Elon Musk's Moral Muteness

Q & A: Tesla’s Musk
Question 1
The leadership example chosen for this analysis is the case of Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, and his tweeting out in 2018 that he “funding secured” to take the company private at $420 per share. The stock price was well below that at the time and it shot up exuberantly to around $380 on the news even as most analysts wondered whether Musk really had funding secured as he promised. Notorious for over-promising and under-delivering (the Tesla Model 3 had been “coming” for years with consumers who had already placed down payments still waiting more than 2 years later for delivery), Musk’s promise to take the company private seemed even more far-fetched than most of his promises. True enough, over the following days and weeks a sordid story emerged in which drugs, a desire to “burn the shorts,” and serious SEC violations all…… [Read More]

Revealing Bias in the Tweets of Tesla CEO Elon Musk

Preventing Bias on Twitter
Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla and is a popular leader in the EV space. He is active on Twitter but has made some controversial tweets in the past. One came when he stated that he was going to take Tesla private at $420 per share (an inside joke later revealed to be made for his much younger girlfriend at the time Ms. Grimes). Another came when he called Thailand cave diving hero Vern Unsworth “pedo guy” and was subsequently sued for defamation. Another came recently when Musk said that “the coronavirus panic is dumb” (Stewart, 2020). Musk tends to present information in cavalier ways, often trying to appear humorous to a younger generation of stakeholders who tend to idolize him.
Any bias presented by Musk is towards those who do not heap adulation and praise upon him. He subtly attacked Bill Gates after Gates’…… [Read More]

Why Elon Musk Must Go

Human Resources and Change: Major Responsibilities of HRM
The three major roles of human resources management (HRM) are (1) administrative, (2) operational, and (3) strategic. The functions that fall within these roles include: recruiting and selecting hires, orientation, maintaining stable and quality workplace environments, managing employee relations, and training and developing staff. This paper will show how the HRM of the company Tesla, Inc., including the manufacturing, finance, and marketing subsystems are in need of change. By comparing these subsystems to other successful subsystems, this paper will indicate that Tesla can improve its productivity and increase demand. In that context, the impact of change, stakeholder satisfaction, attracting, developing, and maintaining human resources, internal consistencies, connectivity to the course, and the application of personal Christian worldview will all be addressed.
Subsystems in Need of Change
The most major organizational subsystem within Tesla that is in need of change is manufacturing as…… [Read More]

artificial intelligence and futurism transhumanism

.....humans interact with technology in increasingly sophisticated and meaningful ways, the ethical and philosophical questions posed by artificial intelligence start to become more pressing than ever before. The science fiction genre has promoted as ambivalent a relationship between humans and technology as scientists and futurists have. Both the potential benefits and drawbacks of artificial intelligence have been explored, asking human beings involved in the development of AI technology to consider the ramifications of their work. For example, Nick Bostrom has indicated the need for developers of artificially intelligent systems to work with cognitive scientists to mitigate risk by programming AI from the beginning to act only in the best interests of humans (Shead 1). However, the assumption that AI will somehow eventually need or want to compete with human beings with the potential to overcome or conquer human beings is just that: an assumption. It is a flawed assumption because…… [Read More]

Tesla and the Global Market

Global Company Report: Tesla, Inc.
Introduction: Summary of the Business and Its Industry
Tesla, Inc. was launched in 2003 in California as a niche market luxury carmaker that specialized in electric vehicles (EV). The Tesla Roadster was its first product. The Roadster was a high-end EV and not a mass market car. Today, Tesla offers the much more affordable Tesla Model 3, which is a mass-market EV designed for the common man. Its other products include the Tesla Model S and the Tesla Model X. Tesla sells its cars in North America, Europe and in Asia. It has recently obtained financing to build cars in China, where its vehicles are already being sold, and is currently poised to enter Japan’s market. Tesla’s focus on sustainability and its CEO Elon Musk’s use of social media has made Tesla a favorite among investors who view sustainability as the future and Musk’s innovative…… [Read More]

Tesla Organizational Communications

Organizational Communications

Part I: Description of the Organization

Tesla is a niche-market company organization that manufactures electric vehicles and batteries to advance the green energy movement in the modern world. Guided by the vision of the CEO, Elon Musk, Tesla began its car business by provided luxury brand vehicles under two models, the Tesla Model X and the Tesla Model S. Recently, the company has been working on mass production of a lower-priced brand, the Tesla Model 3, for consumers not in the market for luxury vehicles. Tesla’s mission statement is: “to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible” (Tesla, 2013). At the core of its business is the concept of providing a product that promotes sustainability and that does not rely upon the burning of fossil fuels for vehicle transportation. Tesla’s electric vehicles are battery powered rather…… [Read More]

