Microsoft has employed Steve Ballmer for the past 30 years, but he has recently decided to resign from his position as CEO of the company. After his long tenure, many with stakes in Microsoft feel uneasy, and many in Microsoft are unsure of the future direction of the company.

Ballmer said he had decided to resign because he was unhappy with the culture of the company and he wanted to change it, but the culture of a company that size isn’t easy to turn around, especially when you’ve held a big hand in creating it.

Microsoft’s co-founder, Paul Allen, has very radical ideas following the resignation of Microsoft’s CEO. Allen said that he thought a split was in the best interest of the company, as some sections like Xbox and Bing were taking revenue and attention away from the larger sections of the company like software and services.

With or without a split, Microsoft will be facing some major changes in the coming future, as the current strategy is no longer seen as functional by those in control. Changing the strategy of a company like Microsoft will be no small task, considering the size of the organization, radical maneuvers might need to be made to point the company in the right direction.

Many companies have used the stack rating system as a method to weed out unproductive and unfit employees, such as Microsoft and Yahoo!, but many are now opposed to this system. Microsoft, who used the system for ten years, decided to drop it at the beginning of the year because they were unhappy with the result it had on the company culture. Employees felt that it created a cannibalistic culture that, “encouraged people to back stab their co-workers.” This left employees feeling helpless, knowing that if they had two bad reviews then they would have their position viewed and possibly fired, and also knowing that someone had to get a bad review every time in order to maintain the bell curve requirement of the stack rating system.

Yahoo!, who still uses this system, has had to layoff 600 people in the past couple weeks because of the Stack Rating’s structure. Managers are forced to give people negative reviews even if they don’t feel like they deserve it because they have to give the review to someone.

This type of system creates a negative environment to work in because it takes the power away from the employees, making them feel helpless about their jobs, which demotivates them and prevents them from doing their best work for the company.

http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/11/stack-ranking-microsoft-yahoo

In the United States, Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and with this national holiday comes the question of how will companies keep their employees happy through this date. For many companies the answer is easy, give them the day off, but for other companies, such as major retailer or grocery stores, this is a harder question. It’s a tradition for families to do their shopping for Christmas presents during Thanksgiving, since everyone is together and the stores all have blowout sales, so many retailers decide to stay open for Thanksgiving.

One example is Walmart, who attempts to keep employees happy while the rest of the country has a day off by offering three different incentives to work on Thanksgiving, an extra day’s pay, 25 percent off their next Walmart purchase and a traditional Thanksgiving dinner at work. Walmart is trying to use extrinsic motivators to get their employees to stay satisfied.

Another major retailer, Costco, has a different strategy, take the day off. Costco is breaking the mold of retailers by giving their employees the holiday to spend with their loved ones.

Differences like this reflect the public’s opinion of these companies, where Costco is known for taking good care of their employees and Walmart is thought of as treating theirs more poorly.

In March of 2011, Starbucks terminated its contract with Kraft Foods for the distribution and marketing of Starbucks merchandise to grocery and convenience stores; however, the contract was not due to expire until 2014. In the following law suit, Starbucks was sentenced to pay 2.76 billion dollars to compensate for damages, interest and legal fees. While Starbucks was gathering expendable money to pay for the fees, they were much larger than anticipated, forcing Starbucks to add 750 million dollars to their debt.

The choice to sever the contract was obviously a monetary risk for Starbucks, but they decided to go forth anyway. This is because Starbucks believed that Kraft wasn’t pushing their products in the right direction, and were lacking on some of their contractual obligations, therefore preventing Starbucks from reaching its potential by not achieving the maximum amount of sales and growth thought attainable.

CEO Howard Schultz, while unhappy with the outcome of the court’s decision, stands his ground saying that their choice to leave Kraft was, “without question, the right strategic decision for Starbucks, our brand and our shareholders.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-starbucks-kraft-grocery-fight-20131112,0,4766900.story

Following the release of the new Boeing 777x long-haul jet, Emirates Airlines has signed over 100 billion dollars in deals between Boeing and Airbus in a move to massively raise the size of their current fleet, purchasing 150 Boeing 777xs and 50 Airbus A380 airliners.

This move shows an aggressive attempt by Emirates to take over the air in the heavily trafficked routes through the Middle East as passengers travel from East to West. A purchase of this much capital will allow Emirates to have massive growth in the coming years, while competitors, such as Etihad and Qatar Airways, made smaller purchases of 25 and 50 planes respectively, leaving a huge gap between Emirates Airlines and the competition.

With these Gulf Airlines already having a strong history of growth, this may be the move to really leave Qatar and Etihad Airways in the lurch as Emirates Airlines surges ahead with this tremendous gain of capital.

Huy Fong Foods Inc, famous for its immensely popular Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce, could be facing a possible shutdown as on the 22nd of November a United States Court judge will hear a case attempting to close Huy Fong Foods’ factory.

