Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 73

Essay Example Throughout my time at Sadiq public school, I participated in all national Pakistani bilingual debates. I won an award for being the second best English debater nationally and later on I was elected as president of the debating society. After my school life in Pakistan, I came to England to pursue higher education. For my first year I studied at the University of Bedfordshire; I transferred to the University of Hull for my second year and completed my undergraduate study with a BA (Hons) in business and management. While I was studying, I have gained much work experience at a shipping company, Pakistan International Container Terminal. I received an internship and worked there over the summer ofth to August 17th 2011. In the summer of 2012, I did another internship, but this time at Premier Mercantile ServicesJune 16th to Aug 18th.. This internship entailed business development and management. During my university life in Britain, I have represented my university for squash in competi ng with other universities and also acted as the president of the squash society. university for squash competition, competing with other universities. The reason I chose to study MSC Management and Entrepreneurship was to understand strategic marketing management and entrepreneurship. I also studied global entrepreneurship. The reason why I wanted to study this course was because I have connections with many family businesses back in Pakistan that are related to shipping, logistics, and agriculture. For the future, I am looking to expand my family’s logistic company to Dubai. In terms of the agricultural business, I am looking at selling organic milk in Pakistan. Also, I want to manufacture cheese and export to countries in Europe and in the Gulf. My family businesses are currently supplying cow meat to Gulf countries, but I am looking to export on a larger

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT - Case Study Example For example, Gupta et al. (2009) gave example of intellectual capital in research & development division of pharmaceutical companies as the core competency which can not only be copied easily by competitors but also being developed over the course of long period. In such context, core competencies of Microsoft Corp can also be understood in context to core competency model proposed by Prahalad and Hamel (1990). According to the Microsoft case presented by Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson (2012), from the foundation of the company in 1975, Microsoft Corp always strive for getting the â€Å"first mover† advantage by continuously innovating with product application and design. It is evident from the research works of Gupta and Dwivedi (2012) and Edgar and Lockwood (2012) that core competence is a customer driven approach and providing value to customers should be integrated with core competency models. Now, the question may arise that is it possible for all products of Microsoft Corp to have at least one core competency? For answering this question, study of the product portfolio performance of Microsoft Corp will be conducted. However, there is not much scope to do, the limitations being the lack of time and resource. To overcome such difficulties, the report will use case study of Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson (2012) in order to understand key core competencies of Microsoft. Product portfolio of Microsoft Corp can be segregated into seven segments such as Windows, Business Solutions, Xbox Game Console and Entertainment, Developer Tools, MSN, web browser and Servers, mobile solutions (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson, 2012). For example, Windows and windows live segment accompanies by Windows Operating System (OS), Internet Explorer etc are highest revenue earner for the company. On the other hand, business division segments of Microsoft accompanied by Dynamics ERP, Microsoft Office, CRM, Office Web etc are second largest revenue earner for the company (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson, 2012). Interesting fact is that, Microsoft has acquired more than 80% of market share in the field of operating system and business division which show that the company has successfully integrated its technological core competencies in order to achieve market leadership. Microsoft is even performing well in the field of Entertainment & Gaming Solution with the help of its product portfolios like Xbox, Zune digital music platform, Windows phone and successfully defending its market share (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson, 2012). However, same cannot be said for online service division of Microsoft such as Bing search engines which has incurred consecutive operational profit loss due to unequal revenue distribution right agreement with Yahoo. Drejer (2002) and Clulow, Gerstman and Barry (2003) stated that core competencies can be achieved by deploying internal resources such strong intellectual capital, financial resources, technological capabilities, efficient human resourc e, marketing expertise, strong supplier relationship etc. In such context, Prahalad and Hamel (1990) stated that core competence gets enhanced with the use and sharing while other capabilities might get reduced with extensive use. Microsoft is still struggling to compete with Smartphone and technology companies like Samsung, Apple and existing competency of Microsoft is not helping them