Verified Document

Change Resistance At Sony Term Paper

¶ … Resistance to Change Within Sony Corporation propose strategies that the current CEO Howard Stringer can Ilise to try to manage this resistance

Morgan identified eight organizational perspectives that can be used as frameworks for organizational resistance. In the case of Sony Corporation, the CEO Howard Stringer faced resistance when he tried to introduce the western way of management. The employees resisted the changes, and this brought about many other issues. Using Morgan's organizational metaphors, Howard Stringer could have managed to overcome this resistance. The machine view suggests that employees will operate as expected, work by following laid out procedures, and operate like clockwork. Using this metaphor, Howard could have initiated top-down commands that employees would have to follow (Muller et al., 2010). This metaphor works by reducing waste, increasing efficiency, and product standardization. At Sony Corporation, this metaphor might not work since most of the work is not repetitive, or simple.

The CEO could have changed the organization to become an organismic organization. Organismic organizations focus on inter-organizational relations, innovation, and have more design choices. Emphasizing on relations between the organization and its environment would have allowed the employee resistance to reduce. Once the employees were able to use their skills and understand their importance they would embrace the new changes. Sony Corporation was struggling to survive in the electronics industry. The introduction of the iPod dealt a big blow to the company's walkman, which meant that the...

Using this metaphor the company can survive and compete with its rivals.
The brain metaphor encourages people to learn, process information, and change. Using this metaphor, it is clear the employees were unwilling to learn new ways of doing things and processing information. The employees did not see the importance of software, and they insisted on hardware. This meant that software was still an afterthought for the developed hardware. Howard should have demonstrated to the employees and the management the importance of software working together with the hardware. Showing them how critical it is to consider the software together with the hardware would have allowed the employees to change their mentality and start processing the new information. This would make them adaptable and change with passing time. Combining different functions in order for them to be performed under the same department would be an effective strategy for overcoming this resistance.

Culture will play a vital role in the organization (Suddaby et al., 2011). The company held on the belief that western leadership was not suitable, and the employees preferred Japanese leaders. The society was critical of western leaders, and they had an uphill task trying to understand and reform the company. In Japan, employees had lifetime tenure at the company, which made it difficult for the CEO to cut costs by laying off people. The different misfortunes that afflicted the company like the battery recall could have been handled much better. The engineers in charge of the battery division did not communicate to the…

Sources used in this document:
References

MULLER, S.D., MATHIASSEN, L. & BALSHOJ, H.H. 2010. Software Process Improvement as organizational change: A metaphorical analysis of the literature. Journal of Systems and Software, 83, 2128-2146.

SUDDABY, R., HARDY, C. & HUY, Q.N. 2011. Introduction to special topic forum: Where are the new theories of organization? Academy of Management Review, 36, 236-246.

SUMI, A. & SCHUETZ, M. 2011. Is Sony Turning Around?, Pokfulam Road, Asia Case Research Centre, University of Hong Kong.
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now