History of Sharp Corporation 夏普公司历史
Sharp Corporation was established in 1912 as a metal workshop in Tokyo, with a vision to innovate and develop products that other companies would copy. Among the first inventions of this company include the mechanical pencil in 1915 that did not require sharpening, and the first generation of Japanese radio set, which were first available on the market in 1925 (Miyamoto, 2008). This company started manufacturing television sets in 1953, and developed a transistor calculator in 1964, the first and only one in the world at that time. The company also started experimenting the LCD technology in the 1960s and by the end of that decade, it had manufactured its first LCD television. By 1976, Sharp Corporation was the best manufacturer of electronic calculators in the world. Importantly, the rising demand for television sets in the late 1950s onwards encouraged this firm to focus mainly on production of television sets. This is irrespective of the fact that the company also engaged in the production of solar panels, mobile phones and LCD panels among other electronics products and components. One of the critical aspects of Sharp Corporation’s history is its structure as well as internalisation process. In line with this, the company first reorganised itself into three divisions in 1963 namely industrial equipment, home appliances, and radio (Miyamoto, 2008). With regard to venturing into the international markets, the company ventured into the United States market in 1962 through its subsidiary, Sharp Electronics Corporation (SEC), which was first establish in New York City. By the end of 1960s, the company established its first subsidiary on the European market, Sharp Electronics (Europe) GmbH (SEEG) in the former West Germany. This was followed by an establishment of another subsidiary in the United Kingdom in 1969 (Miyamoto, 2008). In addition to this, the company also establish numerous subsidiaries in Japan, its local market, with the aim of creating separating its line of business into small specialised businesses. Furthermore, the company ventured into markets such Brazil in South American and Australia through establishment of subsidiaries in these markets. Importantly, despite its massive expansion into foreign markets, the company’s policy to maintain secretive approach to the market through maintaining high secrets on research and development activities implied that it maintained Japan as its headquarters and as such, its main control of its subsidiaries worldwide. Therefore, while other companies could not copy its technologies easily, Sharp Corporation was unable to take advantage of economies of scale through establishment of its manufacturing plants in countries such as India, China and Malaysia, which provide cheap labour and raw materials (Lehmberg, 2011). As a result, it maintained high costs of production, which undermined its ability to compete with electronics companies such as Samsung from South Korea among others. With this in mind, the company recorded its first losses in over 50 years in 2009. The financial position of the company worsened and in 2016, it was forced to sell of its business to Foxconn, a Chinese electronics manufacturer.
夏普公司成立于1912年，是东京的一家金属车间，其愿景是创新和开发其他公司将效仿的产品。该公司最早的发明包括1915年不需要削尖的机械铅笔，以及1925年上市的代日本收音机（宫本，2008）。该公司于1953年开始生产电视机，并于1964年开发了晶体管计算器，这是当时世界上个也是一个晶体管计算器。该公司还在20世纪60年代开始试验LCD技术，到那十年结束时，它已经制造了台LCD电视。到1976年，夏普公司成为世界上更好的电子计算器制造商。重要的是，20世纪50年代末以后，电视机需求的增长促使这家公司主要专注于电视机的生产。这与该公司还从事太阳能电池板、手机和LCD面板以及其他电子产品和组件的生产无关。夏普公司历史的一个关键方面是其结构和内部化过程。与此相一致，该公司于1963年将自身重组为三个部门，即工业设备、家用电器和无线电（宫本，2008年）。关于进入国际市场的风险，该公司于1962年通过其子公司夏普电子公司（SEC）进入美国市场，夏普电子公司最初成立于纽约市。到20世纪60年代末，该公司在欧洲市场上建立了个子公司夏普电子（欧洲）有限公司（SEEG），位于前西德。随后于1969年在联合王国设立了另一个子公司（宫本，2008年）。除此之外，该公司还在其当地市场日本建立了许多子公司，旨在将其业务线划分为小型专业企业。此外，该公司通过在南美和澳大利亚的巴西等市场设立子公司，进入这些市场。重要的是，尽管该公司在海外市场进行了大规模扩张，但该公司通过对研发活动高度保密来保持对市场的保密态度的政策意味着该公司将日本作为其总部，并以此作为其全球子公司的主控权。因此，虽然其他公司无法轻易复制其技术，但夏普公司无法通过在印度、中国和马来西亚等提供廉价劳动力和原材料的建立制造厂来利用规模经济（Lehmberg，2011）。结果，它维持了高昂的生产成本，这削弱了它与韩国三星等电子公司竞争的能力。考虑到这一点，该公司在2009年录得50多年来的亏损。该公司的财务状况恶化，2016年被迫将其业务出售给中国电子制造商富士康。
