Introduction Sony is a world-renowned electronic manufacturer originated in Japan, having led the electronic industry for a long time in its 67 year history. However, with technological ad-vancement and emerging companies’ development, the position of Sony in the market was greatly threatened. Sony has faced unprecedented challenges since the late 1990s. This deteriorating situation forced Sony to an organizational reconstruction. The ineffi-ciency of the first reconstruction led to another one and the replacement of its CEO. Overall, Sony witnessed radical changes regarding its organizational structure, internal relationships, organizational culture and leadership over the last decades. Structure of Sony Sony’s Structure seemed to be divisionalised, according to Mintzberg’s contingency framework. After the restructuring in 1999, Sony unified its ten divisional companies into three network companies: Electronics Business, Entertainment Business and Insurance and Finance Business aiming at exploiting the opportunities offered by the Internet. The new model aimed that resources within the Group would complement each other. The key part of a divisionalised structure is the middle line connecting the operating core to the strategic apex. The main design parameters are market grouping, performance con-trol and decentralisation. Sony restructured the company based on three prime markets: electronics, entertainment and Finance & Insurance. Sony’s headquarters gave autonomy and authority to the decentralised divisions, along with the required support functions and R&D labs in order to facilitate their operations. Moreover, Sony also created Digital Network Solutions that would eventually provide customers with digital content and fi-na... ... middle of paper ... .... Mintzberg, H. (1983) Structure in fives: designing effective organizations. Prentice-Hall. Mullins, L. (2010) Management & Organisational Behaviour. Ninth Edition. Prentice Hall Financial Times. Sony. Annual Report 2005. Available online at: http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/ar/2005/qfhh7c000005z5so-att/SonyAR05-E.pdf Sony. Annual Report 2006. Available online at: http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/ar/2006/qfhh7c00000akslc-att/qfhh7c00000aksmr.pdf Thompson, J. and Tuden, A. (1959) “Strategies, Structures, and Processes of Organiza-tional Decision” in Comparative Studies in Administration, ed. J. D. Thompson et al. (1959) Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Yang, J. (2005) Bloomberg Business Week. What Should Sony Spin off? Available online at: http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-04-12/what-should-sony-spin-off [Ac-cessed at 20th, Jan]
After watching Charlie Rose’s interview with Jim Collins; where Collins explains his recent book How the Mighty Fall, presented me with an opportunity to reflect over recent companies that were staples in my childhood and early adult memories and now are non-existent. In this paper, I will look, analyze and relate Blockbuster Video and their history to Jim Collins’ five stages of an organization.
3M Corporation's each division is treated as a profit center with no interdivisional business between the six divisions. The business unit strategy is to "hold" as the company wants to maintain and increase profitability and market share. In terms of corporate strategy, 3M functions as an unrelated diversified corporation with the prime goal to innovate consistently, thereby offering a...
N.V. Philips (Netherlands) and Matsushita Electric (Japan) are among the largest consumer electronics companies in the world. Their success was based on two contrasting strategies – diversification of worldwide portfolio and local responsiveness for Philips, and high centralization and mass production for Matsushita.
Clearly Polycom’s success does not just stem from quality products and services, but also from the employees who are in the trenches every day; creating new products, increasing productivity, maintaining and increasing customer satisfaction, excellent customer service, etc. Foresight, innovation, and strategic planning are a daily routine to keep the company a successful competitor in the market. It is without a doubt that Polycom needs qualified leadership. High caliber leadership/management is vital to successfully run a global enterprise of this statute. Constant re-organization and product structure changes are necessary to adapt to current and future consumer demands. I interviewed one of the leading managers at Polycom to find out what it takes to keep the machine rolling and what the typical duties of a manager entail.
1. How did Philips become the most successful company in its business during an era when scores of electrical engineering companies were being formed? What impediments and disabilities did Philips' strategic and organizational capabilities bring with them?
Eastman Kodak went through a considerable transformation change since it was founded. The organization structure at Eastman Kodak was a typical classical hierarchy with the CEO overlooking the entire organization. Later in 1984, the company went through a transformation change in which it was reorganized into 29 separate business units grouped into four lines of business. It included Photography (PPG), Commercial and Imaging Group (CIG), Chemicals (EC), and Health (HG) and three international segments. Each group operated under its own general manager.
