PHILIPS NV

Philips NV

Philips NV

Royal Philips Electronics Netherlands (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) is a diversified health and well-being company, focused on improving people's lives through timely innovations. As a world leader in the field of health, lifestyle and lighting, Philips integrates technologies and design into people-oriented solutions based on the basic ideas of the customer and the brand promise of "sense and simplicity". Headquartered in the Netherlands, Philips employs more than 116,000 employees in more than 60 countries worldwide. With sales of 23 billion euros in 2009, the company is a leader in cardiology, emergency care and medical equipment, energy efficient lighting solutions and new lighting applications, as well as lifestyle products for personal well-being and pleasure with strong leadership positions in flat TV, male shaving and maintenance, portable entertainment and oral healthcare.

Philips was founded in 1892, initially focusing on the production of incandescent lamps. The company became the third largest light bulb producer in 1900. In contrast to the diversification strategies of competitors, Philips first concentrated on only one product (Muntendam et al 1986). This has significant new features and allowed the company to become a leader in industrial research. While expanding in the world, Philips has evolved from highly centralized to a decentralized organization of autonomous companies operating in different countries. Along with territorial expansion, Philips later expanded its product range significantly. Sooner, Philips stressed the importance of a competitive dual leadership of the commercial and technical functions. His post-war structure was built on the strengths of national organizations (NO), which can respond to country-specific market conditions (de-Schmidt and others 1990). Philips did this by adapting products and organization of consumer preferences and economic conditions. While the official corporate-level structure of geographical / product matrix, the real power is gradually shifting towards nose, mainly focusing on their local markets.

However, overtime, the structural deficit began to show his inability to create innovative products in order to maintain its financial performance and global competitiveness, the disadvantages of a matrix organization became apparent (Teulings et al 1984). With the acceleration of changes in the market, Philips recognized the need for restructuring to cope with common economic markets, economies of scale and increasing global demand. The first attempts were made to balance the administrative relations between the product and regional managers. Although several international production centers (IPC) were eventually established, NOS remains a powerful and independent.

Dual leadership was later replaced with one control, in order to be more specific about goals and communicate more effectively (Muntendam et al 1986). The planning process Products also reviewed in order to take into account the views of national organizations and international departments of the product had the opportunity to make a final decision on important issues in the long term. Sales continued to decline due to lack of coordinated planning, resulting in losing Philips leadership in the industry. Its various businesses were classified as non-core, 14 global offices were consolidated into four, and the board was reorganized. Continued efforts to globalization of product development and efforts to ...