Howard Stringer

HOWARD STRINGER: TURNING SONY AROUND The case study discusses how Howard Stringer; the first non-Japanese man who have been selected as the Sony Corporation’s chairman and CEO; turning Sony around toward higher profit in just two years after he took over. He had been appointed when Sony’s total revenue were showing negative growth. Stringer shows his capabilities as an efficient leader by demonstrating his advanced turnaround strategies and also his leadership styles and initiatives. Stringer’s strategies include reducing the cost by 1.8 billion by March 2007. While doing so, he cuts 10,000 jobs that are 7% of Sony’s global workforce thus closing down 11 out of 65 production facilities. He also focused on sorting out copyright infringement and antipiracy problems for Sony products. Stringer felt strongly about HD product as the key to Sony’s future success subsequently under his stewardship Sony was the first to make the television the centre of the internet by taking the internet direct to the television screen. Stringer’s initiatives consist of started to examine the performance of other brand competitors and study the downslide in sales over the years. He also tries to reinvent Sony’s brand image to make it more relevant to digital-age consumers. His major goal of restructuring plan for Sony was to make the electronics more profitable by making gadgets and content work together effectively so that consumers would be willing to pay premium price for Sony’s products. Since Stringer’s turnaround strategies and initiatives, Sony’s stock price on Nikkei rose by 30% over the earlier 3 months and the operating margins had also turned the corner up to 2.6% from 1.3% in just mere 2