`WORLD.COM

World.com

World.com



Management Planning

No matter the size of an organization, effective planning must be completed to ensure that all objectives are addressed. With any organization management planning is very important to the company's success. This paper will discuss the planning functions of management while looking at Worldcom. the four functions of management: planning, organizing, leading and controlling will be explained. The paper will identify legal, ethical, and social responsibilities that impact World Com. This paper will also show factors that influence World Com strategic, tactical, operational, and contingency planning.

Very quickly, a brief background about Word Com. The concept of telecommunication that became World Com was thought up in 1983, in a coffee shop in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, by Bernie Ebbers (Moberg, 2003). The company grew quickly through acquisitions and mergers. In June 1999, the company's shares traded for $64, and Ebbers was a billionaire (Moberg, 2003). Unfortunately in 2002, World Com was caught in an accounting scandal. Mr. Ebbers, and key senior management of WorldCom were charged with fraud. The company went into bankruptcy, which was the largest bankruptcy in US history (Beltran, 2002).

Planning is a major key to the success of any organization. Without planning an organization can be unorganized and the one thing he or she can plan on is planning to fail. Organizing is the second key factor of management planning, in this function they are allocating and configuring resources to accomplish the goals and objectives. Leading is the third factor of management and it is establishing direction and influencing people to follow that direction. This function involves the manager's efforts to stimulate high-performance by the employees. Lastly, the final function of management is controlling. This function is monitoring and changing resources and processes to achieve goals and objectives in a highly effective and efficient way. Control provides feedback by which daily activities can be directed toward achieving goals and objectives.

An organization has social responsibility that can be categorized as economic, legal and ethical (Bateman & Snell, 2007). On June 25, 2002, it was announced publicly that WorldCom has falsified its operating expenses by 3.8 billion (Beltran, 2002). The WorldCom News reported that WorldCom did not account for expenses when they were incurred. The expenses were hid from the key stakeholder by pushing them into the future, thus giving the appearance of spending less, therefore, making more money.

Once the news of the scandal spread to the public, the stock plummeted and scandal was devastating to the organization. WorldCom was valued at $120 billion at its peak in 1999 but after the scandal, WorldCom's market had fallen to $280 million (Gaffin, 2002). WorldCom, was the second largest long distance company (Beltran, 2002), the fraud charges were not just illegal, but unethical.

Three factors that influence World Com's management planning process was due to Operational, Tactical and Strategic Planning.

Operational

A legal issue that has impacted the operational planning function of WorldCom was the overstatement of profits of the company. Because of this unethical action the company had to file Chapter 11 ...