Major focus of personnel change was on trust by Vice-Chairman Lee Jae Yong of Samsung Electronics. While most of CEOs remained in office from personnel change on Samsung Group’s presidents that was carried out on the 1st, Vice-Chairman Lee Jae Yong focused on response against crisis with continuity. Future Strategy Office did not suffer from big change, and there was not promotion to vice-chairman. It is Samsung’s will to overcome crisis based on continuity.
It seems that Head (Vice-Chairman) Choi Ji Sung of Samsung’s Future Strategy Office and Deputy Head (President) Jang Choong Ki of Samsung’s Future Strategy Office will focus on adapting to ‘Lee Jae Yong’s System that is 3 years in because Vice-Chairman Lee Jae Yong led group management smoothly while Samsung Group was in critical situation due to Chairman Lee Kun Hee of Samsung Electronics being suddenly ill and continuous sales to Hanhwa and Lotte and reorganization of structure need to be pushed continuously.
Each team from Future Strategy Office added confidence through promotions. As Team Leader Jung Hyun Ho of Personnel Support Team and Team Leader Sung Yeol Woo were promoted to presidents. Number of presidents out of team leaders from Future Strategy Office increased to 3 including Team Leader Kim Jong Joong of First Strategy Team. It is rare to see promotions from Future Strategy Office considering a fact that no personnel from affiliates excluding Samsung Electronics, Hotel Shilla, and Samsung Bioepis was promoted to president position.
A fact that last personnel system done by Chairman Lee Kun Hee of Samsung Electronics in May before he fell ill is maintained proves that their roles as group’s control tower receive so much trust from management.
Although leaders for Samsung Electronics’ wireless, household appliances and medical equipment sections are changed, rest of business departments such as memory, system LSI, video display (VD), printing solution, network and others maintain their current systems. Even though group reformation will take place as many executives from departments excluding semiconductor left Samsung and only few are promoted, it can be seen that they are receiving trust considering acceptable performance in the midst of slump.
Industries believe responsibilities of roles actually became more definite due to separation between a section director and a department head because while a section director focuses on large discussions, a department head can just work on his or her responsibilities.
Samsung Group is planning to increase speed of decision making on intentions and strengthen cooperative mediation between departments by strengthening management system on responsibilities per department. While Presidents Kwon Oh Hyun, Yoon Bu Geun, and Shin Jong Kyoon set overall directions of IoT, Smart Car and others as section directors, department heads will focus on detailed businesses and make specific results. Samsung Electro-Mechanics co., Ltd., Samsung Display and Samsung SDI also focused on continuity first for reorganization of structure that started for each department and focus on expansion of customers.
A fact that Samsung is showing trust on 4 financial businesses, heavy industry and engineering can be seen as Samsung’s management’s intention for them to put all over their efforts in strengthening competitiveness and overcoming slumps. Although financial businesses are growing due to Samsung Electronics and Samsung Group, many industries point out that their global competitiveness does not meet expectation. Some industries are seeing that financial businesses had to choose business’s continuity because management performance was not bad and they are growing appearance and internal stability by continuously pushing for M&A and partnership.
President Park Dae Young of Samsung Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. and President Park Joong Heum of Samsung Engineering are planning to put all of their efforts next year to overcome slumps because they need to continuously bring about revival plans such as recapitalization and sales of office buildings due to unfavorable factors such as weak heavy industry plant business, loss of $1.3 billion (1.5 trillion KRW) in 3rd quarter for Samsung Engineering and others.
Merge is another task that Samsung needs to do. “Heavy industry and engineering need to grow global competitiveness by establishing sizeable management.” said a high-ranking official from Samsung about possibility of re-pushing for merge that fell through last year.
Staff Reporter Seo, Hyeongseok | hsseo@etnews.com