Twitter's Strategy & Leadership: An Analysis Using the Ashridge Model

This case study provides an analysis of Twitter's strategic decisions and leadership issues. Part A evaluates Twitter's mission and vision using the Ashridge Sense of Mission Model, examining its purpose, employee values, company values, behavioral standards, and overall strategy. It concludes that Twitter has efficiently developed its mission statement, adapting to market trends and user preferences. Part A also assesses Twitter's existing strategic decisions through Porter’s Generic Framework, focusing on cost leadership, differentiation, and focus strategy. Part B identifies leadership issues related to account handling, extreme dependency on algorithms, and diversity within the organization. The analysis highlights the importance of strong leadership for long-term sustainability and value creation, while also noting potential shortcomings in Twitter's operational strategy. Desklib provides access to this and many other solved assignments and past papers for students.

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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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