Business Strategy Analysis of the Sony Corporation

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Sony's business strategy, organizational structure, and leadership dynamics. It begins by examining Sony's functional organizational structure and the 'One Sony' culture strategy implemented by Kazuo Hirai. The report then delves into the evolution of Sony's leadership, contrasting Howard Stringer's autocratic approach with Hirai's democratic style, and analyzes the impact of these leadership changes on the company's performance. Furthermore, the report explores Hirai's new strategy, focusing on key areas such as strengthening core businesses, reviving the TV market, entering emerging markets, and fostering innovation. The report also evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of the structural changes implemented to support the 'One Sony' concept, including the creation of specialized business units and the reinforcement of headquarters resources. Finally, it identifies a critical missing component in Sony's strategy: a robust marketing component to ensure product visibility in the market, and concludes with a synthesis of the key elements that contribute to organizational success.

BUSINESS STRATEGY - SONY COMPANY
STUDENT NAME:
INSTITUTION:

Sony Organizational Structure
The structure adopted is functional organizational
structure
 The Hirai’s strategy to create business unit where
some units are under an executive mirrors on the
functional structure.
Prior to Hirai’s leadership, the organization
structure was more of integrated business and the
major business was centering on electronics,
semiconductor and medical services, and on the
consumer electronics such as TV mobile phones,

Culture strategy
Culture is the set norms that prescribe
how a given group of people behave.
As Sony, Hirai’s culture strategy is to
create ‘one Sony and on management.’
The reason for choosing this is to get
every employee irrespective of the level
to cooperate and pull efforts for a better
Sony (Shafritz, Ott and Jang, 2015).

Leadership Strategy
Sony organization has
undergone different leadership
styles.
Howard leadership was
autocratic because he made
decisions and transformation and
without anyone’s involvement
(Shafritz, Ott and Jang, 2015).

Cont’d
During his tenure, and
irrespective of the strong brand
owing to their products such as
Sony Trinitron TV, and Walkman
audio devices,.
Sony was lacking behind in the
competitive market and by 2012,
Sony’s stock had drastically
fallen while those of its

Leadership Cont’d
In the year 2003, the company suffered a ‘Sony shock’ in
which their earning dropped completely down due to
cheap electronics products that were emanating from
Asia.
As a way of leveraging the situation, the organization
retrenched a sizeable number of the employees.
Hirai’s leadership is democratic because he engages the
employees and has provision for discussing a matter and
reaching a conclusion for implementation when everyone
is satisfied (Shafritz, Ott and Jang, 2015).

Leadership Cont’d
In 2005, the leadership change, Howard adopted the
integrated and dealt away with the old vertical
management system.
He believed that the integrated system will integrate the
content of the business.
However, due to the cultural differences, Howard attempt
to resuscitate the company failed and there was no
improvement but the company’s performance continued
to plunge further downm (Bolden, 2016).

New Strategy and New Structure
Hirai a young energetic no engineer became the
CEO and Howard became the chairmen, Hirai
brought in new strategy and new structure.
The strategy focuses was on five key areas;
Strengthening core businesses (games, digital
imaging, laptop, phones);
Reviving the TV back;
enter new emerging markets like India and
Innovation with a focus on integrating products
areas. All these strategies were supported by
creation of a new organizational structure so that
the concept of ‘One Sony’ was supported.

Cont’d
The new structure created twelve businesses
groups that were stand alone.
In addition, these structured changes was
strengthen by reinforcing the headquarter
resources with the creation of several senior
supervision selections.
The aim is to pull the establishments
assortment by developing high-class material
for company devices (Bolden, 2016).

Cont’d
The position of the executive was created to
be in charge of corporate for products the are
relating to the user.
The role was to strengthen horizontal
integration as well as enhancing experiences
across Sony’s entire product network and
service line (Bolden, 2016).

Cont’d
The executive was to oversee the mobile business which
entails the smartphones, tablets etc.
The single corporate level executive was to oversee the digital
imaging and professional solutions whereas the CEO was
charged to oversee the home entertainment business group
including TV.
On top of the structure and changes, the company adopted
one Sony one management. This is a way of getting
everybody in the system get involved beginning from the top
management (Bolden, 2016).

Advantages of the Structural Change
There is specialization of units that allows the group
business to use expertize in that area fully to realize
the potential and creates good quality products.
People in a specialized business unit are able to
share and create new ideas related to the sector.
There is increase speed and efficiency in work
operations since people in a business unit can do
what they now best for best quality (Bolden, 2016).