Management Styles in the Telecom Business

Management styles play a bigger role in any business setting. In Telecoms, management styles has played an even bigger role especially in the wireless telecommunication. Business have offered their businesss to consumers but through product differentiation, others have done well while others have lagged behind. In this paper, I am going to discuss the management styles that have been in use between the two giants of wireless communications in South Africa namely Vodacom and MTN.

Since their inception, the two giants have fought the pioneering of the wireless telecommunications in South Africa. Vodacom was the first to reach 10 million subscribers in South Africa while MTN focussed on spreading its tentacles to other parts of Africa. They (MTN) increased their market share by venturing into the unknown territories of the African continent. This proved to be a successful strategy because of lack of wired telecommunications, wireless was the best to reach the masses. As a result, MTN established itself in 7 African countries where their total subscribers is well over 60 million.

On the other hand, Vodacom strategized by concentrating on the refinement of their domestic business by offering data as well as voice services to the masses of South Africa. Knowing that wireless technology was a new phenomenon in South Africa, Vodacom seized this opportunity and ventured into advert blitz offering free 3G cell phones to those customers that signed a two year contract. This proved to be a very successful strategy that even MTN embarked on a similar strategy to capture the share of the domestic market as well.

Of all the strategies put in place by these two giant organizations, there was the underlying reason why one was successful in one part of the geographical area than the other and that is the management style. Management styles play a bigger role when it comes to the successes of businesses.