Case Study: Twitter's Leadership and Strategic Development Analysis

This case study analyzes Twitter's leadership and strategic development, examining its business strategies through the Ashridge Sense of Mission Model and strategic decision-making theories. The analysis delves into Twitter's purpose, strategy, behavior standards, and values, highlighting how these elements contribute to its success. The study further explores Twitter's decision-making processes, focusing on the behavioral decision theory and key elements like user engagement, market analysis, and organizational values. The assignment also reviews how Twitter adapts to government policies and ethical standards. The case study provides a comprehensive overview of Twitter's evolution and its strategic approach to maintaining its competitive edge in the social media landscape, showcasing how the company has adapted its strategies to generate revenue and remain a prominent player in the industry.

Running head: TWITTER CASE STUDY
Twitter Case Study
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

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Table of Contents
Answer to question 1:......................................................................................................................2
Introduction to the case study:.....................................................................................................2
Analysis of Twitter’s business strategies in Ashridge Sense of Mission Model:........................2
Purpose:...................................................................................................................................3
Strategy:...................................................................................................................................3
Behaviour Standards:...............................................................................................................4
Values:.....................................................................................................................................4
Twitter’s Business strategies and signs of weak or strong sense:...........................................5
Answer to question 2:......................................................................................................................6
Strategic Decision making Theories:...........................................................................................6
Behavioural Decision Theory:.....................................................................................................6
Strategic and Emergent Decision making process of Twitter:....................................................7
Key Elements of Twitter’s Strategic Decision making Process:.................................................7
Conclusion:....................................................................................................................................10
References and bibliography:........................................................................................................11

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Answer to question 1:
Introduction to the case study:
Twitter is a renowned company in the technology and social networking industry,
operating globally having their Headquarter in United States. They allow their users to post news
and messages as tweets and to interact with their followers over the internet. Their social
networking services are different from other social networking businesses, but their revenue
generating process is remains the same as others. They are generating revenues through hosting
advertisements (investor.twitterinc.com, 2019). Since its creation in 2006, Twitter Inc was
experiencing a rapid growth rate in their business. In 2013, they enlisted them with US stock
exchange and raised capital through initial public offering of their shares. In 2015, they were
experiencing a slow growth and decrease in their market share (Ireland, Hokisson & Hitt 2011).
Their efficient business strategies helped them to overcome those situations and to be in
competition till now. Their business strategies can be analyzed in the following two strategic
decision making model.
Analysis of Twitter’s business strategies in Ashridge Sense of Mission Model:
Ashridge Sense of Mission Model is a strategy analysis model, which explains the
mission and vision statement of an organisation. It breaks the overall strategy of the business into
four perspective, Purpose, Strategy, Values and behaviour standards. It explains the basic
purpose of the establishment and existence of a company. It helps in establishing a company’s
values and beliefs and behavioural standards to achieve the objective of the company (Adam
2016). Behind the remarkable success of the Twitter Inc, their strategic decisions played a vital
role in time to time. Their mission and vision statements can be analyzed in the Ashridge sense

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of mission model from the following four perspectives to better understand their mission, vision
and their respective strategies to achieve their mission.
Purpose:
Every profit business organisation and non-profit making organisations are having some
basic purpose for which they have been established in the society. It implies the purpose of their
existence. The main purpose of Twitter Inc is to empower people and make them aware about a
new product, services or any political or other news. On the other hand, profit is the main driving
force for every business origination. Twitter Inc’s main source of income is the charges received
from their clients for hosting advertisements in their social networking platform, where huge
crowed is being gathered by various marketing strategies. Therefore, revenue generation or profit
making becomes their one more objective. They make any news or tweet viral through paid
promotional activities to gather huge traffic and communicate information to millions of people
at a time. Therefore their purpose and objectives are well defined very specific, and strive to
achieve those through strategic and operational efficiency.
Strategy:
Strategy means a combination of alternative decisions and plans, which helps an
organisation to be efficient and to compete in the market to achieve their respective
organisational goals. Twitter Inc’s mission statement focuses on giving access to everyone to
create and share innovative and new ideas instantly without any restriction or barrier. Perfect
mobility and accessibility of news, information and views is their main objective around which
they build up their strategies. Their strategies, always strive to materialise their mission and
vision statements. Since 2009, their numbers of subscribers have been growing steadily and
rapidly, but still they were unable to make adequate amount of profit. To overcome the situation,

