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The Case of Sony

In: Business and Management

Submitted By trannguyen
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Sony is a famous Japanese multinational corporation, which specialized in manufacturing the electronics (such as televisions, refrigerators, gaming...), entertainment, game, etc. Sony is also one of the leading manufacturers in this industry globally (Wikipedia, n.d.). In 2000s, strong competitors of Sony such as LG, Apple, Samsung continuously launched new technologies such as LCD, GPS, 3D displays, mobile digital music, etc. that made Sony's technologies become obsolete. As a result, Sony was in a big trouble and gradually lost its leading competitive position in the electronic market. In 2005, top managers of Sony decided to choose a non-Japanese to lead their company and help the company overcome difficulties. Finally, Howard Stringer - a Welshman was chosen (Jones, 2013). 1. Environmental constructs
Management culture, not making new product’s culture: There was very little coordination, unity and harmony between different divisions of Sony. Leaders of various divisions as well as hundreds of product teams at Sony did not talk to each other and they were allowed to pursue their own innovations, Sony also empowered to their engineers in order to pursue their own ideas. The intense competition between the leaders of various divisions usually occurred for the purpose of protecting their own power and interests. Leaders tried their best to achieve the funding as much as possible for their teams in order to develop products successfully and achieve functional goals. Besides, Sony's operating costs were double comparing to its competitors because the authority of top-level decision-making of Sony was controlled by its divisions' leaders (Jones, 2013).
Technology is rapidly changing: Expensive and obsolete products of Sony were quickly defeated due to the appearance of more and more smart products with reasonable price in market. The main cause was that Sony

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