Abstract
The years since the coming of the Information Superhighway have been challenging ones at the Post Office. In spite of a record of performance improvement that has made the United States Postal Service into “one of the great turnaround stories of the 90s,”1 the future holds ominous prospects. Core services that have sustained the United States Postal Service, one of the world’s largest organizations, are being challenged by new technology. Electronic bill paying and bill presentment, Internet marketing and other emerging communications technologies are substituting for paper mail. While this substitution may be at the margin in the near term, these new business threats raise strategic questions to which the Postal Service must respond.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
The coming of the Information Superhighway as a topic of national discussion could reasonably be attributed to two speeches that were given by A1 Gore then vice president of United States, in December of 1993 and January of 1994. In a practical sense, the introduction of mosaic software and the creation of the World Wide Web in 1994–1995 may be the point at which the vision became a reality. The notion that the Postal Service represents one of the turnaround stories of the 90s as been a continuing topic of media discussion. The specific reference was noted by Postmaster General William J. Henderson in the fall of 1998 at a conference run by Amtrak for its executive leadership.
These themes — dinosaur of the information age and the potential role of the USPS as an information company — have been consistent messages from the media and from Postmasters General Marvin Runyon (1992–1998) and William Henderson (1998--) In a speech to the National Postal Forum in August 1998, PMG Henderson outlined his vision for the creation of a technology platform which would serve as a central feature to the future of the USPS.
This paper does not focus on the foreign posts and the question of whether they are in fact the private entities that they have been purported to be. There are substantial questions about the role that their host governments have played in supporting these private-appearing institutions. There are also open questions about the ultimate character of the public service responsibilities that these private entities will retain. But the focus of this paper is on the misinterpretation of the character of the USPS rather than its competitors.
“Germans Strengthen Position in U.S.A,” Post-express, The Bulletin for the World’s Postal Business, Volume 3, Issue 10, 19th May 1999.
Quotations about Yellow Stone are from Post-express article cited above.
The citations are from the UPS “information” package for lawmakers. The citation of Chairman Kelly’s remarks is from a guest article in the Journal of Commerce by Chairman James P. Kelly, “Postal Service Stacks Deck” April 5, 1999.
The notion that this is a time of significant market change is a phrase that is heard so often that the significance of the transition is easily overlooked. One classic work that first noted the coming transition was Paradigm Shift: The New Promise of Information Technology, McGraw Hill, 1993. Another readable discussion of the transition can be found in Bill Gates’ The Road Ahead, 1995, Viking Books a division of Penguin Books.
This concept of the value model is important, especially in the digital age. In recent years there has been new attention given to the changing character of business models. Microsoft for example fundamentally changed the business model of the computer industry by turning the focus to operating systems and away from hardware. The Internet forced a change in Microsoft’s proprietary model in the 90s. And, similar to these examples the new age of networks has ushered in still other game changing business models. Dell Computer, Cisco Systems and Amazon.com are frequently mentioned models. One of the leading writers about the creation of value models has been Adrian J. Slywotzky whose book, Value Migration: How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition, Harvard Business School Press, 1996, Corporate Decisions Inc. The need to incorporate the concept of value in “managing the momentum” is seen in “Strategy at a Crossroads” Report of the Arthur D. Little, Americas Executive Strategy Camp, 1998.
James F. Moore, The Death of Competition, Harper Collins, 1996 is one recent book that has emphasized this new element of modern business.
Recent articles and critics have noted that profits have become a less clear concept in the age of the Internet “com” investments where many companies that have great value have not yet many any profits at all. E.g. remarks of William Taylor, founding partner of Fast Company magazine.
See “Finding Common Ground” the Report of the Postmaster General’s Blue Ribbon Committee Report of 1997 and the subsequent report of the Mailer’s Technical Advisory Council Group on Capital Investment.
The Five-Year Strategic Plan of the USPS (1997) was well reviewed in peer reviews (National Center for Public Administration), by the GAO and Oversight Committee of the House and was especially well received by the National Performance Review where it was once characterized as the best strategic plan in government. But as noted here, the Postal Service should not be too fast to take comfort in the fact that customers and overseers appreciate the focus on traditional service improvement.
May 17, 1999, opening remarks of the Postmaster General.
For a more detailed explication of this private side of the United States mailing industry, see Elcano, German and Pickett “Hiding in Plain Sight: The Quiet Liberalization of the United States Postal System” describing presorting, walk sequencing, drop shipping, barcoding and other elements of the work sharing system. This paper has also been prepared for the Seventh Conference on Postal and Delivery Economics.
A consolidator rate was implemented on January 10, 1999 and the USPS has since created a service known as Parcel Select to serve these new customers.
Postmaster General William J. Henderson outlined this “Internet strategy” at the Postal Forum in his opening remarks on May 17, 1999.
See, for example, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse, Richard R. John, Harvard University Press, 1995.
One of the most complete discussions of this phenomenon is to be found in the Rand Corporation study of Universal Email completed in 1995.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2000 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Reisner, R.A.F. (2000). Strategy and The Posts. In: Crew, M.A., Kleindorfer, P.R. (eds) Current Directions in Postal Reform. Topics in Regulatory Economics and Policy Series, vol 35. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4481-4_22
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4481-4_22
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-7019-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-4615-4481-4
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive