Nowadays, De Beers' business conduct follows the so called best practice principles. These principles implies that both De Beers and the companies they work with comply with a number of standards regarding three main areas: business, social and environmental responsabilities (De Beers corporate website, Accessed March 09)
Today, the business model includes social responsibility. The diamond giant has business interests in Bostwana, where its activities account for approximately 1/3 of the country's GDP (Nocera, 2008)
(2007), the world demand for diamond was in excess 1.2bn carats in 2000, which corresponds to more than 10 times the production of natural diamonds (Olson, 2002)
De Beers' monopolisting power caused civil wars in the producing countries, as the company was continually buying diamonds as they were mined and all the money cashed for the rocks was used to finance arms for rebels. The company's involvement in armed conflicts happened as it was trying to control the supply of diamonds, thus buying them from any group that was selling them, including here RU, UNITA or any other rebel group that was fighting with the Democratic Republic of Congo (Smith, 2003)
The new entity was the only one to have diamond mining operations in the country. One year later, Rhodes signed an agreement with the London-based diamong syndicate in which the former agreed to buy a fixed amount of diamonds per year at an agreed price, thus, keeping under control both the output of diamonds and their price (Wikipedia, Accessed March 09)
Wal-Mart, however, is driven by competitive threat. That sense of being under threat is part of the corporate culture (Schendler, 2005)
There is no question that Wal-Mart is a dominant competitor in the retail field. According to 2007 estimates, they held a market share over 30% in household products and over 20% in groceries (Boyle & Arora, 2007)
[in 2000] AOL Time Warner's $350 billion merged corporation [was] more than 1,000 times larger [than the biggest deal of 1983]." The monopoly on today's media is controlled by these enormous conglomerates that have secured monopoly control of the majority of our media landscape (McChesney and Nichols, 2002)
With the consolidation of the media empires, these three are no longer independent companies. Six mega-corporations (AOL Time Warner, Disney-ABC, GE-NBC, Viacom-CBS-Westinghouse, Bertelsman, and Murdoch's News Corp-Fox) control the majority of media outlets in television, cable, radio, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet (Kidd, 2001)
This monopolization has government oversight as well so that there at least is a process if the companies wish to raise prices. The market, too, expands through exploration and research and development, benefiting consumers (Foldvary, 1999)
For instance, several large companies have dominated the automobile and steel industries for decades. (Dewey, 1990) Even in the name of protecting consumer welfare, many governments have created public-service monopolies by laws excluding competition from an industry
And leading provider of business networks and services until on January 1, 1984, it was relieved of its operating telephone companies by Federal court order. (Freyer, 1992) Part II Recently, according to the AT& T
The monopolistic right to dominate the industry was granted by the government, giving exclusive control over a specified commercial activity to a single party. (Robinson, 1969) In contrast to the singular dominance of monopolies, oligopolies are industries controlled by a few companies or entities
.is a great enemy to good management Adam Smith, 1776, "The Wealth of Nations," Book I, Chapter XI, Part I, Adam Smith was born in 1723 in Kirkcaldy, Scotland (Falkner, 1997) and dedicated his life to the philosophical studies
Currents of Adam Smith ran through David Ricardo and Karl Marx in the nineteenth century and through Keynes and Friedman in the twentieth." (Henderson, 1999-2002) In 1776, Smith published his works in economics, the most comprehensive study published by that time, entitled an Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, or short, the Wealth of Nations
Monopoly There are numerous definitions of monopoly throughout the economics theory, formulated in different ways but generally conducting the reader to the same conclusion: monopoly is power - the power of one company to produce as much as they like, generally the offer is lower than the demand, and then price these items to their personal benefit. "Monopoly power refers to the degree of practical control that firms have over their prices" (Karier, 1993)
Patents, part of the legal restrictions, are yet another important cause generating monopoly and refer to the patent given to an inventor to be the sole producer and seller of his invented product, such as Pfizer is the sole manufacturer of Viagra. The natural barriers to entry refer to two situations, where the costs of entering the market are too high, or, the second, where only the large companies are advantaged by the cost structure on the market (Moffatt, 2008)
The monopolists, by keeping the market constantly understocked, by never fully supplying the effectual demand, sell their commodities much above the natural price, and raise their emoluments, whether they consist in wages or profit, greatly above their natural rate. The price of monopoly is upon every occasion the highest which can be got" (Smith, 1776)
Leibenstein). Included in X- inefficiency are wasteful expenditures such as maintenance of excess capacity, luxurious executive benefits, political lobbying seeking protection and favourable regulations, and litigation" (Khemani and Shapiro, 1993)
Thus the good would not be much to the standards, as it would be in the perfect competition. This is known as X-inefficiency (Brownless, C, 1989, P218), if compared to a perfectly competitive industry, considering the same cost and demand curve conditions; even then the monopolist will charge a higher price for less output