Title: Organisational Structure of Sony

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 Organisational structure of Sony

Executive Summary
Sony is an organisation that has the most available customers all over the world. The
company has different types of audiovisual products in the market. Now it is a question of
how well Sony is in its management over the world. There are strategies mentioned in the
whole discussion. The most important part is how good it is at its customer service and after-
sale service.
However, Sony faces some critical issues in managing their organisational structure. Due to
change of the business environment and market condition, they have to change their
structure. Therefore, they need to follow some specific theory by which they can make an
effective organisational structure. The main purpose of this study is to determine and
application of a specific management theory to determine an effective organisational
structure.

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 Organisational structure of Sony

Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................4

Describe the specific management theory/concept....................................................................5

Provide background information on the organisation................................................................7

Outline how/why Sony applies the specific management concept/theory at their organisation 8

Conclusion................................................................................................................................11

References................................................................................................................................12

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 Organisational structure of Sony

Introduction

SONY is an organisation which creates a new era of electronics, gaming and other
entertainment services. It is the organisation that has a separate impression in the market. It is
a brand that generates trust in the people. People believe in Sony. SONY has approximately
114400 happy employees on the current date. SONY mainly works with audiovisual
activities. It is the key point of Sony. And besides that, it has a financial department.
Limitations are the different sections of SONY. There are some limitations but that all over
don't create any type of issues in the organisation at all. The reviews of the employees say
how good the management section is.

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 Organisational structure of Sony

Background of Sony

Every organisation has a very interesting history of its evolution in the industry. The name
SONY was not the actual name at first. It was founded by Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita in
Tokyo. The month of May was in the year of 1946. Then it changed to the name of SONY in
1958. It is the name comes from the Latin word Sonus. Now Sonus means sound. That is how
Sony has been named. The first transistor radio was developed in 1955 by Sony. Well, there
is one more great innovation that is Trinitron colour TV (Sony, and Naik, 2019). It was
also developed by SONY in the year of 1968. Then it continues to manufacture walkman,
DVD player and so on. Now it has one of the best sound systems in the world. Well in the
year 1999 the walkman was sold in the amount of 100 million in the US only. The deputy
president of sony technology and the network is Yoshihide Nakamura. He has made a sale of
approximately $8 billion in annual sales and all makes recruits 35000 people from all over
the world. After that, he was promoted to so many posts and also transferred to many
departments of Sony. After all of that, he was nominated as the president of the company.

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 Organisational structure of Sony

Describe the specific management theory/concept

Under this strategic analysis category, there are some business strategies that an organisation
should follow (Ruben 2018, pp. 95-118). They are six main business strategies present
overall. Those strategies are also known as the six sigma of management. They are:
Subsystem
The subsystem is a part of the main system. The main system is made with a certain number
of subsystems. It is always recommended to divide the workload into separate categories that
the work can be done easily and with perfection. Now the same concept is applied for the
management as well. For a big organisation it is very tough to maintain the management
single-handedly. So there's the necessity of small groups of management. The teams take the
responsibility of the ground level management. And the higher authority manages the teams.
So it is a tree-building process (Rojas-Suarez, Gómez-Colmenares and Vergel-Ortega, 2019,
P. 012006).
Synergy
It is the section where the findings become more aggressive to work for any organisation. It
means when two separate departments are doing work independently with their sub-teams
then it will be less efficient. But in the case of, they are genuinely connected to each other so
this will generate more efficiency that the whole system can generate independently
(Westgard And Westgard, 2017, pp. 85-96).
Open and Closed systems
It is one of the key points that any organisation should follow. An open system is known to
be a system where the inputs come from the outside or better to say the environment. There
are other organisations that can get into the problems and also help to get a solution to the
problems. So it is an altogether interactive way of management. Where everything is open to
all. Now the closed system is a different thing. It is basically a closed one where no
interaction can take place neither have no source, not no help. So it is the worst part of the
management. It happens due to the lack of communication.
System Boundary:
This is another important point to keep in mind that when a management system is building
up there should be good communication and realization between the employees and the head
of the departments as well as with the environment. In that case, there is the open