Leadership Case Study Mo Abudu

Leadership is difficult to quantify; studying it empirically is not a simple task, because so many different variables can be considered as the potential result of leadership. If we want to evaluate the leadership of a given CEO -- for example, to assess the leadership achievements of Mo Abudu, founder and CEO of EbonyLive TV and its various affiliated ventures (Inspire Africa, VLA) -- what statistics should we be measuring? The most popular measurement, of course, is purely financial, and regards a CEO as the sole motivating factor behind any company's economic performance -- most studies that examine Steve Jobs's leadership at Apple are quick to mention that, at the moment of Jobs's death, Apple actually had more money in the bank than the United States government (Isaacson 2012). But it is naive to assume that merely counting cash is a good way to measure leadership, just as rapid growth…… [Read More]

Strategy Summary of Paypal

Pay Pal Analysis

Paypal has taken the payment processing world by storm since its inception. Just as the shift from many isolated banks to a centralized banking system with centralized payment frameworks changed the way that people exchanged money and conducted commerce, PayPal has done much the same thing. Rather than requiring people to always extend their checking and/or credit card information to customers or buyers, they are instead able to use companies like PayPal as an intermediary so as to ensure that payment is delivered but no banking information is compromised. It is not foolproof as there is still fraud and such but it is a much better option than the financial payment frameworks of yesteryear. hile the model PayPal is using is not nearly perfected and while Android, Apple and others are joining the payment facilitation fray, PayPal is very well positioned.

Analysis

PayPal is a publicly traded…… [Read More]

Global Business Leadership

Global Business Leadership

When I first registered for the global leadership class, I thought "isn't all business the same?" In the sense that I really wasn't sure what distinguished global leadership from any other type of leadership. Having never held a management position in the workplace, I was perhaps at a disadvantage to understand the nuances of the question of global business leadership. The course has broadened my understanding of leadership on a global scale.

I see leadership as the process of leading people. The latter point is specific to understanding what leadership is -- people. A manager is someone who manages resources, and directs them to tasks, but these resources are not necessarily people -- they can be capital, or equipment. Thus, a manager is someone who determines who and what will perform the different tasks that will bring the organization closer to its stated objectives. Leadership is somewhat…… [Read More]

Tesla and the Porter Forces

Project Deliverable 2: Innovation and Competitive Analysis
The CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, has faced significant pressure from both the public and the investing world to deliver on promises of meeting production deadlines on the Model 3. The Model 3 is meant to be the electronic vehicle (EV) for the middle class—a comfortable, suave, sophisticated and technologically advanced EV that is a step and class above the types of EVs produced by other car manufacturers—like the Volt, which has none of the sheen and sophistication that Musk has vowed to bring to the green energy sector of automobile manufacturing. However, going forward, Musk should consider that other luxury brand auto makers are beginning to catch up with his vision. Porsche and Jaguar are virtually on his heels and they have none of the balance sheet problems and debt issues that Tesla is facing. The competitive environment is heating up and…… [Read More]

Should We Get a Basic Income

Basic Income

To understand why the concept of basic income would not work, it is necessary to understand the meaning of money and how it has value. Money has value because of two things: 1) confidence—as in the confidence that is placed in the currency by those who use it, and 2) the fact that it represents a store of worth—for example, if a person works ten hours on a roof, he expects to be compensated. He could theoretically be compensated with wheat, or milk, or beef, or gas, or some other goods or even services in exchange; but to facilitate the exchange and the agreement between the hirer and the laborer, money is introduced. Money thus acts as a store of wealth: the laborer who works on the roof for ten hours agrees to be compensated by x amount of dollars or euros or pounds or renminbi or whatever…… [Read More]

Good or Bad Aviation Project Management

Aviation Project - SpaceX

The current aerospace technologies being built and flown by the private commercial company known as SpaceX (from California) have a remarkable record of success thus far. The "Dragon," which is the cargo capsule built by SpaceX, put into orbit by the Falcon 9 launch rocket, delivered its second load of supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday, March 3 (Segal, 2013). The SpaceX contract with NASA is for a total of twelve cargo missions to the ISS over the coming years; the first Dragon cargo ship was launched and delivered supplies to the International Space Station in October, 2012. The un-manned Dragon is designed to carry supplies to and from the ISS, and it is the first privately built commercial spacecraft to handle those chores -- or conduct any space-related activities per se. NASA contracted with SpaceX in 2008 after NASA had retired its…… [Read More]

Tesla's Terrible Pricing Strategy

Pricing Strategy 
There are several critical factors that affect making pricing decisions: customers, competitors, regulations, government laws, the overall economy, and production costs and some of the most important variables to look at when deciding on a pricing strategy. As Zeng, Dasgupta and Weinberg (2016) put it, differentiation is key to developing a pricing strategy that works for a company that has to set itself apart from competitors in order to secure market share. For Tesla, which is the subject of this paper, the electric vehicle (EV) market is beginning to heat up as competitors come into the business with their own products. That means Tesla has to differentiate itself with a pricing strategy that will appeal to the biggest consumer base in the market—the average middle class consumer. In the past, Tesla has relied on the luxury brand market to drive sales—but with investors anxious for a return on…… [Read More]

