Lenovo-Case Study

The modern business culture must, by necessity, be fluid if it is to succeed globally. There is interaction between employees, between stakeholders, and between global environments. In fact, this environment is formed through multiple interactions between the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities presented through the organization's unique culture. Since truly the one constant in business is change, it is how we adapt to such changes; as individuals and part of groups, that helps manifest behaviors as he culture evolves. Indeed, many believe that one of the templates that make up this fluidity is the concept, even more popular in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, of mergers and acquisitions (Horibe, 2001).

Lenovo has a Transition service that saves its customers valuable time and resources, its hardware refreshes, and purchase through deployment to aged asset recovery. According to research, Lenovo’s PC management tools help users reduce costs that capture 80% of a PCs full lifecycle beyond the hardware price. Its ThinkVantage technologies reduce machine downtime and provide data security and their PC lifecycle analysis helps reduce the running and ownership costs. Lenovo helps customers manage the complete PC lifecycle and maximize the productivity and usefulness of devices;

In his article, Don Clark expresses concerns about the future of International Business Machines cop in the long term by showing how the company net income and revenue are decreasing because of the shift toward computing service and software. Further, Chinese buyers are suspicious with American products due to the fact that the recent strains over intelligence-gathering actions operated by the US government. Therefore, it will be tough for IBM to sale it product in China to expand its shares (Don, 2015).

The integration phase is the final phase of a merger and acquisition. This is typically where managers underestimate the magnitude of issues. Problems arise due to over estimation of synergistic benefits, culture, and communication issues between departmental managers, employees, and customers. Culture clashes are a huge issue in mergers and acquisitions. From our research, we found many companies underestimate the severity of these clashes. Each company has its own environment and the smallest changes can upset a whole organization if it is not dealt with

Culture incompatibilities. In an article written by Schraeder and Self (2003), it was revealed that organizational culture is a factor identified as a potential catalyst to merger and acquisition success. According to the authors, cultures are an integral part of an organization. Some researchers believe that culture is to an organization is what personality is to an individual. During a merger or acquisition, the difficulty of modifying the culture of an organization to fit the other becomes quite salient. Thus, culture difference is seen as a major obstacle in the transition of mergers and acquisitions.

New entrant in the electronics and IT industries are confronted with relatively more difficult entry to the international market due primarily to highly aggressive competition between and among large corporations. It is common knowledge that business operations and facilities that characterize both the international IT and Electronics industries are very expensive and sophisticated. Such factors serve as strong barriers of entry to the industries where HP-Compaq belongs.

“Distribution is the name of the game,” Lenox CEO and president James Bennett told the insurance company’s newly hired chief information officer, Diana Sullivan, three years ago. Sullivan recalled the details of that first extended conversation with Bennett as though it were yesterday. “We depend

The PC industry is one of the most competitive industries in the world. The industry had started to develop fast in the 80 's when IBM launched its first PC series following which a number of "Clones" made their entry into the market. Along with these clones a number of smaller manufacturers also started entering the market. The reason for this emergence was mainly that IBM had conceded the rights to the 2 most important components of a PC i.e. the microprocessor and the Operating System to Intel and Microsoft respectively. This was due to their "Open Architecture" model. This caused the technology to be available to everyone.

The organizational climate within an organization or company is very important and complex. When two companies merge with different corporate culture, it is important to find out which cultures to keep and which to lose. In determining the best practices, it is important to keep your employees feelings in mind. After all, without the employees, there may be no organization. Acquiring a company that has a different culture than the culture instilled in my company, will bring up many challenges and unique topics. The way management addresses these challenges, will

The integration of two organizations’ corporate cultures into one is no simple tasks, as corporate values, norms, and expectations will differ between the two organizations. According to the article how to Successfully Manage a Merger, “roughly 70 percent of all corporate mergers fail, according to the Boston-based consulting firm Bain & Company. Although mergers can head south for many reasons, difficulties created by cultural differences at merged companies seem to play a significant role” (Schatz, 2013). When merging cultures, companies must have a strategic plan that makes culture a priority in the change management strategy. This plans needs to include defining the desired culture, assigning a team to manage the cultural change, outlining the organizational culture that you wish to achieve, developing the cultural change plan, and making sure that progress of the plan is measureable.

With the emergence of cloud computing, Toshiba has restructured their business organisations to integrate cloud computing in virtually all their sectors such as in their key sectors of healthcare, retail and energy. The Toshiba Smart Community was also formed to meet new demands and needs in order to stay at the forefront of technology in the age of cloud computing.

Founded in June 1911, IBM has always been a leading company in the technology industry and at the forefront of innovation. It is a manufacturer of computer hardware and software, and also provides infrastructure, hosting and consulting services. Before the 2000s, IBM was the largest PC vendor in the world. However, the hardware sales have continually declined since 2000, and IBM sold its PC group to Lenovo in 2004, as well as its x86 Server Business in 2014. In the new era of the technology industry, IBM has faced the challenge to transit from a hardware manufacturer to a service company.

Both Dell and HP are two strong players in PC industry which refers to an industry where companies produces PCs (desktops and notebooks), handheld devices (smart phones and tablets), and workstations. However, with growing global expansion, Dell and HP’s performance differs. Dell, once the world’s largest PC maker in 2001, has continually lost its market share to HP and Acer since 2007 (Guglielmo 2009). The cause is rooted in two differences of these companies: company diversifications and core competences. Therefore, how firms can continually survive in the PC business is more of an issue for Dell than for HP.

Corporate structure and culture can be a strength or weakness to an organization depending on the situation at hand. For instance, culture that emphasizes on constant renewal is a reliable strength when it comes to organizational change. It would be easier to domesticate change with such a culture than when the organization professes a conservative culture. Organizational culture is a great advantage when inducting new employees because it gives them some insight of what is expected of them. However, corporate culture and structure can be an avenue of weaknesses when it comes to mergers if the two organizations merging have different cultures. The differences might call for restructuring of the resulting organization to accommodate both organizations. Restructuring is an expensive affair, which might have negative impact on customers (Films on Demand, 2011).

Some of the issues Lenovo had to deal with in the acquisition of IBM was how to capitalize on the marriage of brands and how to win corporate respect with the Lenovo brand. The acquisition allowed Lenovo to move quickly into the international marketplace. Given that IBM had one of the most trusted brands around the world, this allowed Lenovo to build on past IBM’s reputation. But Lenovo only had the right to use the IBM logo for five years so they wanted to leverage that asset.