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 Organisational structure of Sony

organisation who are very much flexible can easily extend their boundaries and the others are
just none flexible that is the reason they are getting more boundaries than before.
Flow:
It is the section which describes the movement of the system. Means how the supplies are
coming, what are the flows of money now and so on. It creates a good give on the company if
all of them goes well. So it helps to manage the stress and also keeping the employees and the
environment of the organisation stable.
Feedback:
It is the last point but yes it is the crucial point. Everything is applicable for a result. Now
feedback is a result of every activity. So the feedback says how well the management is now
or if it requires any modification or not (Jay, 2018).

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 Organisational structure of Sony

Outline how/why Sony applies the specific management concept/theory at

their organisation

Sony is a large sector and the organisational structure is also complex. However, following a
specific theory will help this company to maintain their organisational structure. The
corporate structure of Sony is utilised to recognise the functions and relative positions of the
organisational members. They mainly follow the System theory to adjust and maintain their
changes in their organisational structure (Hachiya, 2016). This structure is mainly changed to
cope up with the competitive rivalry. According to the current market conditions, the
structural change should be acquired. After implementation of the System theory, Sony
mainly follows the components of this theory. 

Figure: Organisational structure of Sony

Source: (Munir et al. 2018, pp.186-223)
Sub-system: Sony is a large global company. They have several products and to maintain
this large company, they need to maintain some sub-system. Sony mainly divides some
functional group or business functions and creates some departments by which they can
execute a process or strategy effectively. These subsystems are made for helping and
supporting functional effectiveness and efficiency. Sony has mainly the following
subsystems:

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 Organisational structure of Sony

1. Finance department
2. Manufacturing department
3. Research and development department
4. Logistic and procurement department
5. Human resource department
6. Sales and marketing department
7. Engineering department
8. Legal, corporate communication, Security and privacy, CSR, Compliance and external
relation department. 
Synergy: According to the System Theory, the higher management of Sony always focuses
on the relationship between all the departments (Chang and Rosenzweig 2016, p.299). As an
example, it can be said that if the production department focuses on the quality or cost, then it
will help the marketing and sales department to focus on the offering their products.
Therefore, a relationship should be maintained. By maintaining the synergy, Sony can
interlink every department successfully and execute their processes effectively. 
Open and closed system: Closed system is not effective so much. Therefore, Sony mainly
tries to maintain their openness according to the changes in their market environment. Sony
has to deal with the Government as well as the competitors (Hartmann, 2019). They receive
labour, Technological expertise, raw material as input and sell their services and products as
output. Therefore, being a global company, they mainly follow the open system in their
broader context. 
System Boundary
Sony is a large company and they have several branches in many countries all over the world.
Therefore, they should be flexible in providing their services and in this case, their boundary
is overlapping as they follow the open system. They always try to interact with their
environment as much as possible because it provides them more flexibility. Flexibility is the
main advantage for Sony's organisational structure (Glowik, 2016). The linkage among their
several business divisions and function-based groups help Sony to recognise the market
demands. Their business divisions help this company to give more focus on the research and
development department. Therefore, their effective organisational structure helps in product
development and innovation. 
Flow
Sony mainly focuses on the supply chain management and implementation of latest
technologies to sustain their flow of the process. They invest a huge money and people in the
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 Organisational structure of Sony

research and development and production department by which they can maintain the flow of
every department.
Feedback
According to System Theory, feedback mechanism is very important to maintain the whole
organisational structure. Therefore, Sony also follows a feedback system which is managed
by the senior managers of every department. They continuously utilise score card and give
feedback to measure all the KPIs (Birkinshaw, 2016). Therefore, Sony can maintain an
effective organisational structure as well.
According to this theory, Sony mainly follows the matrix structure. This structure is the
combination of both divisional and functional structure. As Sony is a multi-national and large
company, this structure will help them to meet their organisational goals. Sony mainly
divides their whole organisation in some functional groups. Sony mainly deals with several
projects at the same time. Therefore, the higher management divided their employees further
some team or group of every department (Grubenmann 2017, pp.458-476). This structure
facilitates the employees of the Sony to take more responsibility in their job. This structure
allows Sony to boost their productivity as well as helps in bringing creativity and innovation.
The managers of this company can take part in decision-making process co-operatively. As,
the business framework of Sony is complex, therefore, they mainly follow this organisational
structure to execute all the business functions more superiorly.

