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Meg Whitman

In an interview, Meg Whitman describes the company and site, Auction Classifieds, when she went to interview for the job of CEO. Today, Ebay is one of the great success stories of internet commerce with over 10 million registered users, 224 million in revenue, and most important for an e-business an actual income of 10.8 million.

Meg Whitman indicates that leaving the land-based economy for the internet has meant being a pioneer by creating an entirely new global marketplace at the beginning of an internet revolution. Whitman attributes the womanly aspect of being a consensus oriented manager--being raised to build consensus, be a team player, not be ego driven, and happy to have other people take credit for things has proven to be effective in the Ebay environment. Whitman is noted for living a simple life such as driving a Jeep and living in a simple house with a couple of kids. She says  that what drives her to keep working is that she loves what she does in helping to build Ebay into a company she thinks it can be or the next chapter in the Ebay story.

As mom, Meg Whitman, says that her success has meant making some real and difficult sacrifices. She says her biggest regret is not spending as much time with the kids. She admits she missed certain parts of their development and wasn’t there to see some of the really fun things they did. She concurs that such time can never be gotten back and that those tradeoffs are there for people like her. She says when children are at the ages of 1 and 3 or 2 and 5 there is a lot of guilt for not being there so you have to love what you do.  Her first advice to young women coming out of college or business school is that you find something that you love because you will do better at it and it will make making those tradeoffs a bit easier. She doesn’t believe that men worry about such issues as much because they may have stay at home wives which is an incredible support system allowing them to focus perhaps 100% of their efforts on their career. She believes that, as a women, you can have a wonderful life but you must decide whattradeoffs you are willing to make which is different for every single person. She firmly says she would do it over again.

Also check out http://blogs.forbes.com/clareoconnor/2011/07/29/ebay-billionaire-meg-whitman-eyeing-vp-role-under-romney/

Please also do further research in Whitman and answer the questions below and provide an example to each question. Please provide references for your examples, whenever necessary.

  1. In what ways did Meg Whitman’s characteristics and the orientations resulting from them contribute to her effectiveness as CEO at eBay? Provide an example.
  1. How is Meg Whitman appropriate for a top management team?
  1. What do you think would be Whitman’s approach to human capital?
  1. How important is social capital to the success of eBay?
  1. What was the organizational culture like at eBay during Meg Whitman’s time as CEO? Is there evidence that an entrepreneurial mind-set was part of that culture? If so, what is that evidence?
example answer 2.docx example answer 1.docx 

Please read the two case files. The answer(Argument) should be similar with the two files.

