Assessing Twitter's Mission and Strategic Decisions

This article assesses Twitter's mission and strategic decisions using the Ashridge Sense of Mission Model and Porter's Generic Framework. It also discusses leadership issues on account handling.

ASSESSMENT – COURSEWORK

Table of Contents
1.0 Part A:........................................................................................................................................3
1.1 Ashridge Sense of Mission Model.........................................................................................3
1.1.1 Introduction.....................................................................................................................3
1.1.2 The Model.......................................................................................................................3
1.1.3 Conclusion......................................................................................................................6
1.2 Twitter’s Existing Strategic Decisions..................................................................................7
1.2.1 Introduction.....................................................................................................................7
1.2.2 Strategic Decisions.........................................................................................................7
1.2.3 Conclusion......................................................................................................................9
2.0 Part B:......................................................................................................................................10
2.1 Introduction..........................................................................................................................10
2.2 Leadership Issues on Account Handling.............................................................................10
2.3 Extreme Dependency on Algorithm....................................................................................11
2.4 Leadership Issues on Diversity............................................................................................12
2.5 Conclusion...........................................................................................................................15
References:....................................................................................................................................16
Appendices....................................................................................................................................19
Page 2 of 24

Page 3 of 24

1.0 Part A:
1.1 Ashridge Sense of Mission Model
1.1.1 Introduction
Mission and vision statement may be construed to be a key success parameter for
assessing the operational approach of a business organization and its attitude and responsibility
framework towards its stakeholders. A well-thought and designed mission and vision statement
may help the management to execute the operations in the most efficient and responsible manner
(Bavik, Tang, Shao & Lam, 2018). Researchers have identified different models to evaluate the
efficiency and effectiveness of the mission and vision statement of a company in line with its
operational manual and policy. The section below briefly focuses on the same in the context of
Twitter through the lenses of Ashridge Sense of Mission Model.
1.1.2 The Model
Twitter’ sense of mission would be evaluated with the support of Ashridge Sense of
Mission Model. The elements of the framework are as follows:
Purpose
The foremost purpose of Twitter is to offer everyone the power to instantly establish and
share ideas without any barriers. According to Billsberry, Mueller, Skinner, Swanson, Corbett &
Ferkins (2018), the mission of the organization is to improve the method of the free global
conversation and to upgrade the platform with all advanced tools that can remove all the
disruptions. The younger generation flocked to Twitter as a way to correspond promptly,
efficiently and with diversified levels of privacy. As its popularity increased, it turned into a
Page 4 of 24

platform of sharing information openly with an individual or group of user and also as a medium
of broadcasting in sequence. Twitter is a platform in social media that has the ability to
understand the difference between things that shall never change and elements that shall be open
for change. This rare capability to manage continuity and transformation demands for an on
purpose practiced obedience to retain its purpose ("2016 Annual Report", 2019).
Employee values
It has been identified that Twitter’s culture and values are deliberately appreciated and
recognized by its employees. The conduction of Rooftop meeting and friendly colleagues
supports the employee base of Twitter to enrich their level of satisfaction as compared to other
social networking sites. The organization has enabled to receive the highest rating form its own
resources in terms of designing the most work efficient corporate culture and career goals.
Employees are given adequate chances to place individual opinions in terms of Twitter’s internal
operations. The opinions are submitted anonymously to develop a database of feedbacks that is
monitored by the management itself to introduce process improvements (Leroy, Segers, Van
Dierendonck & Den Hartog, 2018). Moreover, employees are also encouraged to maintain a
friendly gesture within the workplace and take a proactive initiative to help other team members.
The degree of competition with Twitter's internal resources is almost zero and team unity is fund
at an optimum level. Employees are also helped with constant learning and developmental
sessions to brush-up their expertise and talent.
Company values
It has been observed that Twitter has nabbed to create its business values in a number of
ways. On the very onset, the organization is being successful in lightning the fast method of
Page 5 of 24

