Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2018

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Introduction For the past few years, the name, Elon Musk, has been flying around headlines daily. Most of them being updates, critics and achievements of his companies SpaceX and Tesla. Today, SpaceX rockets are striking, as their performance have been promising. SpaceX not only contributes to the market, but leads it with inspiration. Thus, the goal of the following essay is to investigate the question “To what extent does the leadership of Elon Musk impact the corporate culture in SpaceX?”. This research question will be focused on the context of Business and Management theories specifically on human resources. The success of their company is highlighted from the cost- effective and technologically advanced rockets, which are unique from their competitors. Therefore, the central focus is directed towards the management and corporate culture SpaceX’s engineering team. The leadership of Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, also plays a heavy role towards SpaceX’s success. Elon has co-founded multiple billion-dollar companies such as Tesla, PayPal and SpaceX. This extremity shows that his success is not just luck from the “DotCom” boom nor the rise of Bitcoin which made a few multimillionaires recently but propitious. Both Tesla and SpaceX pioneer the market with their innovative products 1 . Research also indicated that many spaceflight companies has been unsuccessful such as Beal Aerospace and Space Transport Corporation 2 Thus, the impact of Musk’s leadership on SpaceX’s success and corporate culture will be assessed.

1 Patrick Caughill, "Spacex Is Leading The Rise Of An Entirely New Industry", Futurism, Last modified 2017, https://futurism.com/spacex-monopoly-competition/. Web. 13 June 2 Andrew Beal, "Beal Aerospace Regrets To Announce That It Is Ceasing All Business Operations Effective October 23, 2000.", Spaceprojects\, Last modified 2000, http://www.spaceprojects.com/Beal/. Web. 6 June.