Application of Fiedler's Contingency Model on Sony Corporation

Contingency Theory
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Sony is a household name that most of the people will recognize across the globe. Established in the year 1946, by Akio Morita, it has its headquarters in Tokyo. Over the years the company has grown from an electronics manufacturing entity to take on the field of financial services, gaming, motion picture production and the music industry. It is for this reason that the company has been recognized as one of the fortune 500 companies coming in at number eighty seven (Sine, Mitsuhashi, & Kirsch, 2006). The company has proven to be one of the most comprehensive as it covers some major dockets in electronics, communication, entertainment, medical and financial industries. With a wide reach as this, the company is subject to internal and external forces. These are forces that shape every decision the management makes irrespective of the scale (Perrow, 1967).
Like most of other businesses, Sony's management has to contend with a number of internal and external influences to the direction that the company is going to take at any given time. Internal factors are generally within the organizations structure of management, from the top to the bottom. This means that elements such as staffs, policies and culture play a crucial role in the determination of Sony's decision (Lewis, Welsh, Dehler, & Green, 2002). On the other hand, research indicates that aspects such as competition from companies like Panasonic and LG among others are among the external influences. Aspects of global economics have also been cited severally, especially with reference to the 2008 recession. Other than that, there have been quite a number of organizational demands from environmental campaigners, national government policies and nongovernmental organizations, for electronic companies to tow the environmental sustainable practices.
Due to the number of external factors that impact on the international markets, business managers are hard pressed to make sure that they conform to the changes and the complexities that develop over time. Business policies, government laws, customer tastes and preferences, competitors and technology are increasingly changing the business environment (Hickson, Hinings, Schenk & Pennings, 1971). Research indicates that the external variables in today's market are increasing gaining in complexity and flexibility over very short periods of time. As a result managers are forced to come up with multiple strategies to cope with the changing environment. Sometimes the strategies do not work in all the countries, given the complexity in culture, technology levels, government policies and the competition levels of the market among a myriad of factors.
One of the models that have been applied by quite a number of managers, in multinational corporations is the Fiedler's Contingency Model. This is a model that advocates to the managers and leaders...