conversations to a large user group. Using this platform a user can keep its colleagues, family
members and friends updated on breaking news or internal information within few seconds of the
broadcast. The platform has been extremely useful. Where people in the community also enabled
to share important updates and expand its reach in the society before a traditional new broadcast
could do. Moreover, Billsberry, Mueller, Skinner, Swanson, Corbett & Ferkins (2018) stated that
the organization not only set value for its users but also pays explicit focus on valuing its internal
resources as well. Each of the employees is supported by the required measures to perform
efficiently at the workplace. Employees are also given deserving compensations boost their eel
of satisfaction index.
Behavioural standards
The employees are strictly advised to maintain a code of conduct with the users. The
management is strict in terms of evaluating employees’ behaviours and they are enforced with
legal functions in case caught with any negative behaviour. In the opinion of Billsberry, Mueller,
Skinner, Swanson, Corbett & Ferkins (2018), the employees within Twitter are given all forms
of liberty to perform their tasks; however, they are strictly prohibited to infuse any form of
ergative behaviour within the organization and also with the user base. Moreover, employees are
even prohibited from sharing any personal and confidential data to outside members. Employees
at Twitter are given efficient training to understand the value of the organization and the
measured that are supposed to induce their process to secure the private data of users ("2016
Annual Report", 2019).
Strategy
Page 6 of 24

With more than three hundred million monthly active users, near about half a billion of
users tweets their posts every day and with the estimation of approximately sixteen billion
dollars, Twitter is considered as one of the leading news site and social media platform across
the globe. Jiang & Chen (2018) stated that Twitter has grown by several bounds and leaps and
also offers a podium for receiving and sharing news in a speedy and timely way with more than
three hundred million tweets being posted each day. Even Twitter is one of the mainly visited
websites. The brand is uniquely recognized globally by its bird logo prevalently acknowledged
as ‘Larry the bird’. On the other hand, the platform is also comprised of certain shortcomings,
like, it is limited to only 140 characters, in case a user face trouble expressing individual
thoughts within the limited word count, in that case, Twitter would be challenging.
1.1.3 Conclusion
Based on the discussion herein, the researcher arrives at a concluding statement that
underscores the fact that the company has been able to develop its mission statement quite
efficiently. The management has been vigilant on the market trend and changing the landscape of
user's choice and preference so that the corporate aims may accordingly be modified and
operational procedure may accordingly be synced to match the market trends.
Page 7 of 24

1.2 Twitter’s Existing Strategic Decisions
1.2.1 Introduction
It has been observed that in the recent time, the social media businesses are struggling to
monetize its portal, a rise in their user base seemed to have been stagnated. However, Twitter has
enabled to develop its niche segment despite the rising level of competition in the digital sector.
The brand has although did not experience great success in the online advertising market that is
mainly dominated by Facebook and Google, yet, it had generated its niche segment who are
relatively showing considerable loyalties towards Twitter.
1.2.2 Strategic Decisions
Wong & Giessner (2018) asserted that Twitter is usually characterized by the rapid
technological changes, continuous evolving user base, random product innovation, platform
partner, content partner, expectations and developers’ preferences. Twitter considerably
experience major rivalry in all aspects of its business, counting from organizations that offer
tools to benefit communication method and the sharing of ideas, firms that facilitate marketers to
demonstrate advertising, and other online promotional networks. Hoch, Bommer, Dulebohn &
Wu (2018) stated that Twitter also influences its media outlets to employ its product and service
lines to dispense the strong contents. In addition, the brand further licenses its premium
streaming live video content from a range of content bringers. In case the content bringers fail to
license Twitter’s content in the leading economic and additional terms those are readily
acceptable to the company, in that case, Twitter's capability to broadcast such content would be
negatively affected with rising expenditure margin. Thus, according to Bird & Mendenhall
(2016), Twitter usually depends on the sale of marketing services for the considerable greater
Page 8 of 24

