Rupert Murdoch - Growth of the Entrepreneur - Coursework Example

Essay (Business) Name: . Course: Instructor: Institution: City: Date: Introduction My choice of an entrepreneur for analysis in this paper is Rupert Murdoch. Rupert Keith Murdoch is an Australian born entrepreneur born in March 1931. He is regarded as one of Australia’s most successful business tycoons (Maverick 2015). The Forbes magazine ranks him as the most powerful media mogul in the world. Murdoch was born to Sir Keith Arthur and Elisabeth Murdoch who were also very successful entrepreneurs in Melbourne Australia. Murdoch was introduced into the corporate world when he inherited a media company, the News Time from his father. At the age of 85, the business magnate is estimated to be worth 11.9 billion dollars (Rupert Murdoch News Corporation 2006). 1. History, development and growth of the entrepreneur to see what made this person successful Murdoch is the current chair of the board of management for News Corp, a company that owns many television and print media companies across many countries. His hard work and determination enabled him to build an empire of media in Australia. At the age of twenty two, Murdoch inherited two media companies upon the death of his father (Rupert Murdoch News Corporation 2006). Nothing much has been about his early childhood except when his father died when he was 21 years and he came to run the family businesses (Craufurd 2015). In the latter years of his business career, Murdoch used his influence and the position, acknowledging the role that media plays in politics to associate his media companies with various political orientations. He for instance threw his weight behind the Australian labor party in Australia an act that almost split the ruling party into two. In the United Kingdom, Murdoch formed an alliance with the conservative that at the time was led by the celebrated Prime Minister Margaret thatcher. He recently hired a chartered plane to fly David Cameron the prime minister of Britain yacht the Rose heart for private talks (Craufurd 2015). In the United States of America, media companies associated to him participated in fundraising for Hillary Clinton during her campaigns in the democratic primaries. In an interview with Walt Mossberg, Murdoch admitted to having a hand in in New York post’s endorsement of Barack Obama during the democratic primaries in the United States (Arsenault & Castells 2008). 2. The role of their family and socio-cultural background in the development of their entrepreneurial passion The family of Murdoch played a great role in his development to become a very successful business tycoon. To begin with, he was born to a family of re-known business people in Australia. His father, Sir Keith Arthur was a journalist who rose to fame working as a news correspondent during the world war one era. In 1921, Keith was appointed as the chief editor of Melbourne Herald (Biography.com Editors nd.). He became the managing director of the herald and weekly times limited in 1929. He married Elizabeth that same year who was later to become a famous philanthropist in Australia. The members of the family were very prominent proprietors of the media industry in their native country, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Murdoch was blessed with six wives from three marriages. His eldest child Macleod was appointed to the board of Times Newspapers limited in 2011 (Craufurd 2015). His eldest son Lachlan, the heir apparent to Murdoch is a former deputy chief operating officer at the news corporation and a publisher at the New York post. He later resigned from the executive posts leaving his brother James as the only member of Murdoch family who was directly in the operations of the family ventures. All his children were in one way or another involved in businesses that were associated to the media industry (Finkelstein 2007) 3. The type of businesses they developed and the competitive advantage of the business compared to other entrepreneurs It is accurate to assert that a great proportion of the businesses run by Murdoch are media companies. His interest in investment in the media industry was influenced by his father who was a journalist during the world war era. Upon the death of his father, Rupert Murdoch inherited his father’s media company and later founded the global media holding company corporation where he was the chairman and the chief executive officer (The Guardian 2016). The company is considered as the largest conglomerate of media in the world. He served in the same capacity in the successors of the conglomerate, the News Corp and the 21th century fox after the Global Media Holding Company News split in June 2013. Murdoch acquired a number of print media stations between the 1950s and the 1950s in Australia and New Zealand before going over to the United Kingdom in 1969 where he took over the news of the world as well as the sun (Biography.com Editors nd.). In 1974, Murdoch ventured into the United States market. He however retained his media interest in Australia and the United Kingdom. He bought the sun in 1981, his first broadsheet in Britain. He later became a naturalized united states of American citizen in 1985 to meet the requirements one had to meet in order to invest in the television industry in the U.S (The Guardian 2016). The first venture that Murdoch invested in outside Australia is the acquisition of a major shareholding in The Dominion, a New Zealand media company. While touring New Zealand with friends, Murdoch read of a takeover bid of wellington paper by Thomson of fleet, a British newspaper tycoon based in Canada. He immediately launched a counterbid where the young Murdoch eventually managed to acquire the company after a long battle for financial supremacy between the two media magnates. He formed The Australian in 1964, the first national daily newspaper in Australia (McKnight & Hobbs 2011). He later acquired the daily telegraph from sir frank parker an Australian media magnate who later publicly regretted selling the company to Murdoch. He expanded his business holdings in 1999 by acquiring the majority shares in Mushroom Records which he later merged with Festival Records a result of which was managed by his son James for a number of years later (The Guardian 2016). To fulfill his quest to adopt the emerging electronic publishing technologies, Murdoch brought together his United Kingdom operations under Wapping in 1986. His news corporation later bought over the twentieth Century Fox in 1985 and HarperCollins in 1989, and the wall street journal in the year 2007 (Schaefer et al 2016). Murdoch set-up the BSkyB in Britain in 1990 and expanded his operations to Asia and the South American media industries in the 1990s. By the onset of the current century, the News Corporation company owned by Murdoch owned over 800 media companies situated in over fifty countries all over the country with an estimated worth of five billion dollars (Schaefer et al 2016). 