The History and Social Responsibility Initiatives of Harley Davidson Research Paper

The History and Social Responsibility Initiatives of Harley Davidson - Research Paper Example The paper tells that many of today’s large multinational brands were once established as a small upstart or lucrative business form, but their entrepreneurs transformed the same to Fortune 500 or world’s first class brand by continuously developing better business ideas, discovering further new business opportunities and seizing the same. The history of Harley-Davidson is similar to that of a fascinating tale as it involves the vision of two young engineers who started their own business. Its history goes back to 1903 when young entrepreneurs- William Harley and Arthur Davidson- discovered the business opportunity for basic transportation and developed a bicycle frame with French-designed single cylinder gasoline engine to provide a vehicle for the customers to meet the basic transportation need. Neither William Harley nor Arthur Davidson had any big dream of a manufacturing company, but they, in fact, we're thinking to produce an outboard motor for their own purpose to reach their favorite fishing spots easily. In 1903, they built the first production of Harley-Davidson with the help of a more powerful motor. William Harley began in the bicycle business and Arthur Davidson trained as a pattern maker with help of another draftsman, they worked together and brought the premier machine that was basically a bicycle frame fitted with a single-cylinder four-stroke machine. Harley-Davidson’s first machine production was complete by the summer of 1903. It was not a just loop-frame bike, but a more primitive vehicle with the quite smaller engine attached to the pedal bicycle frame. The second machine was more advanced than its first one, because, its loop-frame model was a natural trap for the unwary and careless people. Within three years after the first motor is produced, Harley Davidson Company became known in its way to prosperity as it increased production of motors to around 50 motorcycles. Until 1906, the company had only a backyard shed for production processes, but Harley and Davidson expanded the manufacturing plant to nearly 2400 square feet of plant space. Before 1910, the brand attained wider popularity for efficient construction, user-friendly motorcycle, durability and so on. As Holmstrom noted, after 1908, Harley Davidson began to veer from the facts for marketing purposes. Though there were two different machines in design and outlook, their identities turned to make them the single machine. The company grew to achieve several recognitions of excellence in business and marketing landscape. In 1942, Arthur Davidson recalled the growth of the company- Harley Davidson grew just like Topsy with luck, but it was not just that luck because management strategies and effective decision making helped the company stay stronger for years. Harley Davidson redesigned its engineering by changing the front frame down-tube to straight from its previous styles and designs. The 1911 single model was made with the increased cap acity of using gasoline by enlarging the tank capacity to store around 2 gallons of gasoline.

Contemporary issues in management Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Contemporary issues in management - Assignment Example Presently, Samsung produces and exports electronics products around one fourth of the total export of South Korea. Samsung had decided to diversify in terms of product diversification as well as market diversification into the foreign market especially into the emerging markets across the world. The main reason behind this is to diversify the risk of single industry. It is noticeable that the company’s current revenue is larger than the many countries’ GDP. So, the parent company has diversified into different industry from electronics and semiconductor production to advertising agency. Business from this wide range of business areas Samsung has able to make a powerful influence on the economic development of South Korea. The companies like Samsung always believe in expansion. Although the Samsung group is recognised for the digital electronics and semiconductor product but it has diversified into wide variety of industry and formed many subsidiaries like Samsung heavy industries, the second largest shipbuilders in the world, Samsung engineering, Samsung life insurance, Samsung Everland a theme park in South Korea, Cheil Worldwide the 19th largest advertising agencies in the world. Internal diversification This blue chip company was founded as â€Å"Samsung Sanghoe† which was a small trading company of food products especially noodles and other grocery products. In terms of business diversification there are two different types of it like the product diversification and the market diversification. The company started the need and opportunity diversification after the war. After the war the economic condition of the country was very weak and many companies could not able to run their small companies. Samsung got the opportunity to buy some of those companies which had future prospect and growth. The company started diversifying into many areas insurance, securities and retail. At that time founder Lee discovered the opportunities in industri alization as there was a higher need of industrialization in the country after the war. He thought that by this step the company might also get major support from the Korean government. For this reason Lee started concentrating on industrialization and focused on economic development strategy with the support of large domestic conglomerates. The strategy behind this diversification to consumer electronics was to become world’s leading brand in consumer electronics programme. The company’s diversification into Samsung Electronics’ was one of the most important diversification strategies of the company. The group become much better in terms of brand recognition and this is the only subsidiary by which the company has become a worldwide popular digital electronics brand. External diversification According to Williams, Samsung set on a path of unrelated external diversification activities where it focused on creating and gaining of companies completely unrelated to each other. This diversification strategy was aimed by the concern through enhancing the portfolio of business and service or product offerings. Samsung is thus found to expand into diversified business areas like production of memory chips, hardware equipments and computer peripherals pertaining to information technology industries,