日本索尼企业文化研究.doc

The culture differences between Sony and BO The focus of our comparative analysis lies on two multinational corporations competing within the business of audio-video equipment. The two corporations are the Japanese company, Sony, and the Danish company, BangOlufsen (BO). These two corporations were chosen primarily because the two were in the same business which sets the basis for our comparison. Secondly, we feel that the Japanese and the Danish culture appear to be very dissimilar. Finally, we chose the two because of the accessibiliy of useful information regarding them. As Sony and BO are in the same business, one can discuss to some degree, that these two companies are competing for same customer groups; Sony is high volume orientated, whereas BO is using a strategy of focus. BO is differentiating itself by offering distinctive products with focus on design that appeal to high-scale customers. Although the two companies are not targeting on the same market, their business environment is similar in the aspect that they both produce high quality audio-video equipment targeted to the global market. Because of the distinct difference in national backgrounds of the two and despite somewhat different marketing strategies, we believe it will be interesting to compare the two. Power distance The first dimension in a natural culture, called Power Distance, indicates to what extent the society accepts that an organizations is controlling the power, and the organization is distributing this power in its particular way. This belief is reflected in the minds of both powerful as well as less powerful members of the society. The dimension can be considered as the degree of inequality among people in a country that is accepted by the people of that specific country. This ranges from relatively equal to extremely unequal. We have chosen the following examples as extreme examples of how the mindset of the society of a country could be. This is as said the extremes, therefore, al