Lecture Notes about the Corporate Social Responsibility & Analysis

Question: Discuss about the Corporate Social Responsibility and Analysis. Answer: Introduction This assignment is about analyzing a business in global context. In order to conduct this assignment, the company Samsung has been selected. The company has strong global presence. It is considered as one of the largest electronic companies in the world. In this assignment, SWOT analysis has been conducted for the company Samsung and its impact on business operation has been analyzed. A brief history of the company Samsung has been provided. Ethics and corporate social responsibility of the company has also been analyzed in this assignment. Finally some recommendations have been provided for the company Samsung in the reflective summary section, so that the company can improve its business performance globally. Analysis of the companys history and growth Samsung electronics is a South Korean multinational electronic company. The company has numerous amounts of subsidiaries and affiliated businesses like Samsung Telecommunication and Samsung Madison. The company was founded in the year of 1969 (Kim et al. 2015). The company is considered as the major manufacturer of electronic equipment such as semiconductor chips, lithium ion batteries, hard drive, and flash memory. In term of revenue, the company Samsung electronics was considered as the largest information technology company in the world. Due to the popularity of android phones like Galaxy series, the company is considered as the largest manufacturer of mobile phones and smart phones (Samsung 2016). In the year of 2014, total revenue of the company is US$ 305 billion (Samsung 2016). Presently total employees of the company are more than 370,000 in 80 countries (Samsung 2016). Hence, it can be mentioned that the company has long term history of success. Kanonov and Wool (2016) state d that since the starting year, the company has significant impact on the economic, social, political, culture and media development of South Korea. The company holds one fifth of the total export of the country. It has been found that total revenue of the company is equal to 17% of the total GDP of the country Korea. The history of the company can be divided in four time periods. They were such as early period (1969- 1987), consumer struggles (1988- 1995), component manufacturing (1995- 2008) and consumer product manufacturing (2008- present time) (Samsung 2016). In the year of 1969, the company was established in Suwon, South Korea. At that time, the major products of the company are such as calculators, televisions, air conditioners and washing machines (Samsung 2016). In the year of 1981, the company had produced 10 million black and white televisions (Samsung 2016). In the year of 1988 the company became the third producer of 64KB DRAM. The company had launched its first mobile phone in the year of 1988. During 1990s, the initial sale of the product was poor, as Motorola held 60% market share of mobile phones in South Korea at that time (Samsung 2016). Until the middle of 1990s, the company struggled for poor quality of products. After 1995, the company owner had decided to change business st rategy and started to manufacture electronic components for other companies. This vertical integration strategy had become successful for the company. In the year of 2005, the company had surpassed its Japanese rival SONY for the first time and became the most popular consumer brand (Samsung 2016). In the year of 2007, the company had overtaken Motorola and became the second largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world (Samsung 2016). Presently the company has set to achieve the revenue of $ 400 billion within the next 10 years. Implementation of fifth generation (5G) high-speed internet in mobiles is the companys next target. In the year of 2013, the company announced that they have successfully tested 5G technology (Samsung 2016). SWOT analysis of the Company Samsung electronics The company Samsung electronics is the subsidiary of the company Samsung conglomerate of South Korea. Samsung Electronics is recognized as the largest manufacturer of Smartphone and mobile phones. Bhushan (2016) stated that Samsung is also the largest manufacturer of LCD panels and televisions. Due to its marketing and manufacturing expertise, the company is considered as the second largest consumer electronics organization in the world (Only after its American rival Apple). Strengths The company Samsung is the most successful manufacture of electronic products. It is also the largest manufacturer of liquid crystal display (LCD) panels, mobile phones, Smartphone and television sets (Samsung 2016). Hence, it can be mentioned that the company has strong brand image in the market. It can be considered as one of the strong points of the company. The company is worlds number one marketer of smart phones with 21.4% market share in the second half of 2015 (Samsung 2016). The American rival Apple holds the second spot with 13.9% market share (Choi and Park 2016). The company has invested huge amount of money to improve the companys research and design capabilities (Go 2015). It helps the company to develop Samsung Pay. It is a payment app equivalent to Apple Pay. The company has the capability to replicate majority of the capabilities of the company Apple and Googles Android operating system for mobile devices. The company has strong marketing and manufacturing capabilities. The company has strong relationship with the majority of the retailers of Europe and United States. Glowik (2016) stated that, it helps to provide steady channels to all the products of the company. Weaknesses The company is not able to cope up with the marketing capabilities of smartphones of Apple. It has been found that between 2014 and 2015, the market share of Samsung in US Smartphone market