AT&T Inc Business Network Analysis And Innovation Capabilities

AT&T Inc description and services

AT&T Inc is a holding company that was established in the year 1983.The company majors in the production of communication and digital entertainment services globally. The organization has categorized its business into for segments: Business solution, Consumer mobility, entertainment group and the international. The company main market is the people of the United States, Latin America and Mexico, and to other firms that offer telecommunication services globally. The organization is in ownership of three television sports networks in the region and has an interest that is non-controlling on the other regional sports network. The services offered by AT&T Inc vary by the market. Some of the services offered include the digital video service, wireless communications, internet service and data, and wholesale services. The organization market share has been the basis of its decision in expanding its business globally.

AT&T Inc has faced a stiff competition from the independents. United States mood was antimonopoly and the rate of AT & T inc were half that of the Bells. Majority of the rural communities were sold to either bells or the independents. AT&T Inc first move to fighting back was slashing off rates. Early companies arrogance was replaced by the high desire to places and win customers. AT&T Inc bought the company independents and used the financial and political power to get competitors off the market. The firm had the greatest advantage of a remote monopoly of the long-distance service. AT&T Inc was given a strong push by the stiff competition in the market to grow and expand although it had a negative impact on its finances. Although the company had million telephone service boasted, it had a poor service terrible public image, poor service, serious debts, low staff morale and technological difficulties that are bevy. The firm has been able to conquer the telecommunication market globally through its international network’s capacity which is massive and impressive and contains petabytes of 18.7 for an average business per day and its cloud strategy.

Globalization has its negative and positive impacts on companies around the world, such as AT&T Inc. The firm has been creating and internationalization strategies in business which has led the company into performing well over the years. The firm had invested a lot in the creation of business strategies that are international, which has resulted in the firm being the top companies in telecommunication technologies in the world. The purpose of this report is to perform an investigation in the networks of the organization business and analyze the relation the firm business networks and the innovative capabilities.

AT&T Inc competition and expansion

This section will play a very keen look at the AT&T Inc firm on visualization software and network analysis. There are seven elements of the network analysis and visualization of the AT&T Inc which comprises of the Betweenness, Degree, and Closeness. Constraints, eigenvector. There will be an interpretation of the network graph of the company and the picture of the graph. The data used in this analysis comprises of the firm network between various branches amounting to 390  of parental branches and 60 of related to the AT&T Inc

The degree of measurement indicates the number of the connections which are direct that can be established by a node to other nodes in the same network (Cross and Parker,2004).The degree of measurement is subdivided into two groups which comprise of the out degree and the indegree.Outdegree is the connection that has been bridged to a node by other nodes in its network(Cross and Parker,2004).In degree refers to the direct connections is made by the node proactively with the other nodes. The degree of measurement can also be defined as the popularity or the wellness of a person within her social network (Cronin,2015)

The nodes that are of the bigger size are those that have the highest degree, therefore they are perceived as main connectors in their network as they have a greater number of connections. Within the AT&T Inc organization, Telekom Austria and the America Movil have the most established connection. This suggests that the connections between AT&T branches are more concentrated in North America and Europe as compared to other regions.

Country	Code	Degree
Telkom Austria	AT	46
AT$T Inc	US	13
America Movil	MX	28

Closeness is defined as the shortest path that a person or anode is to connected to another node or a person (Cronin,2015).In the social networking context, the node that is very close to the source of information will receive or gather more information from the source clearly than those at the far range within the same connection.

The graph above shows the degree of closeness elements of all the organization and branches correlated to the AT&T Inc in various regions and the nation around the globe. Following the closeness principle, nodes that are bigger in size will have less closeness attribute. From the graph above it is evident that the nodes which are in color red, green and blues at the graphs rim are the biggest, therefore, they have the least closeness. Therefore a lot of time will be required for this node to gather information from other nodes in the network.

Globalization and AT&T Inc

The nodes with the smallest size are those that have the highest measurement of closeness. Nodes with the smallest size will receive the best benefits in regards to the communication and the information transfer with other nodes since this will only require less time to do that.

Country	Code	CLOSENESS
Telkom Austria	AT	4068
AT$T Inc	US	4000
America Movil	MX	3998

The term between of a node can be defined as the extent to which a node lies on the path that is shortest between other nodes in the network(Cronin,2015).When it comes to making connections between nodes, the nodes that are of the highest betweenness are majorly considered. In the corporate world, betweenness is a significant measurement since it can detect the problems that are related to the disruption and power of the network. Suppose a node with the highest degree of betweenness is removed from the connection, other networks are likely to suffer because they will not be able to connect easily with each other anymore.

