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The purpose of this study is to describe how Zoom became the tope video conferencing service across the globe.

This case was developed from secondary sources including industry reports, academic, newspaper, periodical sources, company annual reports, social media sites and company websites. This case has been classroom tested with undergraduates in a strategic management course as a capstone course.

The case study describes the rapid growth of Zoom Communications Inc., a San Jose based publicly traded video conferencing company founded in 2011 by Eric Yuan. It illustrates the competition in the online meeting solutions industry in late 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdown. To explain how Zoom became the top video conferencing service across the globe, the case highlights the attractiveness of the market and the competitive advantage of Zoom over its rivals. Students can evaluate the internal capabilities and competencies of Zoom as well as identify key challenges in the external environment for sustaining Zoom’s competitive advantage.

This case study is suitable for strategic management classes for upper-level undergraduates and at the graduate level for MBA and/or master students. It prepares students to discuss core concepts in strategy, such as competitive strategy and competitive forces that shape strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine what distinguishes bet-the-company decisions from strategic decisions in general, what forms do they take and under what circumstances do firms make them.

From a comprehensive review and synthesis of relevant literature and media coverage since 1980, the author identifies 42 cases of bet-the-company decisions, from which the conclusions are drawn.

The author identify four characteristics, three distinct types and four drivers of bet-the-company decisions.

The author draws conclusions from a qualitative analysis of 42 cases mentioned in prominent business media, supplemented by a literature review. Identifying the underlying processes that result in betting the company would require a more in-depth series of case studies. Acquiring statistical evidence would require more formal meta-analysis that this paper lacks.

The paper identifies common characteristics, types and drivers of bet-the-company decisions that decision-makers could use to judge to recognize whether they also face such a situation.

Executives are very sensitive to decisions with extreme consequences. This paper offers the first review of bet-the-company decisions, decisions that lie at the upper extreme of the range of strategic decision consequences.

This paper aims to provide greater understanding of how the composition of pay reduces agency cost to the shareholders by examining how firms pay their chief executive officers (CEOs). More specifically, this study examines the relationship between CEOs’ social capital, measured as external directorships, and their contingency pay, the proportion of their compensation that depends on achieving long-term performance goals.

The authors use a panel sample of Standard & Poor 500 CEOs to test two contrasting theoretical perspectives. From a board perspective, boards attempt to retain executives with more social capital working longer for the firms to utilize executives’ social capital and pay them more in the form of contingency pay. The CEO power perspective argues that CEOs wield social capital as a form of power to lower contingency pay in an attempt at preserving wealth.

CEO social capital does not exacerbate agency pressures. Boards reward the long-term benefits of social capital accumulated by CEOs through higher proportions of contingency pay.

The authors considered CEOs of well-capitalized, publicly-traded US-based firms. So the results may not generalizable to other contexts.

Boards do recognize and reward CEOs for their social capital, and use higher levels of contingency pay to lock in CEOs with social capital.

This is the first study to explicitly examine the impact of CEO social capital on both non-equity and equity compensation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the determinants of entrepreneurs’ subjective social status perception (SSP) on firm international behaviors based on the upper echelons theory and social class theory.

To test the hypotheses, the authors studied a large sample of 10,823 small- and medium-sized private Chinese enterprises from 2006 to 2014.

The results showed that entrepreneurs with higher status perception prefer international activity and firms have higher export intensity and intention. In addition, the social capital of entrepreneurs and institutional environment amplifies the positive relationship between SSP and international behavior.

This paper contributes to research on the upper echelon of management and extends our understanding of how managerial social characteristics influence international strategic decision-making. Besides, it also contributes to the emerging stream of social status research in international expansion studies and expand researchers’ limited understanding of the effects of social status in business settings.