars but US manufacturers retained their hold on the lucrative markets for larger vehicles.† (French, 1997, p142) The US manufactures saw their market shrink as the more aware and price conscious consumers shifted to the Europ ean and Japanese counter parts for their automobiles, while the US manufacturers were left with making large, excessive fuel consuming vehicles that denoted social status and personal style.Aside from this the increasing prices of crude oil in the international market in the 1970s also significantly changed the demand of the automobiles as depicted by the consumers. â€Å"A crisis in the US car-market developed as a result of sudden unforeseen shifts in the general environment which allowed overseas producers to expand market share rapidly. New car sales faltered in the 1970s and excess capacity increased.At the same time the leap in fuel prices shifted the consumer preference towards smaller, more fuel efficient cars which Japanese and European makers already supplied in their domestic markets and were better able to produce that were the US manufacturers used to making larger, more up-market ‘gas-guzzlers’† (French, 1997, p142) The automobiles of French and Jap anese make were smaller, more fuel efficient as well as more stylish yet cheaper than the those manufactured by the big three US automobile manufactures.As a result the consumers opted for purchasing the imported cars instead of those manufactured by the Unites States manufacturers. The recession of the 1970s also further reduced the disposal income and the propensity to save for the people in the United States which made purchasing the imported European and Japanese models of automobiles much more attractive to the consumers instead of opting for those models manufactured by the big three US automobile manufacturers.In the same period the perception of the consumers also significantly changed as was marked by the baby boomer generation and the hippy era. In this period, the consumer became more aware of the environment, the increasing pollution and the contribution that automobiles made towards adding to the pollution levels. As a result the consumers started to look for cheaper al ternatives of travel and those which were more environmental friendly that the vehicles manufactured by the big three US automobile manufacturers.The internal factors that contributed to the changing cost position of the Bridgestone Industries, specifically at the plant pertained to the decreasing demand of the US manufactured cars and increased demand for cheaper cars that was reflected un the restricting cost based purchases being made by the big three manufactures form the Bridgestone Industries.As the volume of sales decreased for Bridgestone Industries, along with the margin for profits on sales made due to the rising overhead costs the cost position of the Bridgestone Industries significantly changed to become negative and resulted in the closing of the automotive component and fabrication facility by the Bridgestone Industries. Overhead Burden Rate The Bridgestone Industries had a specific method for determining the overhead burden rate for the products that was proposed and set on an annual basis.â€Å"The budgeted unit costs provided by the plant for the 1987 model year study included overhead (burden) applied to products as a percentage of direct labor dollar cost. The overhead percentage was calculated at the budget time and used throughout the model year to allocate overhead to products using a single overhead pool. The overhead rate used in the study was 435% of direct labor cost† (Patricia & Cooper, 1993)

Essay on The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare In The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare, the story revolves around the various individuals who would vie for control of the Roman Empire. All of these individuals exhibit various attributes, values, and techniques in order to facilitate this goal, from Cassius’ intelligence, Brutus’ charm and honor, to Antony’s gift to drive a crowd. And although all three desire to become the new strongman leader of Rome, it is Antony who succeeds gaining the most control through his own specific talents, most specifically noted at Caesar’s funeral. At the funeral scene, Antony exhibits several qualities beneficial to a Roman leader, such as oratory and appeasement skills. The†¦show more content†¦While Brutus manages to turn the crowd against Caesar, Antony turns them back towards Caesar and against Brutus and the conspirators, but in a more subtle, yet effective manner. As Antony names off Caesar’s numerous exploits, he always does s o with the intent to oppose Brutus’s, yet he always ends each instance with â€Å"yet Brutus says he was ambitious, And sure he is an honorable man† (III, ii, 102-103). Not only does he sway the crowd with this selective choice of words and subtle influence, he also puts on an impressive show of emotion, even breaking down and weeping; â€Å"My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, and I must pause till it come back to me† (III, ii, 116-117). Antony also uses other mechanisms of persuasion, not only in clever wordplay and emotion but also in reverse psychology, as he tells the crowds, â€Å"I am no orator, as Brutus is, but as you know me all, a plain blunt man that love my friend...But were I Brutus, and Brutus Antony, there were an Antony would ruffle up your spirits and put an tongue in every wound of Caesar that should move the stones of Rome to rise and mutiny† (III, ii, 229-243). Thus, while Antony’s speech is clearly more refined and inspiring than Brutus’s, he humbles himself with modesty, and the crowd eagerly eats up every word that Antony says. Thus, as Antony gains control of the crowd, he consolidates his plan to take revenge for Caesar’s death, as well asShow MoreRelatedWilliam Shakespeare s The Tragedy Of Julius Caesar919 Words   |  4 Pageschoices that eventually bring about their demise. At first glance, Caesar may appear to be the tragic hero, when the real tragedy actually lies in Brutus’s story in William Shakespeare s play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. One tray a tragic hero must posses is that they are relatable. The play may be named for Caesar, but the reader simply knows more of Brutus and his motives, which help to make his story a tragedy more so than Caesar s. 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