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Conclusion

Sony is a company which comes with the new era of technology. It is the organisation that
shows the audiovisual world can be much better than your thought. The management theory
of Sony is so good marinated that the employee's good reviews are much greater than
expected. It also maintains the customer relationship and after-sale service. So if one looks
around the overall aspect then he can easily observe that Sony is an altogether different
organisation that runs with it uniqueness.

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References

Birkinshaw, J., 2016. Multinational corporate evolution and subsidiary development.

Springer. https://books.google.com/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=Zze_DAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR12&dq=sony+organisational+structure&ots=SC6mh7g
rKt&sig=gDBJ5h4ta6m7iVzpufwrCz2mfBI
Chang, S.J. and Rosenzweig, P.M., 2016. Subsidiaries: Sony in. Multinational Corporate
Evolution and Subsidiary Development, p.299. https://books.google.com/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=Zze_DAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA299&dq=organisational+structure+of+sony&ots=SC6
mh7gqGy&sig=YB05h-vuPOR7cUbN7FWa4tO2tyE
Glowik, M., 2016. Market Entry Strategies: Internationalization Theories, Concepts and
Cases of Asian High-Technology Firms: Haier, Hon Hai Precision, Lenovo, LG Electronics,
Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TCL, Xiaomi. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co
KG. https://books.google.com/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=K0W7CwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=sony+organisational+structure&ots=ItmYblbL8
J&sig=Gaqgdj8o2pB7YXWRIncSLiJuzeQ
Grubenmann, S., 2017. Matrix organisation: The design of cross-beat teamwork in

newsrooms. Journalism Practice, 11(4), pp.458-476.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17512786.2016.1140588

Hachiya, M., 2016. Historical Review of Sony's Innovations and future steps (Doctoral
dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).
http://search.proquest.com/openview/bbdc582988502acd9c1cdf33d620dd87/1?pq-
origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y
Hartmann, R.K., 2019. Foundations and Futures of Innovation Management Theory.
Available at SSRN 3169147. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3388566
Jay, K., 2018. Refinement in Healthcare: Need for an Innovative Quality Management
System. Res Trends Lab Med Pathol: RTLMP-102. DOI, 10.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bd7b/fc90c3c321898a4399838d5041cadf7d2fc3.pdf

Munir, H., Linåker, J., Wnuk, K., Runeson, P. and Regnell, B., 2018. Open innovation using
open source tools: A case study at Sony Mobile. Empirical Software Engineering, 23(1),
pp.186-223. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-017-9511-7
Rojas-Suarez, J.P., Gómez-Colmenares, C. and Vergel-Ortega, M., 2019, November. Lean six sigmas in
academic processes. In Journal of Physics: Conference Series (Vol. 1414, No. 1, p. 012006). IOP Publishing.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/1414/1/012006/meta

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Ruben, B.D., 2018. General system theory. In Interdisciplinary approaches to human

communication (pp. 95-118). Routledge.
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351310000/chapters/10.4324/9781351310000-6
Sony, M. and Naik, S., 2019. Six Sigma with CK theory for innovations in operational
excellence: a case study. Benchmarking: An International Journal.
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/BIJ-08-2018-0241/full/html
Westgard, J.O. and Westgard, S.A., 2017. Six sigma quality management system and design
of risk-based statistical quality control. Clinics in laboratory medicine, 37(1), pp.85-96.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d00e/a09f755a650df0bb1cb8a6c156e8df5ac6b4.pdf

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