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in 2010, they changed their strategy and concentrated on promoted twitter trends to generate
profit, but still their business model was not well defined and efficient to achieve their target. As
they were performing poor in the revenue aspect, they planned a robust revenue model aimed to
be materialised by 2013 to with target revenue of more than $1 billion by 2013 (Ireland,
Hokisson & Hitt 2011). That change in their business model and strategies helped them later on
to achieve a high growth rate.
Behaviour Standards:
Behaviour standards include both the aspect of business and employee behaviours to
achieving mission and vision of an organisation by setting up standards of services. Behavioural
standards can be classified into Employee behaviour and company’s behaviour which reflects in
their customer support service policies. Twitter Inc has been serving their subscribers to create
and share ideas and messages to people freely and instantly. Their employees have been trained
to manage customer feedbacks and to give customer support in time. They are having a
predefined ethical and behavioural standard to be practiced by their employees. They always
keep privacy of personal and other information of their users. They strictly maintain some
community and ethical standards in their social networking platform to prevent any unusual or
unethical news spreading. All those behavioural standards helped them to achieve success for a
long term.
Values:
Every business organisation should have some principles and ethical benchmarks, which
will help them to make a long-term association with their stakeholders and to be successful in
long term. Organisations must set their mission and vision in such a way, so that they can
maintain certain level of ethical and moral Standards and principles. Value sense describes all

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those moral and ethical standards of an organisation. Twitter Inc is having certain predefined
defined set of ethical standards to be followed by their employees and for corporate practices.
Their values and beliefs describe their long-term mission and vision. Twitter Inc is having some
of such ethical principles and values sense, which helped them to build a long-term relationship
with their users achieving highest level of customer satisfaction.
Figure 1: Twitter’s mission and strategies in Ashridge sense of mission model
Twitter’s Business strategies and signs of weak or strong sense:
Success of any organisation and achievement of organisational goals and objectives
depends on a strong interrelationship among those four perspectives described above. As shown
in the figure 1 above, there must be an inter dependency and inter relationships among those four
elements. All those four elements should hold up each other to make a good organisational
Purpose:CreateandShareIdeasfreelyStrategy:HugenumberofUsersandrevenuesthroughPromotedt

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culture and to make a strong strategy to serve the customers with the best possible products and
services. From the above analysis of Twitter case study in Ashridge sense of mission model it
can be concluded that, the company is having some good value sense and behaviour standards
which maintains their quality of services. Their time-to-time strategies as per the changing needs
show a strong sign on their mission. Their overall business strategy matches with their purpose
of existence of the organisation, which gave them a competitive edge to excel in the market and
become the giant in their respective business segment.
Answer to question 2:
Strategic Decision making Theories:
Strategy means combination of plans according to the changing situations and needs.
There are various models and corresponding theories for strategic decision making, which helps
in strategic decision-making process for an organisation, some of such as decision theories are
casual decision theory, Bayesian theory and behavioural theory (Jovanov & Fotov 2014). There
are various strategic decision making models, which helps an organisation to build up certain
strategic decisions addressing the mission and vision requirements of the company. In the
following paragraph, Twitter’s strategic decision-making process has been described in
behavioural decision-making theory.
Behavioural Decision Theory:
Behavioural decision theory helps an organisation to take some decisions based on the
values and beliefs of an organisation and behaviours of their associates and to build some strong
and emergent strategies to remain competitive in the market. It has two perspectives, normative
and descriptive. Normative perspective of behavioural decision-making helps in assessing the