A decision was made to grow Tektronix approach and expand and develop an IT approach. This would become their new CFO Neun’s vision “Frankfurt is Orlands”. What we see from the case study is that is was initiated by Roy Barker CPID president. They would envision an ability to use their existing systems to help support their division. They wanted to use the approach of separability of each business, leveraging and sharing services and staying simple and not complicate normal operations.
Samsung Electronics Company (SEC) began doing business in 1969 as a low-cost manufacturer of black and white televisions. In 1970, “Samsung acquired a semiconductor business” which would be a milestone that initiated the future for SEC. Entering the semiconductor industry would also be the beginning of the turnaround phase for SEC. In 1980, SEC showed the market its ability to mass produce. SEC became a major supplier of commodity products (televisions, microwave ovens and VCRs) in massive quantities to well known original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). For this reason, Samsung was able to easily transition into a major player in the electronic products and home appliances market (Quelch & Harrington, 2008).
Organizational structure is one of the three key organizational assets that could contribute to the effectiveness of operations of any organization (Zheng, Yan and Mclean 2009) It is joined together by different flows of information, decision processes, hierarchy of authority, specialization and working materials. (Enz 2009; Mintzberg 1980) Furthermore, it also determines the operating workflow, control of information, decision-making in the organization and the line authority (Mintzberg 1980). The facets of the organizational structure, the relationships that exist within it, and how the business processes (Bititci et al 2011) are controlled, determine the managerial style that should be utilized in addition to the strategies the organization could implement. Going further, a company’s organizational design and the parts that constitute it are seen as a contributing factor to superior performance, which ultimately provide an organization with competitive advantage over its competitors. (Enz 2009; Zheng, Yang, and Mclean 2009)
Business structure is a critical factor to determine a company 's success or failure. Generally, larger organization has a more complex organizational structure. In the case of H&M, they had adopted matrix structure, one of the traditional organizational structure, into their business. As shown in figure 1, range of functional groups is listed horizontally across the table and on the other is product/task with a manager taking control of each. The functional structure is divided
The U-form structure used to allow firms to exploit the economies of scale in production marketing and distribution. When firms began to diversify in the 20th century the U-form became cumbersome and M-form emerged as a better alternative. The M-form lead to the duplication of activities, when firms expanded globally, incorporating international divisions into their structure. As firms attempt to balance local responsiveness with global economies, a mix of matrix form and network form help create flexible organizations.
Rudi Gassner became CEO of BMG International in 1987. At that time the company operated in 17 countries with headquarters in New York. Gassner described the organization as "a patchwork of companies around the world. It had no mission, no goals, and in total, it didn't make any money..." (p 369) Due to the lack of structure, Gassner was able to build his idea of what a global company should look like, and he wasted no time in getting started. The structure he created for BMG was a centralized corporate structure and decentralized local management structure emphasizing a flat hierarchal form. He established this in creating five regional divisions led by regional directors (RD's) who were responsible for the strategic development of the region in conjunction with the whole company, in addition to managing the managing directors (MD's). This structure tackled two crucial business issues: globalization and domestic repertoire. After he created the regional structure, Gassner established an executive committee consisting of the regional directors and four members that were corporate staff. At the end of the case, the executive committee was having trouble reaching a consensus about some major issues.
There are three well-established theories of classical management: Taylor?s Theory of Scientific Management, Fayol?s Administrative Theory, Weber?s Theory of Bureaucracy. Although these schools, or theories, developed historical sequence, later ideas have not replaced earlier ones. Instead, each new school has tended to complement or coexist with previous ones.
Atlas Eléctricas vision is to be the leading company in the markets where it operates with competitive products worldwide. This does not match with the current organisational design which has a domestic functional organisation structure. Atlas Eléctrica will have to redesign its organisational structure into a more international oriented structure in order to correspond to the strategy, otherwise it will not be able to realise the strategy. This may be a difficult task for Atlas Eléctrica since its corporate heritage is based on the country similarity theory and since it has acted according to what is familiar right from the beginning.
Organizations must operate within structures that allow them to perform at their best within their given environments. According to theorists T. Burns and G.M Stalker (1961), organizations require structures that will allow them to adapt and react to changes in the environment (Mechanistic vs Organic Structures, 2009). Toyota Company’s corporate structure is spelt out as one where the management team and employees conduct operations and make decisions through a system of checks and balances.