Studies in Organizational Culture- Groupon Inc.

Studies in Organizational Culture- Groupon Inc. “Groupon! Get your Groupon! Hot off the presses!” It wasn’t too long ago Groupon Inc. was the darling of Wall Street. Institutional and individual investors alike were anxiously anticipating an opportunity to buy shares of the company dubbed by Fast Company as “the most exciting thing to happen to retail since eBay.” That excitement was mirrored on November 4, 2011, Groupon’s first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, as the price sky-rocketed to a high of $31.14 compared to its initial $20.00 IPO valuation. However, that unbridled enthusiasm has dwindled since as the stock has plummeted to an all-time low of $3.83 as of Friday November 2, 2012 (Yahoo! Finance 2012). Let’s take a look at the history of Groupon Inc. and how has gotten to this point. Andrew Mason didn’t always know that he would become a CEO of a company that in 2010 was referenced by the Wall Street journal to be on pace to “make $1 billion in sales faster than any other business, ever (Weiss 2010).” In fact, up until about age 25, Mason truly believed he was going to be a rock star (Steiner 2010). Unfortunately, as countless others have realized along the way, chasing your dreams doesn’t always pay your bills. Out of necessity, Mason took a job as a computer programmer and eventually recognized that he had a tremendous talent for it. In 2006, he enrolled in public policy classes at the University of Chicago and ultimately fused his passion for public policy with his tremendous computer programming ability to experiment in the world of internet startups. (Saporito 2011). The idea behind Groupon eventually spawned from the agonizing frustration Mason endured while dealing with a common problem that many people have undoubtedly experienced at one time or another- getting out of a contract. In this particular situation, Mason was dealing with the nightmare of canceling his cell phone contract (Froelke Coburn 2010). Not only was this