Thursday, February 20, 2020

EUROPEAN BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT-Competition Essay

EUROPEAN BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT-Competition - Essay Example Such markets have been seen to offer new competition law challenges especially when there are new emergences for business platforms. Also attached to the same is the fact that there have been identification of the extent to which freedom for private law right has to rights and contracts of property (Egli 2005: 235). The main consideration in this aspect is on how these can be reconciled especially following demise of states offering important services to their citizenries alongside replacement of the same services on the basis of communal requirements accruing from either state or private initiatives. The European Union competition law’s background is pinned on aims and goals which were looked forward into by the European Union of establishing a single market for European Union Member States. So as to achieve this, a transparent, compatible and fairly homogenized framework of regulation of competition law was created. An act of Council Regulation was brought into existence thr ough constitutive legislation process. This was developed during evolution of European Commission’s supremacy law which was not yet established. ... ontrol of Dominance The European Union competition law came into being following the need to ascertain that government efforts were not altered with by corporations which mostly abuse market power. Following this, treaties reached on through European Union are a provision intended for ensuring that there is a liberalized competition prevailing within the union (Collignon 2007: 172). This is further meant to discourage monopolies and cartels who engage in fixing of prices and sharing out of markets. The European Union competition law operates through four major policy segments which according to Akman (2009) include: Mergers, control of proposed mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures involving companies that have a certain, defined amount of turnover in the European Union/European Economic Area. This is governed by the Council Regulation 139/2004 European Commission (the Merger Regulation); Monopolies or preventing the abuse of firms' dominant market positions. This is governed by A rticle 102 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). This article also gives rise to the Commission’s authority under the next area; State aid, control of direct and indirect aid given by European Union’s Member States to companies. Covered under Article 107 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union; and Cartels or control of  collusion  and other practices on anti-competition  that affect the European Union (or, since 1994, the European Economic Area). This is covered under Articles 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The European Union competition law was developed with goals which mainly number into two schools of thought yet not clear. Main opinion and view pertaining to these is that the only relevance is in consideration of

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Strategic management Final EXAM Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Strategic management Final EXAM - Essay Example Strategic management can operate at corporate level or business level. A definition of strategic management at corporate level is: "the pattern of major objectives, purposes or goals and essential policies or plans for achieving those goals, stated in such a ways as to define what business the company is in or is to be in and the kind of company it is or is to be."1 One must also take into account the culture and leadership of the organisation, both of which influence corporate strategic management. For example, after the return of Steve Jobs to Apple Computers Inc a top-level decision was taken to making a major shift away from heavy investment in Research and Development (R&D) of innovative and premium-priced computers, and have invested more heavily in the highly competitive consumer electronics sector. At the business or unit level of operation, strategic management is more concerned with competition, adding value and recruiting and retaining clients. Returning to the example of Apple Computers Inc, since 2001 it has been developing products such as the iPod believing that it could add high-value, user-friendly software in a way that a pure electronics business could not. Business level strategic management has been defined as: "the match between [the organisation's] internal capabilities and its external relationships. It describes how it responds to its suppliers, its customers, its competitors and the social and economic environment within which it operates."2 This view argues that strategic management boils down to having a clear sense of the organisation's objectives and identifying how these will be achieved. However there is no universal agreement on which level the subject should be studied at: corporate or business. Therefore it is important to bear in mind that such gurus as Michael Porter tend to focus on business level strategic management. There is also another school of thought which argues against this prescriptive viewpoint. This alternative and less well-documented emergent view points out that given the impossibility of planning for an uncertain future, identifying a single strategy is a waste of time. Instead organisations should focus on finding market opportunities, experimenting and developing their competitive advantage over-time.3 The three key elements of strategic management are resources, the external environment and the organisation's capacity to add-value to its core activity. An organisation's resources include its personnel and their respective skillsets, its investment and capital. These items are important for the organisation to create and sustain competitive advantage. It could be argued that Apple Computer Inc's recent success in setting the latest standard in MP3 players was built upon the fact that it had a major brand and R&D capabilities from its niche computer business and an excellent own-brand distribution network already in place. In short Apple Computer Inc optimized existing resources. The environment refers to economic and political situation the organization finds itself in, its competitors, customers and suppliers, and increasingly to 'green' issues as concerns regarding global warming and exploitation of low-wage workers become more wide-spread. For example, IBM lost much of its initial dominance of the personal computer market when it failed