part of its revenue. The management of the brand believes that advertisers or marketers approach
Twitter for having the most valuable user base that is most receptive by nature. This enables the
brand also to generate a greater return on investment adjacent to the raised campaign whether
related to launching the latest product or linking with recent news streaming on Twitter.
The competitive positioning of Twitter would be evaluated through Porter’s Generic
Framework on competitive advantage
Cost leadership
It has also been observed that the strategy of generating maximum revenue from third
parties advertising has brought a reliable margin to Twitter. The brand has managed to generate
86% of revenue following this approach in the previous year (Leroy, Segers, Van Dierendonck &
Den Hartog, 2018)). The products like ‘Promoted Tweets', ‘Promoted accounts' and ‘Promoted
Trends' are sold to third party advertisers. In addition, Twitter's several advertisers tend to buy its
advertising services via one of numerous outsized advertising agency holding organizations.
Thus, to increase or retain its revenue margin, the brand attempts to add fresh advertisers and
influence the existing one to uphold or raise the amount of advertising inventory bought via
Twitter's platform and implement latest functionalities and features that are added in the
platform. Twitter’s revenue growth is chiefly motivated through an increase in the figure of its
mDAUs (Monetizable Daily Active Usage or Users). By far Twitter is facing constant
competition from Google and Facebook, however, since the bad has enabled to create its niche
segment and has been able to retain them. Thus, there is a high portability of Twitter increasing
its revenue margin if focused more on streaming live videos. If executed well, Twitter can
definitely accelerate growth. In the long run and thereby achieve the much desired sustainability.
Page 9 of 24

Differentiation
At the similar point of time, Twitter is made an attempt of differentiating its streaming
live service from its competitors by introducing a live tweet-stream service followed with an
event that is met with mixed reviews (Wong & Giessner, 2018). Herein, several users have
appreciated the new service lines; whereas, few roses complains that the continuously informing
tweet feeds eventually distract them whilst watching the key content. It can be stated that the
specific issue could reduce the figure of users that prefer using Twitter for watching live content.
Hence, it would place the brand at a real risk of being not able to produce adequate advertising
revenues to meet the expenses incurred to obtain streaming rights.
Focus strategy
The news-focused strategy of Twitter brings the benefit of lower content expenditure.
The costs are incurred by Twitter on a daily basis, as contrasting to the blunt content expenditure
in the case of streaming privileges for sport based events. This approach is the usual extension to
Twitter’s base and the brand would enable to pool more users by comparing its streaming news
to sports or further entertainment content (2017 Annual Report, 2019).
1.2.3 Conclusion
The discussion and evaluation show that the management of the company has been able
to formulate its corporate strategies to reach out to the larger number of users quite efficiently.
Though the previous sections show that there are certain issues with respect to the operational
strategy related to the offering of services, the overall trend of usage of Twitter has been
increasing in the industry and hence it may be concluded that the corporate strategy has been
well accepted and trusted among the customers.
Page 10 of 24

Page 11 of 24

2.0 Part B:
2.1 Introduction
Leadership may be considered to be a success-critical factor for any business. Strong and
efficient leadership helps the business to achieve sustainability in the long-term, whereas;
inefficient leadership alone may vitiate the basic corporate aims and objectives of growth and
value creation. The section below briefly discusses the leadership and its issues on Twitter.
2.2 Leadership Issues on Account Handling
2018 had encountered with several controversies over Twitter's refusal to ban its far-right
theorist Alex Jones. The brand has continuously received negative feedbacks of the users
regarding the confusing features on its social media platform (Romano, 2018). It even involves
Twitter’s staffs who raise their voice for being frustrated to handle the platform they were
working on. The staff is instructed to advance and update the platform with new technical
methods; however, they are not backed up or supported with adequate tools and equipment to
continue the process. The employees are committed and passionate enough to make a better
world. Yet, they were forced to combat the toxicity across the platform. Hence, it can be stated
that the leadership methods and decisions revolving around Twitter are explicitly wrong.
Although the management is well aware of the prolonging issue both the employees and users
are facing, yet, he is incapable of implementing the right methods and supporting finance to lift
the process (Romano, 2018). Moreover, on the consumers' side, several users have made an
attempt to force the firm's hand-most particularly by sharing some of its viral threads that define
the method of mass blocking Twitter's account. This action had imposed severe threat towards
the steady operation of Twitter. According to Wong & Giessner (2018), it is relatively significant
Page 12 of 24