Huy Fong has been in operation since 1980, but since the release of its Sriracha sauce, Huy Fong has been greatly expanding every year. Unfortunately, in the recent past, complaints of those living near the factory have surmounted enough backing to start a legal ordeal between the City of Irwindale, California and Huy Fong Foods, in an attempt to shut down operations at Huy Fong Foods’ factory in Rosemead, California because of the smell the factory produces.

If the judge rules in favor of the townspeople, Huy Fong will find themselves in a tough situation, having either to move to a new location (Huy Fong Foods currently only has one factory to work from) or shut down operations completely. This first option might not be as easy as it sounds, since the company’s limited supply of ingredients leads to an inability to satisfy the demand of customers, which has been hindering growth and preventing Huy Fong Foods from being able to collect the maximum amount of revenue.

On October 4th, HTC announced a quarterly financial statement that was different from the rest of all of the quarterlies in the company’s history. For the first time since starting up, HTC announced a quarterly loss. Losing $119 million, the stocks for HTC dropped twelve cents per share, falling to $3.58.

Similarities can be seen between this loss and that of HTC’s competitor Blackberry, but speculators are placing the blame in different places. HTC has no blame to put on the product itself, as HTC is a major competitor of the Android operating system for smartphones, even being picked up by Google for the Google phones, because of this, a watchful eye is being placed on management and marketing.

As stocks for HTC fall in the United States and Europe, HTC is starting to look to other international markets. Management and marketing will have to excel if HTC is to regain its feet in the markets where competitors like Apple and Samsung already hold a commanding lead, and if HTC is to establish a consumer base in the emerging markets.

In September, Twitter announced that it would be going public in 2014. Twitter has become a social media giant over the past couple years and the announcement of an IPO has excited many users. The question though, is why is a company that has been doing so well privately deciding to switch to public now?

One answer to this question could be the financial surge a company gets after first going public. The surplus of money Twitter could receive after their IPO could go into funding for many different things that Twitter didn’t have the budget to fund before. These areas will probably be market research or product development. Both of these factors would also work into another possible answer.

Another reason could be to refuel the growth of the company. Back in 2012, Twitter was booming, gaining an incredible amount of new users daily, in 2013 however, while Twitter is still growing, it is moving at a snail’s pace compared to the numbers from 2012. Changing to a publicly traded company could be just what Twitter needs to rekindle its growth and continue to hold its position in the social media world.

Whatever reasoning, a high level of activity can be expected to be come out of Twitter after its IPO in the coming year.

At 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time in Washington D.C., on the First of October, 2013, the government of the United States of America temporarily shut down until a financial budget and plan can be put into place. The government shut down will likely hurt the U.S. economy as well as all of its trading partners, decrease the value of the U.S. dollar, and increase U.S. national debt.

This is important to look at from a business perspective for a couple reasons, the first being it is likely to negatively impact a tremendous amount of businesses, but also, it highlights the importance of a sound business plan.

Without a solid business plan, it is incredibly hard to understand expected costs and revenue, which makes creating a functioning budget virtually impossible. This can be very dangerous because it can lead to overspending or under-spending and missing out on potential business opportunities. In the case of the U.S. government, the lack of a financial plan was deemed so dangerous that salaries were halted for the majority of government employees until a budget can be determined.

Many of the risks for businesses can be seen with the  U.S. government case if properly put into perspective. The value of the dollar can be seen as the value of a stock, these would fall as people realize the risk in investing into an organization without a functional business plan. Countries that trade with the U.S. can be viewed as key partners, trade will likely reduce if a plan is not chosen soon since the U.S. will have a more limited amount of spending money. Finally, the increase in national debt would correlate to the drop in productivity of the company which would in turn decrease revenue and profit.

Stable business plans are the back bones of flourishing organizations, and unless a plan can be agreed upon soon in Washington, the United States may have a fairly bumpy road ahead of them.

The Sun is known as a tabloid newspaper with a great talent to uncover celebrities’ secrets, and while for years, few stars gossip and cover-ups were able to avoid the Sun’s front page, it seemed to have left out some of its own.

Ben O’Driscoll, former editor of the Sun, has recently been charged with bribing officials and staff of various hospitals for leads, as well as encouraging the rest of his staff to do the same.

This action goes to show that when businesses choose to partake in unethical and, in this case, even illegal practices, the public will find out sooner or later. This could be a turn for the worst for the Sun. While the Sun has never been seen as a particularly ethical company, so their customer base will not likely be turned off by this poor publicity as might happen for a more prestigious organization, many high standing employees in the newspaper are seeing similar charges.

Rebekah Brooks, the former editor-in-chief, along with eleven other senior members in the Sun are being charged with corruption related offenses, leaving the newspaper pretty short on staff.