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1.In what ways did Meg Whitman’s characteristics and the orientations resulting from them contribute to her effectiveness as CEO at eBay? Provide an example. According to Hitt: “strategic leadership is the ability to anticipate, envision, maintain flexibility, and empower others to create strategic change as necessary……Strategic leadership involves managing through others, managing an entire enterprise rather than a functional subunit, and coping with change that continues to increase in the global economy.”(371-372). “Whitman attributes the womanly aspect of being a consensus oriented manager--being raised to build consensus, be a team player, not be ego driven, and happy to have other people take credit for things has proven to be effective in the Ebay environment.” (Meg Whitman). Meg Whitman’s notable characteristics are that she can always get the right people, always starts with the customer, pursues perfection instead of just being enough, and discovers the good in an organization. As one example, “Whitman led eBay through its initial public offering six months after joining the company. She also steered it through the collapse of the dot-com bubble in 2000-01. She expanded the business internationally, and acquired the online payments system PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion and Internet telephony company Skype in 2007 for $2.75 billion.” (CNBC). As another example, “she helped grow EBay from $4 million to $8 billion and from 30 employees to 15,000 employees in 10 years.”( itbestofbreed). 2.How is Meg Whitman appropriate for a top management team? According to Hitt: “top executives need to have self-confidence but must guard against allowing it to become arrogance and a false belief in their own invincibility.”(374). Meg Whitman can always find the right people, always starts with the customer, pursues perfection instead of just being enough, and discovers the good in an organization. She takes other people’s useful suggestions and encourages them to do more of that so that they can improve. She spends long time focusing on her work. Such qualities make Meg Whitman appropriate for a top management team. As one example, "I want you to find the good in HP," she told an employee, "Find what it does really well and encourage them to do more of what they do really well."( itbestofbreed). As another example, “As mom, Meg Whitman, says that her success has meant making some real and difficult sacrifices. She says her biggest regret is not spending as much time with the kids. She admits she missed certain parts of their development and wasn’t there to see some of the really fun things they did.” (Meg Whitman). 3.What do you think would be Whitman’s approach to human capital? “Human capital is the set of skills which an employee acquires on the job, through training and experience, and which increase that employee's value in the marketplace.”(investorwords). I think Whiteman’s approach to human capital is to hire a large number of qualified employees and promote their success. Human resources are the base of the company. She needs more experts to build the brand of Ebay. As one example, “she helped grow EBay from $4 million to $8 billion and from 30 employees to 15,000 employees in 10 years.”( itbestofbreed). 4.How important is social capital to the success of eBay? According to Hitt: “social capital involves relationships inside and outside the firm that help the firm accomplish tasks and create value for customers and shareholders.”(385). Social capital is important to business. eBay is actively engaged in charity and builds a good image for the company. eBay first finds a cause to support, then choose donation amount, and finally donate the money. The professional business executives build social capital with its customers and help sustain eBay’s success. Also the management and the employees together are able to work as a team. It also uses cooperative strategies to develop social capital. 5.What was the organizational culture like at eBay during Meg Whitman’s time as CEO? Is there evidence that an entrepreneurial mind-set was part of that culture? If so, what is that evidence? According to Hitt: “organizational culture is a complex set of ideologies, symbols, and core values that are shared throughout the firm and influence the way business is conducted.” (386). Allowing people to make mistakes and correcting them was the organizational culture at eBay during Meg Whitman’s time as CEO. According to Hitt: “five dimensions characterize a firm’s entrepreneurial mind-set: autonomy, innovativeness, risk taking, proactiveness, and competitive aggressiveness” (386). An entrepreneurial mind-set was part of this culture. As one example, “She expanded the business internationally, and acquired the online payments system PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion and Internet telephony company Skype in 2007 for $2.75 billion.”(CNBC). Finally, “She helped grow EBay from $4 million to $8 billion and from 30 employees to 15,000 employees in 10 years.”( itbestofbreed). II. What might strategic leaders do to develop and sustain effective organizational culture? A central task of effective strategic leadership is shaping the organization’s culture. To sustain an effective organizational culture, the leaders need effective communication, effective problemsolving ability, and ability to select the right people. Strategic leaders should also build an appropriate reward system. This can help boost employee’s morale. References Hitt, M., Ireland, R., & Hoskisson, R. (2015). Strategic Management: Concepts & Cases: Competitiveness & Globalization (11th ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning. Meg Whitman's Top Leadership Lessons. Retrieved September24, 2015, from http://www.itbestofbreed.com/article/best-best/meg-whitmans-top-leadership-lessons Meg Whitman. Retrieved September24, 2015, from http://www.cnbc.com/2014/04/29/ Human capital. Retrieved September24, 2015, from http://www.investorwords.com/2359/human_capital.html 