for the management of any organization to ensure that the demands and expectations of both its
internal and external members are met equivalently. However, in Twitter’s case, the management
has fallen from every aspect by leading a group of both dissatisfied employee and user base.
2.3 Extreme Dependency on Algorithm
Further information received highlights the fact that the company has blurred into another
crisis after temporarily suspending the Twitter account of Rose McGowan, who started using the
platform in the wake of sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood
producer (Lomas, 2017). It seems to be like Twitter's anti-abuse algorithm might have influenced
the suspension, even though the brand refused to comment on users’ account to maintain security
and privacy. Although the Twitter account of Rose McGowan has been shut, this action has
triggered the women who victimized against sexual activities to raise their voice against the
attempt of Twitter. The women started using bold statement and words against their experienced
activities and this action has also been taken to prove the wrong attempt made by Twitter’s
management.
On an additional note, women users that have received targeted harassment on the
Twitter account have reported of accounts being suspended after the abusers co-ordinate to file
several reports against them. On the contrary, their ‘one-report-per-abusive-tweet’ actually fails
to draw the attention of Twitter’s algorithm. The specific type of fatal asymmetry has been one
of Twitter’s major faults the company is warned for years. According to Leroy, Segers, Van
Dierendonck & Den Hartog (2018), this event highlights the major pitfall of the brand's
leadership functions, as the leaders are inefficient to appoint the right PR and developer team that
can address the issue after conducting thorough supervision. Total dependency over algorithm
might not help the brand to identify the exact user who is making or provoking others to place
Page 13 of 24

abusive comment over the platform. The company continues to be incompetent in fixing its
abuse related issues despite implementing its anti-troll tools. It relatively proves the fact that the
developing team is not supported with effective training sessions or enough equipment to
precisely design the anti-troll tools that can abruptly detect negative language and also the user
accountable for trolling (Hoch, Bommer, Dulebohn & Wu, 2018). Therefore, it can be stated
that leaning entirely on an algorithm to perform the most vital works appear to be a massive part
of failure for Twitter. Instead of applying the right software in the system to elevate the process,
the leader invested unnecessary tie in replying the tweet feeds of the users that are being abused
on the platform. Jiang & Chen (2018) asserted that the inefficiency not only creates harassment
towards the users but also to the employees who are responsible for dealing with users' accounts.
The employees are relatively back trashed with negative words or statements for the inadequacy
of Twitter to address the issues related to abuses, etc. This leadership issue had not only affected
its brand reputation but also triggered a few of its potential user base to close their accounts.
2.4 Leadership Issues on Diversity
Moreover, further information gathered from ‘The Verge' reflects that Twitter has been
facing an issue with its employee diversity (Luckie, 2015). Racial discrimination has been one of
the major underlying issue found on Twitter. As per the claims of the employees, the
management hardly takes any effective steps to recruit more black or Latino employees. It has
been recognized that predominantly a brand that is missing effective measures to deal with racial
and gender diversity, conveying the decisive job of shifting those ratios when white employees
send a wrong message to the public or to Latino employees. Regardless of the protest from the
under-represented segments, civic officials up to this point and politicians, Twitter has simply
demonstrated its prolonging and till date issues with diversity (Luckie, 2015). Furthermore, the
Page 14 of 24

