Meg Whitman Ebay

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Meg Whitman at eBay inc. Case Study eBay is an auction company arranged online that allows individuals to purchase or sell goods worldwide. Founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar, eBay Inc. grew to be the largest person-to-person trading site on the Internet in as little as two years. Meg Whitman, an experienced CEO of Florists’ Transworld Delivery and senior vice president of Bain & Company was brought on as CEO of eBay inc. in 1998. Today, thirty countries worldwide contribute to the multi-billion dollar business and it’s success. Leading to much of its rapid growth, eBay’s entire organizational culture is based on respect, trust, autonomy, empowerment and equality. eBay thrived on these values just as much externally as they did internally. Whitman’s decision to join eBay was influenced partially by the companies preexisting values that Omidyar instilled prior to extending its business to thirty countries. Whitman stated, “I liked the values they were trying to embed in the company, and I thought their intuition was great (Hill & Farkas, 2000 p.4).” eBay’s values were crystal clear to Whitman, during the time she was making a decision to forgo CEO with eBay. Based on these core values, eBay’s culture is designed to be “open” and “low risk.” Employees were encouraged to voice their opinions and mistakes were tolerated but they were expected to learn from them. Encouraging employees to voice their opinions gave them a since of entitlement. eBay encourages all their employees to speak out if they see the company is doing something that is not particularly right. By allowing this, eBay has empowered every employee to be a “guardian” of the culture. eBay’s internal culture indirectly influences their external community. For instance, everything that is put on eBay’s website, press release, every word said to the press, every corporate

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