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“Samsung Rising” goes deep on corruption, chaebols, and corporate chaos

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Re: “Samsung Rising” goes deep on corruption, chaebols, and corporate chaos

#21

Post by eatonphil »

Nokinside wrote: post #17
eatonphil wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not who you're responding to, but for just one possible reason look at Lee Jae-Yong. He's the head of Samsung and was arrested in 2017 for bribery, embezzlement, etc. Chaebols (name for families that run these mega-companies) are both respected for success and disliked for corruption as I understand it. While there are these mega-companies in RoK and Japan that have especially "close" relationships with governments,…

Keiretsu-type groups that do everything in-house can prevent whole business sectors from emerging. In Japan the relative lack of independent software companies have been attributed to Keiretsu structure. Software development was just in-house activity to serve established product divisions. It was not seen as business to be sold independently. For example, Toyota made whole integrated CAD/CAM/CAE system called 'TOGO'…

Agreed, historically anyway. Older Koreans (judging by my in-laws) hear "computer science" or "programming" and think of computer repairmen.

Oddly enough, Korea and Japan have even higher percentage of SMBs than in the US (can't remember the link but the OECD published such stats). However historically they served only as subcontractors to the chaebols and keiretsu groups.

I think that's changing in Korea and Japan as of recently. In the last 20 years, there has been a rise in startups serving massive audiences in online gaming, social media, and e-commerce. Think Nexon, Daum, Naver/LINE, Rakuten, SoftBank, etc.

Re: “Samsung Rising” goes deep on corruption, chaebols, and corporate chaos

#23

Post by chrischen »

shadowCensor wrote: post #18
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you go more into why you aren’t positive about Samsung?

They are like Apple. Lots of marketing a medium quality product but charging luxury pricing. They do this from TV, to smart phones, to SSD, to appliances. They are on my "no buy" list.

If Samsung and apple are at Medium quality product then what is a high quality product because I must be missing out.

Re: “Samsung Rising” goes deep on corruption, chaebols, and corporate chaos

#24

Post by someguydave »

dba7dba wrote: post #16
mncharity wrote: post #7

> I’ve met hundreds and hundreds of very talented Samsung executives [...] people who are highly educated, highly competent. They know what they’re doing. They know both, say, the guts of a smartphone in addition to what business decisions need to be made to improve their company. And I’ve always gotten the impression that they can run the show themselves, that there’s really not much of a need this far into their co…

Having a family at the top of a corporation does usually lead to the firm operating with long term vision more consistently. Yes, if a Chaebol style leadership was in Boeing, MD corporate leadership wouldn't have gotten the chance to ruin Boing. We all know that the take over of Boing by MD leadership is why we have 737 Max. I am sure there are many many hedge funds that would love to asset strip Samsung or any other…

This “family effect” is probably one reason for the success of German “Mittelstand” export businesses.

Re: “Samsung Rising” goes deep on corruption, chaebols, and corporate chaos

#25

Post by thaumasiotes »

mncharity wrote: post #7

> I’ve met hundreds and hundreds of very talented Samsung executives [...] people who are highly educated, highly competent. They know what they’re doing. They know both, say, the guts of a smartphone in addition to what business decisions need to be made to improve their company. And I’ve always gotten the impression that they can run the show themselves, that there’s really not much of a need this far into their co…

> The argument for stationary bandit gangs is not that they're wonderful executives, but that they have less toxic incentives than the roving bandit gangs they displace.

One thing I like to think about is the concept of "home rule". Egypt makes an interesting case study:

By the time we can see the history of Egypt, the ruling class is seen by everyone, including themselves, as natives. (In fact, they are intrusive, but as with the ruling class of India, intrusions get forgotten over time.)

Eventually, a government collapse results in Libyan soldiers taking over the rule of Egypt. This is a disaster for cultural continuity -- this is when most of the pharaohs' tombs get robbed, by the new foreign pharaohs. It also results in formal inscriptions being written in vernacular Egyptian rather than Old Egyptian. After a relatively short run, home rule is reestablished, and formal Old Egyptian returns.[1]

More eventually, Egypt is conquered by Persia. This isn't great; the Persian emperor administers things from far away.

Egypt doesn't manage to throw off the Persians, but Alexander the Great does. Egypt is briefly part of Macedon. But Alexander dies soon afterwards, and his general Ptolemy gets Egypt out of the ensuing civil war.

Egypt is ruled by the Ptolemies for the next few hundred years. They aren't Egyptian and don't see themselves as Egyptian. They don't like the Egyptian masses and the masses don't like them. But! The Ptolemies have no power base outside Egypt. Unlike the Persian emperor, they live there, on location, and a problem for Egypt is directly a problem for them.

Eventually, Egypt is lost to Rome, and it suffers once again under the backwater treatment it got from Persia.