Problems facing sharp 夏普面临的问题
Leadership challenges 领导挑战
Businesses and organisations across the globe continue to face a myriad of challenges due to the changing business environment as well as the emerging new technologies. Speaking from this point of view, one of the greatest challenges that Sharp Corporation faces is leadership challenges. According to Lehmberg (2011), most of the influential leaders and seniors managers at Sharp Corporation were aging and as such, the promoted the traditional form of leadership approach, which had little or no impact at all on the company’s growth and development in the contemporary business environment. In reference to Caldwell et al. (2012), leadership plays an instrumental role in not only honouring governance obligation through commitment to the needs of the stakeholders but also in developing and establishing a platform for both short and long term growth and development of the organisation. The importance of leadership in the success of any organisation and in this case, Sharp Corporation is emphasized in the example of China’s growth model. In this case, the Chinese leadership since the 1950s has been instrumental in either inhibiting or promoting the growth of this nation by formulating and implementing policies that either hinder or support economic growth. For instance, this country’s growth since the late 1970s is attributed to economic reforms that were championed for by Deng Xiaoping, thus creating a platform for this country to achieve consistent growth (Zhu, 2012). Zhu (2012) further observes that in some cases, the Chinese leadership was willing to experiment with different policies to determine what worked and what did not work towards the growth of its economy. Whereas this is the case, there is a need to observe that without a daring leadership, Sharp Corporation will avoid taking risks to adopt a dynamic business model that is willing to take risks as far as its investment and operations in the market is concerned.
由于不断变化的商业环境以及新兴的新技术，全球的企业和组织继续面临着无数的挑战。从这个角度讲，夏普公司面临的更大挑战之一是领导力挑战。根据Lehmberg（2011年）的说法，夏普公司的大多数有影响力的和管理人员都在老龄化，因此，夏普公司提倡传统的领导方式，这对公司在当代商业环境中的成长和发展几乎没有影响。根据考德威尔等人（2012年）的观点，领导力不仅在通过承诺满足利益相关者的需求来履行治理义务方面发挥着重要作用，而且在为组织的短期和长期增长和发展开发和建立平台方面也发挥着重要作用。在中国增长模式的例子中，强调了领导能力对任何组织和夏普公司成功的重要性。在这种情况下，20世纪50年代以来，中国领导层通过制定和实施阻碍或支持经济增长的政策，在抑制或促进增长方面发挥了重要作用。例如，该国自20世纪70年代末以来的增长归因于邓小平倡导的经济改革，从而为该国实现持续增长创造了平台（朱，2012）。朱（2012）进一步观察到，在某些情况下，中国领导层愿意尝试不同的政策，以确定哪些政策对其经济增长有效，哪些政策无效。鉴于这种情况，需要注意的是，如果没有大胆的领导，夏普公司将避免承担风险，采用一种动态的商业模式，就其在市场上的投资和运营而言，愿意承担风险。
Risks due to uncertainty in the market 市场不确定性带来的风险
Another problem that Sharp Corporation faces is a high level of uncertainty. Researchers and scholars agree that whereas in the past uncertainty levels were significantly higher in international markets and extremely low in local market, this has since changed and both local and international and local markets face almost the same level of uncertainty (Lu, Zhou, Bruton & Li, 2010). Speaking from this point of view, one of the uncertainties that undermine Sharp Corporation’s growth and development is fluctuating commodity prices. An analysis of the case study of this company indicates that due to high competition and emerging new technologies, its products often experience a high level of price fluctuations, thus undermining its profitability. For instance, Lehmberg (2011) observe that some of the items that were shipped by sea experience price fluctuations downwards by the time they arrived at their target market leading to low profits or even losses.
夏普公司面临的另一个问题是高度的不确定性。研究人员和学者一致认为，尽管过去国际市场的不确定性水平显著较高，而本地市场的不确定性水平极低，但这一点已经发生了变化，本地市场、国际市场和本地市场面临着几乎相同的不确定性水平（Lu，Zhou，Bruton&Li，2010）。从这个角度讲，影响夏普公司增长和发展的一个不确定因素是商品价格的波动。对该公司案例研究的分析表明，由于高度竞争和新兴的新技术，其产品经常经历高度的价格波动，从而损害其盈利能力。例如，Lehmberg（2011年）观察到，海运的一些商品在到达目标市场时价格会出现向下波动，导致低利润甚至亏损。