Leadership is undergoing a long overdue shift. Many organizations or institutions do have a persistent leadership gap. This means that the teams are being over managed or undermanaged something that is attributed to the poor style of leadership. For an institution to progress, it is important for them to update their leadership styles. Institutions should be willing to change and learn from various leadership styles. It is important to learn from good leaders and bad ones. Samsung Company is known to have dominated the world with the production of quality electronic and mobile devices. The company has been able to enjoy its success and be able to remain competitive over the years due to the leadership style it has adopted (Horwitz, 2017).
The most important aspect in the success of the Samsung is attributed to its New Management initiative that was proposed by Lee in 1993. Samsung is believed not to have been competitive during this time something that worried Lee. In the emerging trends of globalization, Korea’s democratization were the two major driving forces that enabled the Lee to adopt new leadership styles. Lee viewed the emerging trends in technology as an opportunity to enable them to get ahead of their Japanese electronics giants such as Sony. Most of the Japanese technological companies had enjoyed a massive market share in analog technology. They did not want to adopt new technologies (Shaughnessy, 2013).
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Samsung’s leadership is ambitious. This is the trend that was established since 1993 when Lee wanted the company to be leading global company of the 21 st century. He achieved this through a couple of corporate transformation. This trend has continued to date where Samsung continues to hire the best managers in the globe (Targett, 2018).
Samsung has a hybrid management system which incorporates the U.S, Korean and Japanese management styles. The management system was arrived at by choosing the strengths of each management styles used in these three countries. The Korean and Japanese management in some way were almost similar. The company's learning capabilities have been able to enable it to excel over the years (Targett, 2018).
The Japanese style of management is market-oriented. This style of leadership is unrelated to diversification and vertical integration. There is a huge focus on manufacturing competitiveness and demands a high sense of loyalty and discipline. Employees are governed by strict laws and policies and have seniority-based promotions and rewards (Terence, 2017).
The American management style emphasize on profits and revenue. The management styles enable Samsung to focus on the relevant industry and constantly restructure businesses and products. Most American companies prefer to conduct their manufacturing activities in other counties. The system emphasizes on soft capabilities, technological innovation, and design capabilities.
When the Japanese and the American business are compared, American businesses tend to be more centralized since they do focus on talent and differentiated competencies and less on the loyalty of the employees. They rely on external labor and do not cultivate internal labor. This then results in short-term employment, promotions, employee specialization, and thorough assessments.
Samsung has a vertical and horizontal diversification. It majorly focuses on competition and quality of the product and services. The company is also concerned of the employee training programs that enable its employees to deliver in the working environment effectively and the recruitment process, strict organizational discipline and emphasize on organization loyalty which has a strong resemblance to Japanese style management.
Samsung’s leadership style does resemble American-style management in many ways. The strategies that have been set by the company and personnel policies have are similar to the ones for the American-style management. The company performs frequent restructuring and places a huge emphasis on technological skills, designing and branding. They constantly recruit people based on their talent and provide compensation packages based on performance. Samsung also looks for risk-taking CEO as a means to come up with various ideas. These are all characteristics of American management style.
Samsung adopted strengths of the both Japanese and the American styles of leadership through rigorous benchmarking. With the lengthy research process and experimentation, the company has been able to tailor both management styles into their system making the company to have a unique management style (Terence, 2017).
The co-existence of both management style in Samsung comes from the fact that the company runs a highly risk involving business. A wrong move could result in disastrous results. It is also difficult to maintain operations in different areas of the globe without a robust management style. The company’s IT business is known for its ability to adjust to new and changing technologies. In a means to survive in highly competitive environments, the company uses American leadership styles which advocate for taking the risk, creative organizational culture, and performance (Zhong, 2017).
Samsung has been striving to reduce costs they usually encounter in their manufacturing facilities located in various places around the world. These efforts are powered by the adoption of the Japanese management style which has been in operation for a longer period. As a result, the company strategic planning has adopted the American system for its planning and Japanese system for its operations ( Telegraph.co.uk, 2015).
The knowledge-based economy of the 21 st century has led to the embracement of the intangible assets such as the branding, designing, and technology. Based on this change, the company has reduced its reliance on the Japanese model which had adopted in the past. The company has stopped emphasizing on standardized talent and seniority-based compensation. The company has instead increased its use of the American practice which does focus on core talent, performance-based compensation, and promotion (Spence, 2014).
Instead of the completely abandoning existing practices such as the open recruitment, seniority-based compensation, promotion, and long-term employment, the company has maintained the framework to some extent while slowly adopting the American customs of core talent and performance-based compensation into the previous structure (Selko, 2014).
The highly competitive environments have forced plenty of organizations to be innovative both in their products and the services. It has also forced institutions to develop strategies that provide good environments for the good services and products to be produced. Samsung's success is attributed to the effective leadership style it has adopted a means to improve the quality of its products and the services it offers to its customers. Samsung American leadership style has enabled the company to identify employees that are hardworking and reward their efforts adequately. It has been able to provide an innovative environment for its employees. The company realizes that innovation lies majorly on its important asset-the people. Employees are constantly trained to enable them to acquire the right skill to deliver on their work (Zhong, 2017) effectively.
References
Horwitz, J. (2017). Samsung makes a clean sweep of its leadership. Quartz
Selko, A. (2014). What is the Samsung Way? The industry week.
Shaughnessy, H. (2013). 8 leadership lessons from apple and Samsung. Forbes.
Spence, R. (2014). The Samsung way shows how to make changes stick-your way. Financial Post.
Targett, Ed. (2018). Samsung electronics in Management shakeup. Computer Business Review
Telegraph.co.uk, (2015). The Telegraph – Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph .
Terence M, (2017) "Why leadership styles matter", Strategic Direction, Vol. 33 Issue: 1, pp.1-4, https://doi.org/10.1108/SD-10-2016-0141
Zhong, R. (2017). Samsung unveils new management to quell leadership crisis. The New York Times
