Word: ibm
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Will the real IBM please stand up? In recent weeks the struggling computer giant has stunned Wall Street with surprisingly strong first-quarter profits and has watched its stock price soar. Along with those gains, Big Blue has rolled out lines of powerful business computers that the company hopes will help to spearhead its comeback over the long haul; the versatile large and midsize machines can handle anything from banking transactions to running factory floors. "I think the worst is behind IBM," says Richard Zwetchkenbaum, who watches the firm for International Data Corp. John Coyle, a computer analyst for Standard...
...IBM remains tormented, as factions within the world's largest computer maker (revenues: $63 billion) fight for its very soul. Just last week Robert Corrigan, 53, whom IBM watchers credit with turning around the company's vital personal-computer business, abruptly declared he would take early retirement next month. The announcement marked the second high-level departure in as many weeks. Earlier, Gerald Czarnecki resigned as the IBM executive in charge of slashing the company's bloated work force and unbuttoning its culture, amid reports that he had been proceeding too slowly to please his superiors...
Worse yet, critics question whether IBM has truly developed a plan that will enable it to compete in the long run against feisty and fast-moving rivals at home and abroad. While chairman Louis Gerstner, 52, has revamped the company's finances in remarkably short order since he arrived a year ago from RJR Nabisco, observers both inside and outside IBM remain concerned about his lack of computer savvy. (At his first press conference after being named IBM chairman, Gerstner conceded that he did not know the brand of laptop he used.) Charles Ferguson, a consultant based in Cambridge, Massachusetts...
...chapter on Perot. Wills argues that Perot, who built Electronic Data Systems into a multibillion-dollar enterprise before peddling it to GM, improved on the theories of two corporate legends who made salesmanship a near science: John Henry Patterson of National Cash Register and Thomas Watson of IBM. Perhaps so, but even by Wills' narrow definition of business leadership -- that it mostly has to do with selling -- someone like Bill Gates of Microsoft, who had much more originality than Perot and built a much more important company, might have been a stronger example of the corporate leader par excellence...
Airlines are not likely to scrap the programs, however, because they have been so successful at pulling in business. When IBM recently proposed that United and American grant it lower ticket prices instead of frequent-flyer miles, both carriers declined. And shortly before Delta Airlines announced its latest job cuts, the carrier said it had joined forces with Varig Airlines of Brazil to expand Delta's frequent-flyer program. Frequent-flyer miles "are not going away," says Tony Molinaro, a spokesman for United. "We wouldn't do it if it wasn't really worth it." Especially now that consumers will...