4. Discuss future suggestions for the entrepreneur including different types of businesses or avenues (e.g. selling their business) they may take The future of any kind of business venture is always bleak owing to the dynamic nature of the business world. This can also be said of the media industry in which Rupert Murdoch has made his name. There so many emerging trends in the business world that one has to have in mind in order to maintain a sizable market share. The dynamics affect both the sellers and the consumers of information (Schaefer et al., 2016). For instance the emergence of the internet has had so many companies rushing to commit their resources into making sure that they stay afloat with the new technology (Biography.com Editors nd.). It is obvious that Murdoch set up most of his media companies at a time when the mode of production was majorly labor intensive. The technologies were relevant for those moments. However his attempts to revolutionize his ways of doing things have sometimes been met with lots of resistances. A case in point is the formation of the Wapping. In this case, he was planning to convert his publishing into the electronic publishing. This would mean that he would have to lay off over 600 employees. This however did not go well with the labor organizations in the United States of America (Dunn 2007). To avoid such cases, it is better to always prepare the people who would be affected by those changes. There are of course those media companies that will at some point be rendered obsolete by the new technology; take the print media for instance. The digitalization of the media means that more people will avoid purchasing the newspapers. This is especially so with the young people who consider themselves a digital generation. The most important and viable business move to make for Murdoch is to consider selling the print media companies to avoid losses that are imminent in the future. The other important factor for consideration by Murdoch is the impartiality and the ethical practices by the media. So many companies are losing huge amounts of cash resulting from legal suits stemming out of unethical practices. Some of Murdoch’s media companies have been under probe by the FBI for allegations including those of tapping of private phone conversations (Dunn, 2007). Such actions always have a negative effect on the reputation of a company and it is something that Murdoch would want to look into. The New York post, a media company owned by the news corporation has been accused of impartiality in America. Other companies associated to him have been accused of the same actions in the United Kingdom and Australia. Today’s citizenry are very sensitive to the information they receive. Winning their confidence is very important because invoking their apathy could always lead to financial losses (Hagerty, 1999). Conclusion In conclusion, there is need for the business mogul to diversify his portfolio. This is informed by the fact that diversifying of investments to different ventures across the different sectors is important in mitigating the losses that the media magnate would suffer incase the media industry was to be hit by a financial downturn. He should for instance consider selling off some of his media companies in favor of other companies that deal with entirely different products such as foodstuffs, financial institutions as well as construction companies. Bibliography Arsenault, A & Castells, M 2008, ‘switching power: Rupert Murdoch and the global business of media politics: A sociological analysis’, International Sociology, 23(4), pp. 488–513. doi: 10.1177/0268580908090725. Craufurd, R 2015, ‘Rupert Murdoch: A reassessment; the ethics of journalism: Individual, institutional and cultural influences’, Journal of Media Law, 7(1), pp. 108–113. doi: 10.1080/17577632.2015.1063895. Dunn, M 2007, ‘How to survive Rupert Murdoch’, British Journalism Review, 18(4), pp. 5–10. doi: 10.1177/0956474807086950. Finkelstein, D 2007, ‘JOURNALISM LIVES’, Journalism Practice, 1(2), pp. 277–282. doi: 10.1080/17512780701275580. Hagerty, B 1999, ‘“I don’t do it for the money”-Rupert Murdoch’, British Journalism Review, 10(4), pp. 7–17. doi: 10.1177/095647489901000402. Maverick, J.B 2015, ‘Top 3 most successful Australian entrepreneurs’, in Available at: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/091615/top-3-most-successful-australian-entrepreneurs.asp (Accessed: 1 April 2016). McKnight, D & Hobbs, M 2011, ‘“You’re all a bunch of pinkos’: Rupert Murdoch and the politics of HarperCollins’, Media, Culture & Society, 33(6), pp. 835–850. doi: 10.1177/0163443711411004. Rupert Murdoch News Corporation 2006, Old mogul, new media, Strategic Direction, 22(7). doi: 10.1108/sd.2006.05622gad.006. Schaefer, S., Greenburg, Z.O., Wood, R.W., Sylt, C., Rich, B., Mohn, T., Blankfeld, K., Gara, A., Stratfor, Peterson-Withorn, C. and Badenhausen, K 2016, Rupert Murdoch & family. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/profile/rupert-murdoch/ (Accessed: 1 April 2016). The Guardian 2016, Rupert Murdoch | media, Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/media/rupert-murdoch (Accessed: 1 April 2016). Biography.com Editors nd., Rupert Murdoch Biography, Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/rupert-murdoch-9418489 (Accessed: 1 April 2016). Read More