fell by 2.3% (Samsung 2016). On the contrary, market share of Apple in US is approximately 34.9%. In recent years, some Chinese competitors are catching up to the company Samsung in the Smartphone market. It has fund that between 2014 and 2015, market share of the company Huawei is increased 48% and Xiaomis market share increased by 29% (Samsung 2016). It has been found that the company Samsung is highly dependent on consumer electronics sales in the market with the limited capability of growth. Saeed et al. (2016) stated that, the company depends highly on United States and Europe to gather majority of the revenue. The company uses Google Android open source operating system. According to Chen and Ann 2016), many customer seem to consider Android as inferior product compare to Apples iOS. It is less accepted in the tech community. Most of the tech savvy customers consider that Apples products are more dependable and advance compare to the products of Samsung. Kim et al. (2015) argued that marketing efforts of Samsung is not as sophisticated as Apple. Opportunities The company has the opportunity to grab the emerging market for smartphones, mobile and tablets in the region of India and Africa (Kim et al. 2016). Due to the increased requirement of Smartphone and tablet based solution apps like Samsung Pay are highly on demand (Chen et al. 2015). The company can make more research on new technologies like wearable tech. The growing middle class in the developed world will help to increase the market of consumer electronics. Threats The company Samsung is not able to match the reputation and reliability of Apple in the market place of US. Rana (2015) stated that reputation for Apple is increasing in the emerging market of India and Africa in terms of reliability, quality and sophistication. Declining income level of middle class people of United States and North America has reduced the buying power of customers for the company Samsung (Chen et al. 2015). Chinese competitors such as Xiaomi and Huawei can emerge as serious competitors for the company Samsung. Impact of SWOT factors on the company business After conducting SWOT analysis, it has been found that the company Samsung is one of the most successful electronic products manufacturers. The company produces diverse products such as smartphones, televisions, mobile phones, liquid crystal display (LCD) panels. The company has changed its business strategy many times in order to become the industry leader (Samsung 2016). Presently the company has largest market share of phone with 21.4%. Huge amount of investment of the company for improving research and designing capability has helped the company to become successful. Chen et al. (2016) stated that, the company Samsung has taken a right decision at right time to use Googles android operating system for its Smartphone. The research and development team of the company is able to replicate most of the capabilities of company Apple and Goggle (Urandelger and Bae 2016). In addition, strong relationship with retailers of Europe and America has provided the company the opportunity to rea ch middle class customers of various countries. Samsung has maintained impressive research, manufacturing capabilities and design. However, it has been analyzed that the company on the verge of losing its edge in marketing. It has been found that most of the customers still consider Android as inferior system compare to iOS of Apple. The company Samsung is still not able to match the capability of Samsung in terms of innovation and reliability in countries like United States. For this reason, the organization has to revamp its design efforts and marketing strategy for Smartphone to enhance its market share in countries like US (Caplan et al. 2016). The company has to pay more attention on developing new market capabilities such as Samsung Pay. According to Magnusson et al. (2015), these new capabilities will critically influence the business performance of Samsung, if the organization wants to maintain its position in the mobile manufacturing market as an industry leader. In addition, the company also has to learn to handle aggressive marketing strategy of Chinese competitors such as Xiaomi and Huawai and the reputation of the biggest competitor Apple. The company also needs to focus on the emerging Smartphone and tablet market of countries like India and Africa for future business growth. Ethics and Corporate social responsibility Samsung electronics is global company having more than 320,000 employee and operations in more than 80 countries globally (Samsung 2016). The company is fully committed to comply with the local rules and regulations of different countries. Samsung has adopted strict global code of conducts for all employees. The company believes ethical management is the tool to respond with changing marketing condition and business environment. Pedersen (2015) stated that, ethical management also helps to develop trust and enhance relationship of an organization business partners, shareholders, customers and local employees. The morals and values of the organization have been developed in accordance to stakeholders theory. In accordance to the traditional view of the company, only the shareholders and owners are important (Chandler 2016). However, stakeholders theory helps the company Samsung to understand that employees, customers, communities are also important. For this reason, the company Samsun g has developed a framework of corporate social responsibility based on the stakeholders theory. In the context of Corporate Social Responsibility, the company had expressed its view as worlds leading company in the year of 2005 (Samsung 2016). This year, the company had announced its Five Samsung Business Principles (Samsung 2016). They served as the base of companys global code of conduct that helps them to comply with all the legal and ethical