Samsung is one of the largest multinational conglomerate companies in the world, and it has been around for nearly 80 years. Undeniably, for gadget enthusiasts, the company’s smartphone business has been a hot topic for the past several years, but Samsung’s numerous branches are – and have been – involved in various market niches. A few decades ago, Samsung’s “Techwin” branch used to provide the Korean military with helicopters, and even self-propelled howitzers. Needless to say, given the company’s age and various businesses it has been involved in, Samsung’s internal corporate culture is somewhat rigid, and a strong top-down hierarchy dominates to this date. But interestingly enough, today Samsung Electronics announced a new plan to adopt a different corporate culture, one that would be more similar to a startup.
Although the Galaxy S7 series might be a very successful one, last year there have been several reports to suggest that the company is starting to lose ground in the smartphone market, and one of the reasons behind this apparent downfall was the fact that the company’s practices are, as mentioned above, rather rigid and somewhat outdated. Fortunately, it looks like Samsung is ready to restructure its corporate culture in order to increase its efficiency. According to the new statement, the South Korean tech now aims “to reform our internal culture, execute as quickly as a startup company and push towards open communication and continuously innovate”. The company will try to achieve this by moving away from the current military-style hierarchy, and adopt a different, more contemporary working environment which will promote open dialogue. It will cut down on the levels of its staff hierarchy; reduce the number of internal meetings while adopting streamlined reporting procedures, and hold online discussion among employees and its various divisions more frequently. Furthermore, the company will reduce unnecessary overtime, and support employees who may want to embark on new learning opportunities or spend more time with their loved ones.
It all sounds rather promising, but Samsung is a large conglomerate with over 300,000 employees around the world, and some analysts claim that Samsung might find it difficult to adopt a startup-like business model, and could, in fact, lose more influence in the process. Either way, Samsung seems to be determined to make changes in its corporate culture and hopefully it will be for the best.