Is Sony Turning Around?

Instead of adopting more commonly used standards that appeal to consumers' taste, Sony's traditional focus on its own technologies has trapped the company in the state of "Galapagos-ization" (garapagosu-ka) that segregates the company from global competition. Since the mid 1990s, the company has been struggling with unstable profit and sales in its core electronics business while it aggressively expands into the entertainment content sector. A number of restructuring strategies had been implemented, but the effect was not sustained due to various internal conflicts within the company. In mid 2005, a non-Japanese, Sir Howard Stringer, was appointed as the first Western CEO and chairman of Sony. Stringer pushed forward a series of operational restructurings and placed a greater focus on software and content development than on Sony's traditional business, hardware technology. Even though Stringer's change efforts had brought a blink of hope for Sony's comeback, the situation turned sour in early 2009 when the company announced its first operating loss in 14 years. While different voices about the problems of Sony arose and the leadership of Stringer was questioned, another round of restructuring attempts was pushed forward by Stringer. How could Stringer overcome the deep-rooted internal resistance that his predecessor had failed to overcome? What had gone wrong with the iconic electronics giant? Were all those restructuring and change efforts necessary and useful to Sony's turnaround?

• Organizational restructuring
• Turnarounds
• Organizational behavior
• Change management
• Leadership