The Sustainability Strategy of Microsoft Corporation

Module Code: PM018

Class/Group: Group 50

Module Title: The Theory and Practice of Strategy Management

Assessment Title: Report

Assignment Title: The Sustainability Strategy of Microsoft Corporation

Tutor Name: John Burns

Student ID Number: 201011411

Date of Submission: Friday, 9th May, 2014

Word count of your essay: 2393

Executive Summary

This report is going to present the situation of Microsoft Corporation’s sustainability strategy. At the beginning, the history of and the strategic change will be shown briefly by the introduction. Then the theories, such as SWOT and Porter’s Five Forces, will be used to analysis whether the change of the strategy and evaluate is benefit for business. Finally, some relative and constructive strategy is going to afford for Microsoft Corporation in the next 3-5 years.

The conclusion of this report is that as a long-term strategy, the sustainable development policy is benefit and feasible for the long-term development of Microsoft Corporation.

Content

1. Introduction 4

2. SWOT 5

2.1. Strengths 5

2.2. Weaknesses 7

2.3. Opportunities 7

2.4. Threats 8

3. Porter’s Five Forces 9

3.1. The Power of Suppliers 9

3.2. The Power of Buyers 10

3.3. The Threat of Entry 10

3.4. The Threat of Substitutes 11

3.5. Competitive Rivalry 12

4. Constructive Strategy for Microsoft Corporation in the Next 3 to 5 Years 12

5. Conclusion 13

1. Introduction

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKEX: 4338), headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, is a multinational computer technology corporation (“Microsoft Corporation Annual Report 2005”, 2005). Microsoft Corporation develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices and its best-selling products are the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software (Romano, 2008). Microsoft Corporation is the largest software maker in the world ("Global...