standards. It also helped the company to fulfill all its corporate social responsibilities. It also helps the company to develop the detailed guideline standards for the employees of the company and all the members associated with the company. It includes various clauses such as prohibition of gender discrimination, elimination of the nationality, partner collaboration and protection of customer information (Chandler 2016). All the employees of the company have to follow this code of conduct in their relationship partners and peers. The company has introduced some ethical management programs within the organization. They are such as audit system, cyber auditors, education program for anti-corruption and developing auditing committee (Magnusson et al. 2015). It is an independent committee that works under the board of directors to monitor and support the management team so that corporate values can be improved. The company has developed an individual audit team in order support and monitor ethical practices for the company and all its employees. All the experts included in this auditing team have 10 years of experience in different fields. The team uses different systems and networks to develop efficient auditing. Pedersen (2015) stated that in order to develop integrity in the corporate culture of both overseas and domestic businesses of Samsung Electronics, the company has launched Cyber Audit program. This program helps to define corruption and set guideline for all the employees. In addition, the company also conducts anti-corruption education program for employees to support ethical work practices. The company produces different educational videos in 22 different languages to help all the local employees in global plants of the organization. It includes rationale of developing the code conducts and five major principles, related documents of infringement cases. It also includes the process of cyber audit program and how to report about violations (Pedersen 2015). Despite of all these efforts, the company still has to face various ethical issues related with work safety, DRAM price fixing, Apple lawsuit and Product safety. In the semiconductor plants of Samsung, there are at least 26 employees diagnosed with blood cancer (Magnusson et al. 2015). In addition, there are also 193 employees became sick with rare terminal diseases. In the year of 2011, the company was fined approximately 145,700million, as the company is part of price cartel of 10 originations. It lasted from 1998 to 2002 (Samsung 2016). The company Apple had sued against Samsung for the infringing intellectual property rights of Apple, in the year of 2011 (Magnusson et al. 2015). The verdict was largely favored for Apple. It had been found that Samsung had willfully replicated the design and utility patents of the company Apple. The company Apple was awarded $1.050 billion for the damages. The company Samsung also has to face issues related with product safety. Despite of huge pop ularity of the mobile products, many cases of explosion had been reported. Reflective summary In this assignment, the business of the company Samsung has been analyzed in the global context. With the help of SWOT analysis the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats of the company has been analyzed. The company was founded in the year of 1969. Presently the company is considered as the largest electronic manufacturing company all over the world. The company has long term history of success. The history of the company can be divided in four time periods. They were such as early period, consumer struggles, component manufacturing and consumer product manufacturing. It was not like that the company did not have to go through failure. However, the company had changed its business strategy many times in order to become successful. The company has invested huge amount of money to improve its research and development capabilities. The company is able to replicate most of the products and features of its rival Apple and Google. The company has taken a right decision at right ti me to use Goggles Android operating system for Smartphone. Due to the popularity of Galaxy series the company has become the most popular mobile manufacturing brand. The company has also maintained its business ethics and corporate social responsibility based on stakeholders theory. The company has also developed an independent committee for audit that works directly under the super vision of the direction. However, the company still has to face various issues related with work safety, DRAM price fixing, Apple lawsuit and Product safety. The company is also not able to cope up with the innovation and reliability of Apple. Most of the customers still consider android as inferior operating system compare to iOS. Hence, there are some recommendations have been provided to the company so that it can maintain its market position as industry leader. They are mentioned below: Samsung has to grab the emerging market for Smartphone, mobile and tablets in the region of India and Africa. Due to the increased requirement of Smartphone and tablet based solution apps like Samsung Pay are highly on demand. The company has to shift its business strategy and develop this types of apps as more as possible The company has to make more research on new technologies like wearable tech. Reference list Bhushan, A., 2016. A comparative analysis of consumer behavior of nokia and samsung mobile users.Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce,21(S5). Caplan, D., Dutta, S.K. and Lawson, R.A., 2016. Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives Across the Value Chain.Journal of Corporate Accounting Finance,27(4), pp.57-66. Chandler, D., 2016.Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Sustainable Value Creation. SAGE Publications. Chen, C.M. and Ann, B.Y., 2016. 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