Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center has developed many technological breakthroughs such as the mouse, the graphical user interface, and the Macintosh computer. However, Xerox has faced several issues that has caused their capital to drop drastically. Despite their technology, several workers left the company, like Steve Jobs, to build multi billion dollar corporations using the foundations first developed at Xerox. In the 1980s, they lost their market in photocopiers to Canon. Many sales reps left the company to join other companies, which affected Xerox's relationships with customers. Xerox Corporation's stock price had dropped - being the same in late 2003 as it was in 1961. In 1999, Rick Thoman was assigned the role of CEO of Xerox Corporation. It was him who established "Creative Accounting" which made Xerox's Mexican subsidiary look excellent. It was a $119 million write off from a subsidiary with only $400 million in revenues. This discrepancy resulted in the Securities and Exchange Commission launching a lawsuit for overstating earnings by $3 billion in 3 years time. On top of this, Thoman wanted to restructure Xerox's global sales in order to compete with Japanese firms. All of these issues resulted in Xerox's stocks falling and almost declaring bankruptcy. In May 2001, Thoman was fired.
It was not the technological innovation that caused the company to soar down, but it was the organizational politics that happened at the top of the organization. This merely shows how important it is for a company to work on recruiting good quality employees so that they can succeed in their market.
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