What are the most important decisions Howard Stringer made once he becomes the new CEO of Sony and why?

One reason was that Sony's culture no longer worked In Its favor. The top managers of its most successful divisions worked to protect their own divisions' Interesis-not Sony's--and they had been slow to recognize the major changes taking place in the technolog and global environment. As Sony's performance fell, competition between managers increased, slowing strategia decision making, making it harder for the company to take advantage of its extensive pipeline of new product innovations, and increasing operating costs because each division fought to obtain the funding necessary to develop and promote new products. By 2005 Sony was in big trouble; and at this crucial point in their company's history, Sony's Japanese top managers turned to a garn, or non-Japanese, executive to lead their company. Their choice was Sir Howard Stringer a Weishman, the previous head of Sony's North American operations who had been instrumental in cutting costs and increasing the profits of Sony's US division. Once he became CEO in 2005, Stringer isced the immediate problem of reducing Sony's operating costs, which were double those of its competitore even ss it was losing its technological leadership. Stringer had to make many radical strategic decisions. Japan is a country where arga companies traditionally had a polcy of lifetime employment, but Stringer made it clear that yaffs were inevitable, Within five years he cut Sony's Japanese workforce by over 25,000 employees and closed 12 factories to reduce costs. Stringer also recognized how the extensive power struggles among the top managers of Sony's different product divisions were hurting the company, and he made it clear that these problems had to stop. Many top divisional managers, including the manager of Sony's successful PlayStation division, ignored Stringer; they were replaced, and he worked steadily to downsize Sony's bloated corporate headquarters staff and to change its culture. In Stringer's own words, the culture or "business af Sony has been management, not making products." In 2009 Stringer announced he would take charge of the Japanese company's struggling core slectronice group and would add the title of president to his existing roles es chairman and CEO as he reorganized Sony's divisions. Heak replaced four more top executives with young managers who had held positions outside Japan and were "familiar with the digital world." In the future, according to Stringer, managers must prioritize new products and invest in only those with the greatest chance of success so Sony could reduce its out-of-control R&D costs. Stringer worked hard to bring the realities of global competition to the foretant at Sony-along with Led to deal with them quickly, Beyond his intema problems, he also pushed for major changes in how Sony picked its suppliers. Stringer's goal was to reduce the number of Sony's parts suppliers from 500 ta 1200 to cut A MANAGER'S CHALLENGE A Turnaround at Sony is in the Works iPod, smartphones, and the Wii garne console that better met customer needs than Sony's old-fashioned and expensive products. Finally, all these companies were working to reduce manufacturing costs, and Sony lagged behind because its bloated cost structure had made its products expensive and uncompetitive. Why did Sony lose its competitive advantage in both style and price? Why is managing the global environment so complex today? Sony, the Japanese electronics maker, was renowned in the 1990s for using its engineering prowess to develop blockbuster new products such as the Walkman, Trinitron TV, and PlayStation. Its engineers churned out an average of four new product ideas every day- something attributed to its culture, called the "Sony Way," which emphasized communication, cooperation, and harmony between its product engineering teams across the company. Sony's engineers were given the freedom to ! pursue their own ideas, and its different product teams pursued their own innovations; but problems arose with this approach in the 2000s. Companies in Korea and Taiwan such as LG and Samsung made major innovations in technologies such as the development of advanced LCD screen displays and flash memory that made Sony's technologies obsolete. SORY make. F4 F8