management had made another wrong attempt by hiring Jeffrey Siminoff as a diversity head.
According to Hallinger (2018), the public outcry of diversity issue could have been paused if a
Latino expert was hired for this designation. However, after the action that management had to
foresee a series of backlash for hiring a white male for the diversity position. In the specific
context, Harris & DeFlaminis (2016) determined that skill and experience count the most at the
workplace rather than skin colour. Jeffrey Siminoff had already been Apple's former director of
Worldwide Inclusion & Diversity. Therefore, he is certain to experience in his domain, which
can be readily implemented within Twitter to reduce the diversity gaps. However, since, the
employees were already facing the problem, where 72% were Caucasians and 28% are only
Asian, therefore, the specific action has triggered their insecurities further (O'Brien, 2015).
Besides racism, the brand is alleged of gender discrimination actions. It has been
determined that 90% of Twitter’s employees are male, men candidates within the company tend
to occupy 79% of the leadership designation and also encompasses 70% of the overall workforce
(Linshi, 2014). The women employees have raised several complaints against the management
for being discriminated within the workplace over the male employees. The women employees
having more qualification and skills are not given fair chances to climb the ladder of success.
The performances are not even monitored and rated fairly. This has been the major issue in the
leadership style followed within Twitter. The management is reluctant in terms of dealing with
the issues women employees are facing. According to Giddens (2018), employees shall always
be rated against their performance criteria. It can have the probability of female employee
having more expertise and knowledge than the male staff. Discrimination is prohibiting the brand
from employing the right talent at the right place to gain a higher outcome. Since Twitter is
Page 15 of 24

having a strong base of dissatisfied workforce, thus, the chances of overcoming its barriers are
relatively lesser.
Donate & de Pablo (2015) mentioned that the management of Twitter immediately needs
to change its leadership style. Transformational leadership style would considerably help the
leader to address the identified issues. In this leadership style, the management of Twitter would
inculcate the ability to connect with the employees in such a way that can effectively raise their
degree of motivation as well as morality. The employees are already dissatisfied and demotivated
with the business lines and internal functions of the management. Hence, a sudden change in the
leadership style might help them to identify the efforts taken by Twitter in terms of addressing
and limiting the discrimination issue and distributing fair rights and powers amongst every
employee regardless their gender.
The factors of Transformational Leadership style are stated herein:
Idealized influence
Herein, the leaders would have eh ability to make his employees and line managers to
follow the vision he had established for the organization. If required, the employees can be
involved in the decision-making process to discuss the issue and relevant solutions that can be
applied to overcome so (Crosby & Bryson, 2018).
Inspirational motivation
Herein, management would make the use of the right choice of words that can boost each
employees belonging from different culture or gender to feel motivated. Employees that handle
Page 16 of 24

the user accounts would be trained equally to use the right words to resolve negative handlings
(Bush, 2018).
Intellectual stimulation
Employees would be involved more by letting them think more deep against a given
situation. This would help them to explore their creative aspects and implement the tasks to
derive productive outcome (Bird & Mendenhall, 2016).
Individualized concern
Finally, the leader would focus on common good by encouraging team members to think
alike and concentrate on shared goals to reduce discrimination barriers.
2.5 Conclusion
Based on the discussion and analysis performed in the preceding sections of the paper, it
may be conceived that the designing of a strong mission and vision of a company is critical for
the success of the business. A business will be successful in the long run if there is strong
management strategy with respect to its employees, market positioning and sustainability
approach (Burnes, Hughes & By, 2018). It has been identified that Twitter, in the given case, has
been able to devise its corporate strategy quite effectively. There have been certain issues
regarding the operational procedures and employee motivation, the overall scenario for the
company seems to be efficient enough to create own brand name. Therefore, it may finally be
concluded that a well-designed corporate strategy sets in line with the corporate mission and
vision statement supported by the strong leadership and corporate governance by effective
controlling, and monitoring will significantly contribute towards the attainment of aims and
Page 17 of 24

objectives of the business in the long-run in most cost and time efficient manner (Billsberry,
Mueller, Skinner, Swanson, Corbett & Ferkins, 2018).
Page 18 of 24