1. In what ways did Meg Whitman’s characteristics and the orientations resulting from them contribute to her effectiveness as CEO at eBay? Provide an example. Strategic leadership requires the ability to: anticipate and envision, maintain flexibility. And empower others to create strategic change through selecting and implementing a firm’s strategies as necessary. (From PowerPoint). An effective strategic leaders should manage the firm’s operations effectively. Meg Whitman is prove to working long hours and sacrificing her personal life for her work. She also found encouraging others to realize their full potential by helping them to do more. Also, she sustain a high performance over time and make better decisions than their other employs. Because she is graduate of both Princeton and Harvard, that may help her to make candid, courageous, pragmatic decision by educational background. Meg Whitman love to work with people, so, it help her to understand how their decisions affect the internal systems in use by the firm, and solicit feedback from peers, superiors and employ about their decisions and visions. She was success in spite of the fact that prior to eBay she had worked for traditional firms like, P&G, WD, etc. these characteristics helped Meg Whitman to be succeed as CEO of eBay. 2. How is Meg Whitman appropriate for a top management team? A powerful CEO may: appoint sympathetic outside board members, have inside board members who report to the CEO, have significant control over the board’s actions and may also hold the position of chairman of the board. (From PowerPoint) Meg Whitman had an ability to absorb the requirements of any job even in an industry that was very new to her. She invented a new way of selling on the internet or which eBay was known as a pioneer. As I mentioned in the question 1, while she was willing to work long hours, she was also very intolerant of any opposition to her way of thinking and often bullied her way towards decisions. For suitable as a top management team member, she had developed a reputation for this and was called “Evil Meg” behind her back. She settle a 200,000 dollars lawsuit for pushing a junior employee around. She shows her ability to take any project to a logical end. 3. What do you think would be Whitman’s approach to human capital? Human capital is the knowledge and skills of the firm’s entire workforce are a capital resource that requires investment in training and development. (From PowerPoint) For build the human capital within the organization, Meg Whitman is very supportive of anyone working in her team. She was responsible for building the company from 10 employees to more than 10,000 employees. She split eBay into thirty plus sub business units. For human capital, she had to utilize the skill and knowledge of the various persons in the organization to slot them into appropriate positions in the different business units. So, for my personal opinion, she had to nurture each one of these persons to ensure that they were ultimately capable of handling strategic management positions. 4. How important is social capital to the success of eBay? Social capital is important to all businesses, whether owned by a person with a disability or not. Social capital create value for customers. Social capital in built up by building relationships both within and outside one’s organization. It enables one to leverage these relationships for the ultimate benefit of the organization. Social capital also can be done by hiring people from outside the organization to add to the talent pool within the organization. Social capital makes important the external consequences of one’s actions when the consequences are experienced by the objects of one’s feelings of sympathy and obligation. Social capital alters access to wide range of goods and services, and the cost of entering into contractual obligations. 5. What was the organizational culture like at eBay during Meg Whitman’s time as CEO? Is there evidence that an entrepreneurial mind-set was part of that culture? If so, what is that evidence? Organizational Culture is the complex set of ideologies, symbols and core values shared through the firm that influences the way business is conducted. (From PowerPoint) When Meg Whitman joined eBay, it was an auction site, with a very poor web presence. She quickly revamped the entire website and made it an e-ecommerce site rather than just an auction site. In fact today very few auctions are there on eBay. For entrepreneurial mind-set, "personal characteristics that encourage or discourage entrepreneurial opportunities of autonomy, proactiveness, innovativeness and risk taking." (From PowerPoint) Over the following years, Meg Whitman kept on acquiring similar websites all over the world and added complimentary website for payment processing an also for getting market intelligence. All these activities were primarily driven by Meg Whitman and show that there was definitely and entrepreneurial drive in the mid-set. In fact, when she join eBay, a startup with 10 employees and 44 million in revenues and soon turn the company in ten years to an $8billion company. 6. What might strategic leaders do to develop and sustain effective organizational culture? Strategic leaders might need able to recognize the change of organizational culture and maintaining it. A new culture need effective communication system and find problem, then solve it, along with the selection of the right people to do right things. Strategic leaders might also need to develop company’s core competencies both in terms of the capabilities it possesses and the way capabilities are used to produce desired outcomes. Strategic leaders also can appropriate reward systems, this system hold several advantages for company. Everyone have desired behaviors that can increase employees working efficiency. Reference For answer 4 http://www.worksupport.com/resources/viewContent.cfm/791 For answer 6 http://www.ehow.com/info_8105028_advantages-employee-reward-recognition-systems.html
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