【Topic】What happened in Samsung? ---An Asian management perspective

【Speaker】Sung Joo Park, KAIST Business School

【Time】2008-6-5, Thursday, 19:00-21:00

【Venue】Room 401, Shunde Building, Tsinghua SEM

【Language】English/simultaneous interpretation provided

【Speaker’s CV】

Sung Joo Park is professor at the KAIST Business School in Seoul, Korea. He was the former dean and Vice President of KAIST and served as the founding President of AAPBS. He also served as a member of board of AACSB. He received Ph.D. at the Michigan State University in 1978 and worked for the KAIST since 1980. He was an advisor or consulting professor for Samsung Group for 10 years including the companies like Samsung Corning, Samsung SDS, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (R&D Think-Tank) among others. He was a member of Korean Presidential Advisory Council on Science & Technology and currently is a life-time member of the Korean Academy of Science & Technology.

On April 18 in 2008, the Chairman Lee Kun-hee of Samsung Group, the largest conglomerate or Chaebol in Korea, was charged with tax evasion and breach of trust, and consequently a couple of days later, he announced to step down from the Chairmanship.

In this lecture, a detailed description and analysis of the scandal will be presented. To understand the roots of the scandal, various aspects of Samsung will be discussed including the history of Samsung, success of Samsung Electronics, success story under Lee K.H.’s leadership, management culture, leadership characteristics, decisive actions taken, etc.

Special emphasis of the lecture will be on the conflicts between the Asian and Western management which led the dilemma that many Asian companies are experiencing or facing. Samsung scandal is one example of these conflicts and Sony case of current difficulty may be the severer example.

Successful Asian management models for globalization will be illustrated and proposed based on the Asian way of thinking which is an imperative for Asian economies to be global and advanced in the 21st Century.