Change And Change Management At Sony Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Change And Change Management At Sony - Essay Example Sony, an electronics company as indicated in the case underwent very many changes due to the retrogression in economic strength it was experiencing. Two categories of change occur in the company; people related changes and organization related changes. The first change that occurred at the company was the drop in the value of the company share from a high of $150 to a very low value of $25. The drop in the value of the shares of any company is a clear indication that the real value of the company had gone down. In this case, the drop was a very high of 83%. An urgent action was desperately needed here to rescind the situation given that the drop took just three years. The second change was that one of breaking from the norm (cultural change). In 2005, a non-Japanese took over the leadership of the company. This was a change from the normal norm in which only Japanese top management had been in control. Having been in charge of the American unit, he had the record of integration of al l units and creative coherence for a better progression in the country. This was important in that the record was the change that was required in the country and the world as a whole. More change came in after the executive; Howard Stringer took over the top management of the company (leadership change). With the company facing stiff competition from the other companies in the industry; Samsung and Apple, the first change that inevitably followed was streamlining of the company into five production groups. There was need to specialize in electronics, television, DVD recorders, digital imaging and the portable audio. This was stimulated by the fact that some of the companies competing Sony were moving away from the CRO televisions and adapting flat screen television sets. Apple was embracing the killer iPhone which had so many properties that it was almost full taking over the market. Every change was coming with the resultant consequences which were dubbed change in themselves. Elev en plants were closed and 10,000 employees were laid off. According to Cordrey (2010), such a step is taken to remain with the most effective personnel in operation. When he joined the company, Stringer found out that the decision making process was autonomous across all the units. The autonomy, he found out was creating internal strife and imbalance. This autonomy was inclusive of the key decisions of the company. On this, the change he made was that of centralizing all decision making processes in the company. Over the product lines, the decision was to make it possible for easier decision making processes to take place. His goal was to make SONY products to operate seamlessly with one another in the communication. To save on the cost spend on research and development, the new executive had to eliminate product redundancies which had been adopted by the seamless networking of the company products. The change realized here is in the mode of spending in which there was need to reduc e the expenditure on such unnecessary items like the extended research that was being done (structural change). Sony products had worked miracles over the years and they were still doing fine until the simplicity of the other company products came to the market. This change was brought about as a result of the realization that the customers were not just interested in the complex Sony products but were also interested in the ability to operate the products. The overall outlook of the items at Sony needed to change and this is seen in the simplicity of the Apple products that force the general thought at Sony to change (technological change). The last plan that happened at the company was that leading to the