Case Study of Sony: Successful Implementation of Stakeholder Management
Through an established set of public relation protocols, Sony uses a broad set of
communication activities that are employed to create and maintain favorable relationship with
the various stakeholders that include employees, shareholders, suppliers, media, educators,
potential investors, financial institutions, government agencies and officials as well as society in
general. Stakeholders who need any information concerning Sony, they could retrieve them
readily from the company’s website. In this way Sony creates a common platform (touch-point)
where mutual relationship with its stakeholders is facilitated, including serving the wishes and
demands of its customers.
Sony satisfies its customers by offering innovative products without having to compromise
to quality and reliability. This helps to attract new customers as well as retain existing ones. In
order to ensure that all specific needs are met, Sony set up sales and marketing offices in every
place that the company has businesses in. Sony’s CEO, Nobuyuki Idei, also played a key role in
forging a closer between the company and its stakeholders. For instance, he launched a Sony’s
image campaign, “Do you dream in Sony?” and helped coin the term “digital dream kids.” The
premise of the campaign is to provide shareholders, customers, employees and business
partners who come into contact with Sony with the opportunities to create and fulfil their
dreams together. All these efforts probably explain why Sony has always enjoyed strong
support from its stakeholders and thus helped propel it to become a global mega-brand.
Sony’s resounding success with the PlayStation also speaks well of Sony’s ability to meet
(or even exceed) the expectations of its business partners and customers. Owing to the
dominant position of Sega and Ninetendo in the console market, game developers were initially
reluctant to support Sony’s new format. However, Sony was undaunted and pushed forward
with PlayStation and eventually managed to convince the developers of the system’s superior
design and capabilities. By the year 2000, the PlayStation gained tremendous support from
customer world-wide and went on to dominate the market to become the world’s largest
selling game console, with 70% share and 80 million units sold.
Besides that, Sony also strives to build strong relationship with the government agencies
and officials as well as society. Since 1976, Sony has had an Environmental Conference. Sony’s
policies address their effects on global warming, the environment, and resources. Thus far,
Sony has taken steps to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that its companies produced
as well as regulating the products they get from their suppliers in a process that they call “green
procurement”. In this way the company establishes good relationship with the various
government agencies and officials as well as societies and hopefully through these pro-active
initiatives maintain good relationship can be maintained so as further reinforce Sony’s good
image. This probably also explain why Sony is able to establish its businesses in the various part
of the world readily. In early July 2002, Sony ranked 11th on the Greenpeace chart “Guide to
Greener Electronics.” This chart graded major electronics companies on their environmental
work.
Sony’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy responds to the interests of relevant
stakeholders. In Archie Carroll’s model, corporate social responsibility exists because of the
interactions between firms and their stakeholders. A stakeholder is any individual or group that
affects and is affected by the business under consideration. In the case of Sony, the concerns
underlining the CSR strategy focus on sustainability of the business. The company’s
sustainability efforts also lead to the achievement of corporate citizenship. For long-term
success in the consumer electronics, gaming, entertainment and financial services markets,
Sony Corporation must ensure that stakeholders’ interests are properly accounted for in the
business.
This corporate social responsibility (CSR) analysis of Sony Corporation shows the
importance of achieving business sustainability. The company considers sustainability as the
primary goal in its efforts for satisfying stakeholders’ interests and for corporate citizenship.
