Lee Kun-Hee

Lee Kun-Hee, chairman of Samsung, carries on as South Korea's wealthiest individual for the ninth consecutive year with a net worth estimated at $12.6 billion in 2012, as reported by the Korean language edition of Forbes. Established by his father, Lee Byung-Chull, in 1938, the Samsung Group is the leading business organization in South Korea. What precisely started as a modest noodle enterprise has since then evolved into a network of 83 companies that make up for around twenty percent of the countrys exports and a considerable portion of its GDP (King of Samsung). Most renown for its flagship Samsung Electronics (SEC), Samsung is a prototypical model of a chaebol, a family-run conglomerate in South Korea that combines Confucian principles with family ties and government influence while additionally maintaining family control through a intricate network of cross-shareholdings. This standard chaebol structure, similar to a Japanese zaibatsu, has enabled Samsung to emerge among the worlds most thriving companies, while Lee Kun-hee's management has undoubtedly contributed to these accomplishments, for Samsung continues to be one Asias best known brands. Lee Kun-Hee acquired command of the chaebol upon his fathers death in 1987, with this patrilineal succession being of usual practice. Upon succeeding his father as only the second chairman in the company's history, he noticed that Samsung was already reputable in many of Koreas domestic markets, yet its international post, being a cut-rate supplier, was appearing to be unsustainable in regard to increased rivalry from electronics makers in Japan. On that basis, Lee acknowledged that in order to contend in foreign markets, Samsung would need to shift past the routinized system that made them

successful in the first place and involve themselves with practices contrary to the status quo, instructing his employees to change everything but your wife and kids (King of Samsung). Following his announcement, Lee set into motion a project to bring in Western best practices pertaining to method design, faculty handling, and compensation into Samsungs long-standing way of doing business so that a more international attitude to conducting operations could take shape. On top of that, foreign personnel were brought in and native workers were sent out as Lee sought to increase receptivity to ideas from elsewhere and determine which practices to advocate. Beginning as a series of experiments, Samsung gradually began to build its hybrid management system, initially in SEC and eventually through the Samsung Group In an industry in which one will notice both skepticism and necessity of speed, a management system that allows for accountability and prompt policymaking ensured Samsung could make a number of imperative assessments that has situated it so well today. While Lee Byung-Chull directed Samsungs growth through diversification into many different market sectors, it was Lee Kun-Hee, determined as the business beneficiary in 1987, who elevated the companies success by cultivating and inspiring unceasing improvement and liberated rational, which will increase his personal wealth even more as times goes. Lee's efforts to globalize the company, developing greater regional networks and know-how, resulted in Samsung reinventing itself from a Korean budget name into a serious international force and quite possibly the most well respected Asian brand today.

The Art of Trend Setting

Todays younger generation are flourishing in an arena of globalization and inequality, engaging in an evolving world course, which happens to be at the time, drawing consumers tighter with one another while increasing the separation between them. The possessions of the two hundred wealthiest individuals across the globe are exceeding beyond the total income of over two billion of the poorest, and the disparity between the two communities proceeds to expand. In addition, it seems as if our lives our based on our self-manufactured sense of necessity. No matter how bizarre or unnecessary a product might seem to some, there will always be somebody who can find way to justify its purchase. Necessity now days are based on what can provide ease. A main reason why most look to fast food restaurants in place of a home cooked meals is not because theyre pallet urges them to do so, but rather because its fast and cheap. Its no surprise that the fast food business remains one of the leading industries in the world today in spite of numerous attempts to caution people to avoid eating such foods regularly. But is the growth in fast food restaurants around the world such a bad thing? McDonalds, for instance, has opened countless locations in each and every hemisphere of the world and looking aside from the actual food being served, what is happening is the worlds younger generation having a lot to do with the promotion of this fast food chain, which acting as medium between countries around the world, is globalizing various cultures while also promoting a greater sense of ones own culture. To many disoriented, lonely, children, the Golden Arches symbolize more than just food: McDonalds stands for home, familiarity, and friendship (Golden Arches East, 22).

During a day and age when there is a growing dividing between social groups of all sort, whether it be by age, financial positioning, or religion for example, McDonalds has successfully managed to symbolize a way of supplying a social emphasis but additionally accommodated a canvas upon which they will often set up their own unique personal style landscape. To put it differently, the younger generation make use of modern world lifestyle as well as consumption as an easy method /strategy of narrating their own individual life experiences. The paradoxical characteristics of cultural globalization is intriguing considering it surprisingly universalizes while even individualizes ways of life. The extent to which globalization constantly helps bring about the ingestion of various cultures is someone Watson would surely agree upon, mentioning the most significant contribution made by transnational institutions like McDonalds is that people can use them as bridges to other cultures. In the present case, it is American culture that makes the Beijing McDonalds ultimately attractive to Chinese consumers (75). Having conducted a study on Asian consumer insight, Professor Schmitt makes light of the fact that Asia is undergoing a massive transformation. And Asian consumers are going to have new hopes and dreams and while their values are changing there are growing tensions between tradition and modernity; saving versus spending, fitting in versus standing out from the crowd. McDonalds experience in Beijing in a classic case of the localization of transnational systems The key to McDonalds worldwide success is that people everywhere know what to expect when they pass through the Golden Arches (23), echoing this notion that the fast food chain, wherever the location, is predictable and as mentioned above, this presents a blank canvas for one to develop their own personal experience.

Works Cited Anchordoguy, Marie. Reprogramming Japan: The High Tech Crisis under Communitarian Capitalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2005. Print. Byford, Sam. "King of Samsung: A Chairman's Reign of Cunning and Corruption." The Verge. The Verg, 30 Nov. 2012. Web. "Forbes: Samsung Chief Lee Kun-hee Is South Korea's Richest Man-."Forbes: Samsung Chief Lee Kun-hee Is South Korea's Richest Man- N.p., 25 Apr. 2013. Web. Kyanna, Tarun, Jaeyong Song, and Kyungmook Lee. "The Paradox of Samsung's Rise." The Paradox of Samsung S Rise. N.p., May 2009. Web. Schaede, Ulrike. Choose and Focus: Japanese Business Strategies for the 21st Century. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2008. Print. Watson, James L. Golden Arches East: McDonald's in East Asia. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1997. Print.