BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS

LITERATURE REVIEW TOPIC:- SONY ERICSSON FAILED VENTURE INTRODUCTION:Joint ventures hold a strategic position when it comes to foreign market entry or expansion of the business. There are various factors, which if underestimated can be detrimental to the cause. Some of these factors include cultural differences, knowledge transfer and the process of organizational learning. Besides, there are various other issues like ownership patterns and control procedures that accompany this process. The influence of culture is felt even more when a cross-border alliance takes place. Berger (2007) state that in an international joint venture two distinct organizational cultures come together and take a shape of a new culture. FINDINGS:This joint venture was firstly initiated by Ericsson Company the Swedish giant in telecommunication industry to combine with the electronics expert, Japan-based multinational conglomerate Sony Corporation thus yielded to establish the entity of Sony-Ericsson (SE), the mobile telephone company in 2001. National Culture in Ericsson Ericsson is a Sweden based company and it has roots that are grounded with the Swedish way of living and congruent with the Swedish culture. Being a Swedish company, the culture within the organization is under direct influence from the Swedish national culture. Corporate Culture in Ericsson Corporate culture at Ericsson has long been acknowledged as a very important factor for driving behavior, not only for compliance with rules but also in communication, decision making, reaching of objectives and striving for efficiency. The core values namely professionalism, respect and perseverance

lay the foundation for the entire culture. The development of Ericssons culture is the responsibility of the executive management. Each and every employee at Ericsson is guided by its internal policies and directives which tells him how to meet the legal and ethical requirements pertaining to the task. In order to maintain high standards several control mechanism and procedures are also used. National Culture in Sony As mentioned earlier, Sony is a Japanese company with its operations all around the world. The company started its operations in 1946, taking this into account we can easily assume that Sony has a strong connection with its national values and incorporates a culture that is derived from these values. Corporate Culture in Sony The culture of Sony is based on the vision of its founder who emphasized upon open mindedness, innovativeness and spirit of freedom. Business ethics, code of conduct and following rules and regulations are the basic fundamentals of Sonys corporate culture. Sony employs a corporate governance system called company with committees which comes under the Japanese company law, and according to it the Directors of the Sony Corporation have no authority to conduct the business and only CEO of the company is responsible for the execution of the business activities. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS:Sony Ericsons partners came from various nationalities as well as distinct cultural backgrounds, Sony is from Japan which is High cultural context based on the classification of the U.S. anthropologist Edward T. Hall, whereas Ericsson belongs to Sweden which is a Low cultural context country. The headquarter of Sony and Ericsson was placed in UK, so according to the national culture of the host country UK (which is in between Low and High cultural context) affected greatly the management of Sony Ericsson. Sony Ericson was process & employee oriented, also had a professional orientation. It followed an open system approach with loose control & followed both normative as well as pragmatic way of dealing with the employees.

This organisational culture was a bit against Sony's organisational culture which created a rift among these two JV's. Japanese adopt groupism concept/ Various cultural backgrounds collective needs & goals of all employees. Swedes remain within individuals &competitive nature, frank , direct, informal and punctual. Sony Ericsson' s joint venture was not as much successful because they were not working for the attainment of goals which were designed after the joint venture, both were worried for their individual goals like Sony was worried because they wanted market share in mobile phone manufacturing industry and Ericsson was worried because they wanted their industry reputation back. So that's why they were facing problems. CONCLUSION:The impact of partners cultural differences on their behavior, the relationships between them became sensitive over the time and the level of trust amongst them didnt develop. Many frequent conflicts were observed betw een SE managers based on cultural differences that made difficult for each side to accept others standpoints which were reflected negatively on the outcomes of the partnership. In the case of SE, The lack of partners commitment led to process based trust amongst both organizations. In addition to the incompatibility between the rigid hierarchal organization structure of Sony and the moderate organizational structure of Ericsson led to delay making the necessary decisions compared with the dynamic markets, price and the high-speed technological progress. Those factors were exploited by other rivals to capture the customers. REFERENCES:1. Department of civil and environmental engineering, division of construction management, Chalmers university of technology Goteborg, Sweden, 2013 2. School of sustainable development of society and technology, corporate culture in an international joint venture a case study of sony ericsson 3. http://www.grin.com 4. http://blogs.wsj.com 5. http://www.ukessays.com/essays/business/history-of-sony-ericsson.php