AT&T

AT&T

AT&T

Currently, AT&T is spending $360 million in legal fees to defend its monopoly status. It was fending off anti-trust suits from dozens of states, the federal government and the private sector. When Chairman Charles Brown learned that the federal judge on the case thought AT&T was going to lose no matter what, he decided that a negotiated surrender was better than an unconditional one. In 1982, he announced that AT&T was going to break up into separate companies by 1984. It was the end of the road for Ma Bell(Wu 2008).

AT&T went from nearly $150 billion in assets before the breakup to $34 billion in total assets. That's a 77 percent drop in asset value, and it happened with the stroke of a pen. AT&T spent the years after 1984 trying to preserve its long-distance business and seeking new streams of revenue in a rapidly changing, competitive market.

AT&T went from the safe confines of monopoly power into the "sink or swim" environment of the free market. The 1984 decree opened long-distance service to outside competition for the first time. In the Ma Bell days, the company depended on long-distance service to keep profits up. Local service was priced nearly at cost, while long distance prices could be inflated without much complaint. The post-divesture AT&T may have had Ma Bell's profit machine, but that machine's potential for driving profits would decline significantly in a "price war" atmosphere. Looking to grab a piece of AT&T's market, long-distance carriers such as Sprint and MCI priced their services low enough to undersell AT&T(Hancock 2007).

MCI emerged as AT&T's main competitor in the long-distance market. Price wars between these two companies shaved profits away from AT&T. No one knew that the company that would become WorldCom was deceiving Wall Street with overly optimistic performance reports.

Conflict Resolution

Conflict occurs whenever disagreement exists in a social situation over issues of substance or whenever emotional antagonisms create frictions between individuals or groups. Managers can spend a great deal of time handling conflicts in the workplace. Such conflicts can include management involvement as one of the key factors. There may also be the type of conflicts where management may represent a third party involved. The manager may also act as a mediator whose job it is to resolve conflicts between other employees. Managers must also have a certain level of comfort in dealing with interpersonal conflicts. They must be able to recognize certain situations that could ultimately result in conflict and be able to deal with the situations in order to better serve the employees and the organization. It is important to remember that conflict is usually emotionally driven and often involves anger. There should always be an attempt to control these the emotions and not allow them to get out of control. Conflict has two basic types, emotional and substantive. It is the manager's responsibility to be able to differentiate between the two and bring all parties involved to an understanding and possibly a common resolution(McKinney Kimsey Fuller 1995 ...