Evolution of Business strategy and Success Factors of Microsoft Corporation

Elizaveta Baiborodova

Bachelor's thesis

Abstract:

The main purpose of the thesis is to evaluate the changes in the business strategy of Microsoft Corporation. The research consists of two parts: theoretical and practical sections. In the theoretical part, detailed overview of changes in the Microsoft’s business strategy in the “Gates Era” as well as in “Post Gates Era” was introduced, and the organizational changes that had been undertaken in order to shift the production and development departments to the new set of strategic goals were presented. Also, the literature review highlights the current position of the company and derives Microsoft’s factors of success. Hence, the theoretical part provides a base for the analyses conducted in the practical one. The practical part of the thesis consists of the quantitative, qualitative content, and discourse analyses. Qualitative and discourse analyses were undertaken to determine the cyclic behavior of Microsoft’s M&A and to contrast the findings with the business strategies obtained from the literature review. The quantitative part, the Wilcoxon sign-rank test was used to analyze the statistical significance of mergers and acquisitions of Microsoft’s operating ratios. At the end, the results of the statistical analysis were compared with the similar studies in order to identify similarities and differences and formulate conclusions.

Keywords

Business strategy, Microsoft, Success factors, Operating systems, Hardware

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 10. 3. 2021

Thesis defence

• Supervisor: Ing. Miloš Ulman, Ph.D.

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague

Faculty of Economics and Management

Bachelor programme / field:
Economics Policy and Administration / Business Administration