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Temple University Company Best Managed in The United States Discussion
The discussion post has to be between 400-600 words, including 2-3 references.
Here is the discussion post:
Part 1:
What Company is Best Managed in the United States?
The answer could be P&G. Ratings by the Drucker Institute on overall corporate effectiveness show that P&G is certainly among the most effectively managed firms in the United States. P&G CEO, David Taylor, explains that, “Every day P&G people work to serve consumers with superior brands and reward shareholders with balanced, sustainable long-term growth and value creation. This recognition is further validation that we are on the right track.”
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The Drucker Institute analyzes performance of companies across the functional areas of business, including more than 35 metrics, such as market-share data, patents, and employee ratings. Information is collected and analyzed to determine how well companies are doing according to Drucker’s core principles: customer satisfaction, financial strength, employee development, innovation, and corporate social responsibility. P&G received exceptionally high scores on innovation, social responsibility, and financial strength.
P&G competes in the consumer-products industry. The company’s finance chief, Jon Moeller, explains that P&G wants to focus on product categories that are used daily, such as toothpaste and soap, so of late has narrowed its product mix, disposing of underperforming brands and cutting back from more than 100 brands to around 65. Simultaneously, P&G has cut over 20,000 jobs and trimmed nearly $10 billion in costs. P&G puts its cash to good use and is considered a “dividend king” by some experts. P&G Chief Information Officer, Javier Polit, explained that “What was previously cost-prohibitive is now cost-effective with the use of the cloud. We’re about to forecast now in ways we couldn’t before. We’ve seen improvements in regard to the quantity of raw materials we buy, and the costs associated with ship and restock.”
As stated by CEO David Taylor, “it is a combination of a few key capabilities that determine whether any company will be successful, especially “superior products that delight customers,” “exemplary technology,” and what underpins it all is “acquiring the best people.”
Questions
- Consider the following two-dimensional matrix with weights on the y-axis and ratings on the x-axis as given in Figure 4-4. What are example strengths and weaknesses that could possibly characterize P&G in the four corners of the matrix? Develop a hypothetical strength and weakness for P&G that could be positioned in each of the four corners of the matrix. Give a supporting rationale for each factor. Which corner of the matrix do you think characterizes factors most commonly in an IFE Matrix? Why? Which corner of the matrix do you think characterizes factors least commonly in an IFE Matrix? Why? What could you say about the middle of the matrix in terms of factors commonly included in an IFE Matrix?
Part 2:
Should Facebook Acquire, Cooperate, or just Stay Fierce Rivals with Linkedin?
This chapter discussed rival firms merging, cooperating, or staying rivals. Headquartered in Menlo Park, California, Facebook is by far the largest online social-networking company in the world. Headquartered in Mountain View, California, LinkedIn is the largest online professional network designed to help members find jobs, connect with other professionals, and locate business opportunities. The two companies are becoming more and more rivals as their business model becomes more and more similar. Both websites are free for members to join and both earn money through advertising spots. LinkedIn also earns revenue through its job-listing service. Companies post job openings on LinkedIn and search for candidates on LinkedIn—particularly advantageous for students nearing graduation. Facebook wants some of this action. Members of LinkedIn tend to be white collar and highly educated; 45 percent of LinkedIn visitors earn more than $75,000 per year. Facebook has nearly 3 billion members across the whole economic spectrum of income.
As evidence of the two firms gravitating toward each other in products and services, LinkedIn recently rolled out its video uploading feature, trying to become more like Facebook. Facebook is testing new professional (rather than social) features trying to take market share from LinkedIn. Both companies’ primary strategy is product development. Both Facebook and LinkedIn continually develop new and improved, visible and invisible, business analytics models to gather and assimilate data, and then sell the data. LinkedIn has developed a big-data framework dubbed Gobblin that helps the social network collect tons of data from a variety of sources so that it can be analyzed in its Hadoop-based data warehouses. The company also houses a variety of internal data (information pertaining to member profiles, user actions such as comments and clicking, and so on) in databases such as Espresso and event-logging systems such as Kafka. Also, LinkedIn takes in data from outside sources—for instance, Salesforce and Twitter. Facebook is testing a mentorship feature to help Facebook members identify and spend time with professionals based on common interests. Facebook is also testing a LinkedIn-like resume feature. Many people prefer to keep their social activities (Facebook) separate from their professional activities (LinkedIn), but as these two firms become more and more similar, separation becomes cloudier.
Questions
- Should Facebook develop features to allow people to efficiently hunt for jobs on their website, including posting their professional vita?
- Should Facebook develop features to allow businesses to hunt for employees on their website, including posting job descriptions and job vacancies?
- Should LinkedIn develop features to allow people to post personal pictures and videos on their website?
- Should LinkedIn and Facebook merge? What are the pros and cons of merger for the two firms?
- Should LinkedIn and Facebook cooperate rather than merge? Identify and describe three ways the two rival firms could cooperate in mutually beneficial ways.
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