Tesla's Problematic Pricing Strategy

Pricing Strategies and Decisions
Pricing Strategy Management
Pricing Policies, Processes and Methods
Policies used to manage Tesla’s pricing strategy. Currently Tesla is not only benefiting by but is actually relying on government subsidies to sell its cars. Subsidies come from electric vehicle (EV) tax credits that purchasers are able to obtain whenever they buy a Tesla. The problem is that these credits are only given to consumers for a set duration. Once the government ends the subsidy, sales drop drastically, as has been in the case in Hong Kong where tax incentives basically were the whole of Tesla’s pricing strategy—and once the tax incentives ended, sales were decimated. Currently in Norway, which is Tesla’s biggest European market, consumers pay no import tax or any of the purchase taxes that apply to non-EV cars—which is a big incentive (Tesla 10-K, 2018, p. 22). In the Netherlands, sales are soaring this year…… [Read More]

Business News from around the World

Business News Analysis

Thomas (2017) reports that President Trump is urging the pharmaceutical industry to lower its prices on drugs sold in the market. As an incentive to lowering prices, Trump has pledged to "ease rules" -- i.e., deregulate the industry substantially. As much of the time and money that goes into producing a drug for market consists of testing and reporting to the FDA, this pledge by the White House is one that could enable drug manufacturers to feel inclined to lowering prices, as their overhead would also dwindle should regulation become less stringent.

However, a deregulated pharmaceutical industry could spell danger for consumers, especially if the easing of rules leads to fewer products that are proven to be safe and effective hitting the market. Nonetheless, Trump's populist message is here seen being coupled with his pro-business platform: thus, one the one hand he is appealing to "public outrage…… [Read More]

Apple

Apple exists in an oligopoly market structure, wherein a small handful of companies control the market. Apple, along with Samsung, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google) and Nokia, essentially control the tech industry (smart phones, computers, portable devices, etc.). While smaller companies do exist, it is these larger companies that set the stage for prices, products and innovation. To what extent Apple’s current status as a blue chip stock may be representative of the company’s actual true value and is a question that an analysis of micro- and macroeconomic trends and conditions may be able to determine. This paper will analyze economic data and business data to explain how the core economic principles impact the sustainability of Apple, Inc. and what actions the firm can take now to ensure success in the future.

Apple’s current market share of smart phone market stands at 19.2% and the company leads all others with 77.3 million…… [Read More]

A Biblical Worldview in Finance

The Bible and Financial Concepts
Introduction
The Bible is quite clear on how one should orient oneself in this life towards Heaven and pursuing the kingdom of God (Matt 6:33). However, in the financial world of today, this orientation can easily be lost as secular goals replace spiritual ones. This paper will address the issue of profit maximization, insider trading, and how to convert a sinner from a Biblical perspective to show why orienting oneself towards the Heaven is so important for one’s spiritual life.
Part I
Profit maximization by itself is an inappropriate goal because it is not connected to the moral or spiritual purpose of life, as indicated in Matt. 16:26: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” One who dedicates his life simply to storing…… [Read More]

Visionary Leadership of Nelson Mandela

Visionary Leadership
After being detained in prison for 27 years, Nelson Mandela walked out of Prison to lead South Africans in their quest to break free from Apartheid rule. He became the first Black president of the Republic of South Africa and led a robust reconciliation effort that helped Blacks and Whites in South Africa forgive one another and find common ground to work on to help build South Africa. For these efforts, Nelson Mandela won the Nobel Peace Prize. Nelson Mandela was born in 1918 in Transkei and went on to be a student of law at Fort Hare University. As the African National Congress (ANC) started gaining momentum in the early 1940s, he joined the movement to help resist the racist policies of the then ruling White government. The racist government policies would later be codified into Apartheid which proved to be a brutal and highly racist rule.…… [Read More]

Selling Into Enterprise Corporate Marketing

positioning affect segmentation and targeting strategies when entering a market?