References:
2016 Annual Report. (2019). Retrieved from
https://s22.q4cdn.com/826641620/files/doc_financials/ar/FiscalYR2015_Twitter_Annual
_Report.pdf
2017 Annual Report. (2019). Retrieved from
https://s22.q4cdn.com/826641620/files/doc_financials/ar/FiscalYR2016_Twitter_Annual
_Report.pdf
Bavik, Y. L., Tang, P. M., Shao, R., & Lam, L. W. (2018). Ethical leadership and employee
knowledge sharing: Exploring dual-mediation paths. The Leadership Quarterly, 29(2),
322-332.
Billsberry, J., Mueller, J., Skinner, J., Swanson, S., Corbett, B., & Ferkins, L. (2018).
Reimagining leadership in sport management: lessons from the social construction of
leadership. Journal of Sport Management, 32(2), 170-182.
Bird, A., & Mendenhall, M. E. (2016). From cross-cultural management to global leadership:
Evolution and adaptation. Journal of World Business, 51(1), 115-126.
Burnes, B., Hughes, M., & By, R. T. (2018). Reimagining organisational change
leadership. Leadership, 14(2), 141-158.
Bush, T. (2018). Research on educational leadership and management: Broadening the base.
Crosby, B. C., & Bryson, J. M. (2018). Why leadership of public leadership research matters:
and what to do about it. Public Management Review, 20(9), 1265-1286.
Page 19 of 24

Donate, M. J., & de Pablo, J. D. S. (2015). The role of knowledge-oriented leadership in
knowledge management practices and innovation. Journal of Business Research, 68(2),
360-370.
Giddens, J. (2018). Transformational leadership: What every nursing dean should know. Journal
of Professional Nursing, 34(2), 117-121.
Hallinger, P. (2018). Bringing context out of the shadows of leadership. Educational
Management Administration & Leadership, 46(1), 5-24.
Hallinger, P. (2018). Surfacing a hidden literature: A systematic review of research on
educational leadership and management in Africa. Educational Management
Administration & Leadership, 46(3), 362-384.
Harris, A., & DeFlaminis, J. (2016). Distributed leadership in practice: Evidence, misconceptions
and possibilities. Management in Education, 30(4), 141-146.
Hoch, J. E., Bommer, W. H., Dulebohn, J. H., & Wu, D. (2018). Do ethical, authentic, and
servant leadership explain variance above and beyond transformational leadership? A
meta-analysis. Journal of Management, 44(2), 501-529.
Jiang, Y., & Chen, C. C. (2018). Integrating knowledge activities for team innovation: effects of
transformational leadership. Journal of Management, 44(5), 1819-1847.
Leroy, H., Segers, J., Van Dierendonck, D., & Den Hartog, D. (2018). Managing people in
organizations: Integrating the study of HRM and leadership.
Linshi, J. (2014). http://time.com. Retrieved from http://time.com/3026067/twitter-diversity/
Page 20 of 24

Lomas, N. (2017). Twitter’s abuse problem is absolutely a failure of leadership. Retrieved from
https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/12/twitters-abuse-problem-is-absolutely-a-failure-of-
leadership/
Luckie, M. (2015). Twitter still has a major problem with employee diversity. Retrieved from
https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/30/10688126/twitter-diversity-jeffrey-siminoff
O'Brien, S. (2015). Inside Twitter's big diversity problem. Retrieved from
https://money.cnn.com/2015/11/04/technology/twitter-diversity-leslie-miley/index.html
Romano, A. (2018). A Twitter staffer spoke out about "failing" company leadership — on
Twitter. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/2018/8/14/17688960/twitter-alex-jones-
hate-speech-employees-jared-gaut
The Ashridge Mission Model. (2019). Retrieved from http://www.expertsmind.com/learning/the-
ashridge-mission-model-assignment-help-7342872278.aspx
Wong, S. I., & Giessner, S. R. (2018). The thin line between empowering and laissez-faire
leadership: An expectancy-match perspective. Journal of Management, 44(2), 757-783.
Page 21 of 24

Appendices
Figure 1: Gender Discrimination at Twitter
(Source: Linshi, 2014)
Page 22 of 24

Figure 2: Racial Discrimination at Twitter
(Source: Linshi, 2014)
Page 23 of 24

Figure 3: The Ashridge Mission Model
(Source: "The Ashridge Mission Model", 2019)
Page 24 of 24