I don't have great information on exactly what the state of affairs was for the common man in these periods. But I strongly suspect that, as your analysis predicts, things were better under the Ptolemies, even though they were self-conceived foreigners who didn't really care for the Egyptians proper, than they were under the Persians and Romans. For Rome, as long as the grain was flowing, malaise and poverty in Egypt could be more of a plus than a minus, keeping Egypt subservient. For the Ptolemies, malaise and poverty meant defeat in war. They were in the process of going native -- Cleopatra was the first Ptolemy to be able to speak Egyptian -- when they lost it all to Rome.

[1] There was, separately, a homegrown Pharaoh who also made inscriptions in vernacular Egyptian as one part of his massive reform efforts. This got rolled back too.

Re: “Samsung Rising” goes deep on corruption, chaebols, and corporate chaos

#26

Post by bobthepanda »

eatonphil wrote: post #21
Nokinside wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keiretsu-type groups that do everything in-house can prevent whole business sectors from emerging. In Japan the relative lack of independent software companies have been attributed to Keiretsu structure. Software development was just in-house activity to serve established product divisions. It was not seen as business to be sold independently. For example, Toyota made whole integrated CAD/CAM/CAE system called 'TOGO'…

Agreed, historically anyway. Older Koreans (judging by my in-laws) hear "computer science" or "programming" and think of computer repairmen. Oddly enough, Korea and Japan have even higher percentage of SMBs than in the US (can't remember the link but the OECD published such stats). However historically they served only as subcontractors to the chaebols and keiretsu groups. I think that's changing in Korea and Japan a…

IIRC, one big type of sector that they received flak for when they moved into it was bakeries. Food is one sector in Korea with a lot of SMBs, and at the time it looked like they were trying to steal even more of the economy for themselves.

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20120126001019

Re: “Samsung Rising” goes deep on corruption, chaebols, and corporate chaos

#27

Post by lycidas »

eatonphil wrote: post #9

I have a really hard time finding books on Korean companies, methods, or up-to-date planning; particularly on Samsung, Hyundai, LG or new fields like biotech/renewable; and preferably written by Korean journalists or academics. On the other hand there's a lot you can find written about American or Japanese companies like Taiichi Ohno on Toyota, John Bogle on Vanguard, MITI and the Japanese Miracle, etc. I get that th…

I recently read "Bad Samaritans" by Ha-Joon Chang and a lot of it giving an overview of how the Korean economy developed in the 20th century.

Re: “Samsung Rising” goes deep on corruption, chaebols, and corporate chaos

#28

Post by eatonphil »

lycidas wrote: post #27
eatonphil wrote: post #9

I have a really hard time finding books on Korean companies, methods, or up-to-date planning; particularly on Samsung, Hyundai, LG or new fields like biotech/renewable; and preferably written by Korean journalists or academics. On the other hand there's a lot you can find written about American or Japanese companies like Taiichi Ohno on Toyota, John Bogle on Vanguard, MITI and the Japanese Miracle, etc. I get that th…

I recently read "Bad Samaritans" by Ha-Joon Chang and a lot of it giving an overview of how the Korean economy developed in the 20th century.

Yeah! He's been on my list for a while. He's a prolific author.

Re: “Samsung Rising” goes deep on corruption, chaebols, and corporate chaos

#29

Post by mncharity »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #25
mncharity wrote: post #7

> I’ve met hundreds and hundreds of very talented Samsung executives [...] people who are highly educated, highly competent. They know what they’re doing. They know both, say, the guts of a smartphone in addition to what business decisions need to be made to improve their company. And I’ve always gotten the impression that they can run the show themselves, that there’s really not much of a need this far into their co…

> The argument for stationary bandit gangs is not that they're wonderful executives, but that they have less toxic incentives than the roving bandit gangs they displace. One thing I like to think about is the concept of "home rule". Egypt makes an interesting case study: By the time we can see the history of Egypt, the ruling class is seen by everyone, including themselves, as natives. (In fact, they are intrusive, b…

Though the relationships with non-local rule can be complex. I saw a paper/talk about Ottoman Egyptian farmers disciplining local elites with work slowdowns and strikes. The loss would attract an impatient Ottoman official with a "fix this now, or else" attitude. So for instance, if a widespread beef with an elite family wasn't resolved to villagers' satisfaction, they might move out to stay with family in nearby villages, leaving village production to plummet, and the intransigent elite family to face official ire.

Re: “Samsung Rising” goes deep on corruption, chaebols, and corporate chaos

#30

Post by empath75 »

I will never buy a Samsung product again after the bait and switch they pulled on their 4K TVs, advertising that they would be able to be used as smart home hubs, continuously telling people it would be coming, and then quietly cancelling it and making it an add on for the nvidia shield instead, without so much as an apology or a press release.

Today I went to use their official iPhone tv remote app, and it said it’s being discontinued and to use the SmartThings app, something that was broken 2 years ago in a firmware update to my tv, and has never been fixed. This tv isn’t that old — 3 years old and it’s already on its way to slowly being bricked with crappy updates and products being decommissioned.

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