Positioning strategies serve as the foundational framework for strategic marketing plans and planning, execution, management and evaluation of marketing strategies. Positioning is also used for defining how a company's products or services are differentiated within a customer segment. For example, Apple uses positioning very effectively selling its high-end iPads. his specific positioning strategy by Apple concentrates on only those consumers willing to pay for premium performance, reliability and convenience the iPad offers. Apple does this to position themselves above the myriad of Google Android-based tablets who are competing primarily on price. Apple also uses positioning successfully to sell more on value and less on price. Positioning not only defines the competitiveness of a given product or service relative to competitors, it also communicates the unique value and differentiated features as well (Perreault, Cannon, 2012). Apple excels at this type of…… [Read More]

Richard Branson Analysis Leader Critique a Critique

Richard Branson Analysis

Leader Critique

A Critique of the Leadership Style of Sir Richard Branson

Sir Richard Branson makes an excellent example of an interesting leader to study. Branson's parents provided a relatively unique upbringing and raised him to be as independent as possible. For example, his mother was a stewardess for an airline and also a performer who would create challenging games for her children to play. She would do things like drop off a young Richard Branson in a field close to their hose and make him find his own way home. Another example is that she would tell him to ride his bike to the next town over and then find his way home again (Finkle, 2011). His parents also preached the values of free thought and encouraged him to make his own opinions about life but distilled the importance of hard work as a way to…… [Read More]

Marketing Public Relations and Segmentation

Marketing

Mass marketing is differentiated from target marketing, in that the target customer is pretty much everybody. A firm that has a target market will either have all of its sales, or a significant portion of them, in an specific identifiable group. Thus, the product should span across race, gender, age and geography. Such a product's target market would be better understood in terms of who doesn't buy it than who does. Wal-Mart would be a good example of a mass market retailer, based on their size, their geographic spread, the wide variety of products that they sell and the ubiquitous nature of many of those products -- many mass market retailers target very broad groups (Investopedia, 2015).

A mass market product, therefore, would be a product that broadly appeals. I will go with Charmin. The target market for Charmin is almost everybody. There are only a few groups that…… [Read More]

Immigration versus class

Immigration Versus Class

Today, immigrants comprise a significant proportion of the population of the U.S. and other developed countries. Factors such as globalization and technological advancements have played a crucial role in accelerating this trend. For developed countries, immigration has historically made substantial contributions to economic growth and development -- right from the era of slavery to modern times. Nonetheless, immigration has led to class struggles, creating an ever-widening divide between citizens and immigrants.

According to Buruma (2014), grievances against immigrants have been on the rise over the years in most developed countries. For example, in 2014, epublicans in the U.S. showed immense displeasure with President Obama's offer to allow undocumented immigrants who had lived in the U.S. for several years to apply for citizenship. The discomfort with immigrants in the U.S. has gained further momentum in the wake of President Donald Trump's entry to the White House a few…… [Read More]

Cause and Effect Essay Example Climate Change & Hurricanes

Writing doesnt have to be a chore.

To prove it, heres a cause and effect essay example that gets down and dirty with a semi-controversial issue that polarizes a lot of people (no pun intended): yes, were talking about climate change.

This topic has been in the news for a good long while.
Topic
Climate Change

There have been movies made about it, conferences held about it, and many works of scholarly and not-so-scholarly literature written about it.

So lets take a look at how to turn this subject into the main topic of a cause and effect essay.

Well start off with a title, give you the hook, underline the thesis, and highlight some important parts for you to consider.

Best of all, well show you how to have fun with your essay. Lets go!
Outline
I. Intro
a. Hook
b. Did climate change cause Harvey et al.?
c.…… [Read More]

Tesla Stock Analysis and Recommendation

Fortune 500 Company: TSLA
Ticker: TSLA
Current Stock Price: $290.71
Market Cap: 49.119B
P/E: 147.58
Dividend/Yield: N/A;N/A
Enterprise Value: 4.93
Beta: 0.96
Stock Split: No
Closing price last five days: $291.21, $287.71, $293.50, $300.10, $290.24
52 week high: $389.61
Book Value per Share: $11.58
Analysts’ Ratings: 4 strong buy, 4 buy, 8 hold, 6 underperform
Target Price: Low of $180 to High of $470, with the average at $317.04
Avg. revenue estimate for next year: 26.85B
Significant news: Tesla is ramping up Model 3 production; Tesla is working on a semi

Buy or Sell TSLA? Recommendation: SELL

I would not recommend investing in this stock. TSLA is currently the most shorted stock on the market: investors are bearish on Tesla, as the CEO Elon Musk has turned it into a cult stock with an unjustifiable P/E and a lot more empty promises at his back than actual delivery. While TSLA…… [Read More]

Tesla's innovation'strategy

Exploiting Innovation
Elon Musk's companies rely heavily on innovation for their success. They take industries that are struggling to evolve, such as electric cars and space travel, and seek to enter those businesses with innovative strategies to bring fresh products to market. Because of this, these companies have significant competitive advantages. Tesla has introduced several major innovations that are transforming the automotive industry.
At a high level, Musk overpromises, but supports this with a desire to innovate using unconventional methodologies. He will set out an impossible task, then challenge his teams to find ways to make it happen. Sometimes these teams are put together for the express goal of tackling the challenge. Musk does not put limits or constraints on how these teams solve the problem, and this gives those teams the freedom to find their own innovative solutions. Typically, major challenges will run into a number of different problems,…… [Read More]