From the above diagram, those nodes with the score size that is the largest, have the highest degree of betweenness in the measurement. This clearly means that in such a scenario where these nodes are removed from the connection they are likely to cause trouble. Those nodes that have the least size are less likely to cause any trouble since when they are removed, they will not cause a very big gap. Telekom Austria and America Movil have the highest score in the betweenness measurement due to their main node sizes. This shows that these branches are the most persuasive and intimidating in the AT&T Inc firm.

Country	Code	Betweenness
Telkom Austria	AT	54908
AT$T Inc	US	36780
America Movil	MX	48765

The measurement of the eigenvector, clearly indicate which node has the influence and the possible social power based on the close connection they have with the other prominent and nodes that are well connected within their networks (Borgatti et al .,2013)

As it was predicted that nodes which have been connected to the prominent nodes such as the Telkom Austria, America, and the AT&T Inc will have a larger size as opposed to how they were shown in the degree of measurement, it is perceived that this node will continue having a small size as opposed to the prominent nodes connectors. The reason behind this is the distance between the three parent-subsidiary. At a closer look, it is evident that there is a one-way connection from these three prominent nodes to the others. That shows that the nodes are not going to possibly receive much connection transfers from the AT&T Inc, Telekom Austria, and America Movil.

Country	Code	EIGENVECTOR
Telkom Austria	AT	0.7658
AT$T Inc	US	0.6867
America Movil	MX	0.5678

Network analysis and visualization of AT&T Inc

The subsidiary analysis of the AT&T Inc network is mainly used when there is a necessity in the recognition of which actors in a group are connected mostly close to each other that they can be considered as one separate smaller subgroup (Cronin,2015).The analysis of the subgroup is an effective tool during those moments of a complicated network that is huge, such as the AT&T Inc network. This is because it helps in breaking the network into pieces that are smaller and contain subgroup interconnection to be analyzed and investigated.

The colors that have been used for the nodes inside the network during analysis of the subgroup is randomly given by the net draw system(Cronin,2015).The figure below illustrates the division of the AT &T Inc firms network into the subgroup of five smaller nodes with the color black, pink, blue, grey and red. This shows that the connected nodes are specifically to some branches in particular however not other branches of the network. In figure (6) it is evident that AT &T Inc Branches in Europe, which is red and in North America which is blue have been divided into smaller subgroups. AT &T Inc and the new cingular wireless service inc is located in North America, however, it appears that they are not well related to each other as they are connected to their own subsidiary.

This section of the report analyses how AT &T Inc business network structure can affect its performance innovation. The correlation between the organization innovation and the knowledge is the backbone of any organization innovative capabilities. The innovation capability of any firm correlates positively with the knowledge transfer within that firm(Bathelt and Glucker,2011).Outsourcing and crowdsourcing are the most effective solution in the building of an innovation capability for the firms(Cross and Thomas,2009).In many companies, they make use of the social networking as a medium of for advertising  so as to get in touch with the experts so as to help them get ideas for their future services and products. It is almost assured that capitalizing the building of the robust network relationship outside and inside a company, do aid in enhancement of its competence in innovation, nevertheless, they were not only the opportunities. It has been recommended that developing and building a firm business network can lead t some challenges for the firm, suppose it is not well managed. The challenges include first, the incapability to identify and create business networks with the expert either without or within the organization. Secondly, the inability for the organization to shift its idea that has been collected from the network and place them into action(Thomas and Cross,2009).

Degree, closeness, and betweenness in AT&T Inc network

A country environment can influence the innovation of a company in the following ways.First,the regional innovativeness: the socio-economic environment of a location has a strong influence on the companies that are located in the region. Secondly the national innovativeness: the innovative of any location is influenced by the national innovative capacity which potential for any country to produce innovations that are commercially valuable.

Conclusion

• The business network of the AT &T Inc has its branches located throughout various countries and regions globally and they are densely connected with each other.
• Thus it is assured that there is a flow of information across the business networks and it is transferred in through manner however the shared information vary from one place to the other dues to factors such as culture and climate.
• Therefore, AT &T Inc is in a position to generate a massive deal of the collaborative knowledge which will impact positively on the innovative performance.

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