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values, mission and visions of organisations and to take certain decisions, which will help the
organisation to achieve those mission and vision. On the other hand, descriptive perspective of
behavioural decision-making theory explains the ways in which those values and beliefs can be
incorporated in the employee behaviour or in the corporate practices (Alexander, Walker &
Naim 2014).
Strategic and Emergent Decision making process of Twitter:
Twitter is a technologies and social networking business offering free sharing of ideas,
views and opinions of subscribers freely and instantly over an online platform accessible from
mobile phones or computers. They earn revenue through paid and promoted twitter trends. In this
process, millions of people are getting connected with the company and they are interacting with
each other freely without any barrier. In such a situation, Employees’ behaviour, support services
and corporate values and beliefs are very important aspects to be considered in decision-making
and strategy building process. Based on their strategies that have been taken by their
management in last couple of years, their strategy making process can be well described in
Behavioural decision-making theory.
Key Elements of Twitter’s Strategic Decision making Process:
 Analysis of number of active users, MAUs, changes in ad engagements all this are done
by them to assess their performance, market conditions and future prospects.
 They are having a sound sales and marketing team, continuously working closely with
their customers and gathering feedback for making changes in their strategies.
 Focus on innovation and user engagement to serve the users with excellent experience of
using their services. They are continually making investments in their research and
development activities to achieve this objective.

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 They need to consider the prevailing government rules and policies restricting their
service offerings and censored twitter contents. They are adhering to the government
rules and policies in broadcasting news and advertisements in their platform.
 They are continuously doing research for assessing future opportunities and innovative
service offerings.
 Organisational values and beliefs are given priority for decision-making and strategy
building (Twitter Annual Report 2017).
Twitter Inc considers all those above-mentioned aspects for their decision-making and
strategy building process. Their value sense leads them to serve their users with the free
accessibility of the social media contents without violating any Government laws or any ethical
standards. From the normative aspect of the behavioural decision making theory, it can be stated
that, their number of users and users’ activity defines their achievement of objectives. From their
financial and operational performance as can be noticed from their annual reports it can be stated
that they are having a significant growth rate in their number of users and in terms of their
revenues. They had launched the Hashtag concept on august 23, 2007 and by the year 2017 they
have celebrated the 10 years anniversary of the success of their Hashtag strategy (Twitter Annual
Report 2017).
From the descriptive viewpoint of the behavioural decision theory, it can be stated that,
they have defined their each and every small decision areas in parity with their mission and
vision. They took some of such emergent decisions in their operations, which gave them a strong
competitive edge to compete in the market. Promoted Twitter trend, Hashtg, Ad Videos,
Promoted Account, those are some of such emergent strategies, which attracted business
organisations for hosting their advertisements. They cyclically analyses their operational and

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financial performance to find loopholes in their operations and takes necessary corrective
measures. They assess the ad activities and ad revenues to know their growth in their operational
efficiencies.
Technologies market is subject changing rapidely. They also have changed their product
and service offerings with the changes in the technologies market. Now the technologies market
has become more superior, sophisticated and open for all. They have changed their plans and
strategies accordingly in time to time. They have improved their data security system, privacy of
personal information and the activity monetizing system. They are incessantly gathering valuable
feedbacks from their users and they are still making investments in their research and
development to make their process more inventive with innovative product and service offerings.
Key points of their strategic decision-making in behavioural decision-making theory can be
shown in the following shapes.

ChallengesFaced:FallinRevenue,CustomersdisatisfactionProcessAnalysis:Assessnumberofusers,Activeunsers,Adengagements,DataSecurityandPrivacypolicyStrategicDecisions:Paidpromotedtwittertrends,Shortvideoads,Improveddatasecuritysystemandwelltrainedcustomersupportpersonnel.10TWITTER CASE STUDY
Conclusion:
From the above discussion and analysis of the case study of Twitter Inc, it can be
concluded that, the company is having some predefined missions and visions, and based on their
mission and vision they have specified their values and beliefs for their company practice. They
have taken required decisions and necessary corrective actions as and when needed. Some of
their emergent strategic plans made them to perform with Excellencies in the market and gave
them some extra competitive advantage. As the technologies market is innovating rapidly, they
need to come up with innovation in their service offerings and be efficient in the operational
activities, and a strong business strategy can help them to achieve those objectives.
Figure 2: Strategic decision making process of Twitter

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Ireland, R., Hokisson, R., & Hitt, M. (2011). The Management of Strategy-International
Edition. South-Western: Cengage Learning.
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