Konosuke Matsushita is greatly admired and respected in the economic arena because of his great leadership capacity as a founder, a former CEO and a majority shareholder of the Panasonic Corporation. Starting as an apprentice, at the age of 13, his designs were unfortunately not pleasing to his boss at the firm Osaka Electric where he was designing lamp parts.

His management style is based on his personal belief of the practical experience best espoused in his various stints at all existent job fields in his company. From the very beginnings of his long and fruitful career, he (Matsushita) practically involved himself personally into the daily affairs of his company. With the 1929-year Global Depression, he defied the existent economic and management wisdom by neither laying off workers nor reducing their wages.

He was principled in the ideal that even with a superior product, there was a great value and necessity for the creation of the selling capacity. Thus, by concentrating more on building the sales capacity and less on manufacturing, he was able to devise sales’ avenues for his various products.

He portrayed the authentic leadership style based on his strong sense of purpose, self-discipline and a vibrant expression of strong moral values being aimed at not only finding his life’s purpose or meaning, but also the company’s position, influencing and impacting on the general Japanese society.

His exceptional influence in the form of the transformational leadership was critical on the overall company’s legacy and impact. Through this, he was able to instil in his employees/followers a hard work ethic towards accomplishing more than existent expectations.

Through the ethical leadership that was rooted on the attributes of altruism, encouragement, the character and integrity, as well as the collective motivation, he was able to guide the company through the good and bad times into what the corporation is now in the contemporary arena. He provided the servant leadership through his ethical behaviour coupled with the wholesome creation of values for the society.

In conclusion, through his great visionary ability, skills and ethical values, Konosuke Matsushita was able to guide his creation of the Panasonic Corporation into the today’s billion-dollar enterprise.

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Leadership Styles: Konosuke Matsushita

Konosuke Matsushita is greatly admired and respected in the economic arena because of his great leadership capacity as a founder, a former CEO and a majority shareholder of the Panasonic Corporation based in Kadoma city, Osaka, in Japan. To many of his fellow citizens, he is simply referred to as a god of management. Symbolically, this is embodied in his great leadership style and capabilities and best espoused in his biography. He is called Matsushita Leadership by John Kotter, and an American business management professional. Though from a well to do family, his humble beginnings brought about by his father’s bad investments, were to forever influence on his latter life, as he went on to build one of the world’s greatest corporations. Panasonic Electronic is contemporary Japan’s top consumer electronics and an appliance manufacturer that is larger than its various rivals such as Sony amongst others are.

It is amongst Japan’s most famous and largest corporations, with hundreds of subsidiaries all over the globe. Its products range from Plasma television sets to radios, from cameras to semiconductors and automotive electronics amongst others through the different brand names such as JVC, Quasar, Technics, National, Matsushita and Panasonic. The diversification includes its recent (2010) patent filings with 2,154. ZTE Corp, which is the PRC’s (Chinese) second largest phone network equipment manufacturer, retained its economies of the scale advantage. The corporation netted in profits of up to $850 million in the fiscal 2010-2011 year against its previous year’s loss of $1.18 billion. This robustness, in terms of sales’ volumes had the effect of offsetting the (Japanese) yen’s strength, in addition to the overall impact of the March 2011-year’s tsunami and earthquake. With a total workforce population of 380,000 (2011), it is unfortunately to implement the job cuts of up to 30,000 employees in the current year.

Starting as an apprentice, at the age of 13, his designs were unfortunately not pleasing to his boss at the firm Osaka Electric where he was designing lamp parts. This led to his quitting of the job and starting (founding) his own company with $50 in loans and an equal amount in savings. He was headquartered in his rented house. In the larger of the two existent rooms, where working with Toshio Iue (his brother-in-law), they produced a two-way light socket as their first product. It proved to be a big sale, and, hence, brought about much needed funds for the investment. His management style is based on his personal belief of the practical experience best espoused in his various stints at all existent job fields in his company. However, it is a rebuke by the late Zen master, Taiki Tachibana, which ultimately had to change his personal perspective as pertaining to business and business management (Hays, 2012).

To his face, he was told that it was because of him that Japan was no longer a place of compassion as a result of its citizen’s sole goal of seeking the material gratification at the expense of a social cohesion and moral ethics. Such had to be corrected under his (Matsushita’s) responsibility. This affected him so deeply that he was to later on initiate the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management sole aimed at nurturing human resources with the requisite skills/capabilities of managing state affairs. The institute’s impacts are best exemplified by one of Japan’s Prime Minister, Yoshihiko Noda. He was one amongst those in the institute’s inaugural class. From the very beginning of his long and fruitful career, he (Matsushita) practically involved himself personally in the daily affairs of his company. Starting from bases and plugs for electric fans, he was to later develop the bicycle dry-cell batteries among other later inventions that were critical to the corporation’s phenomenon growth.

With the 1929-year Global Depression, he defied existent the economic and management wisdom by neither laying off workers nor reducing their wages. Instead he developed the half-day working shifts, with the other half being spent for promoting his products. Thus, the successful strategy aided the company’s rebound to normal sales’ volume levels. Through the great diversification, into the potentially profitable electrical and electronics market, the company was able to solidify its place in the global economic arena. Though a participant in Japan’s WW2 efforts, with his name being listed for the later ousting from the nation’s industrial arena, his employees (15,000) were successful in petitioning the American nation to have his name removed from the list. Such was the love, trust and respect that the employees had for their leader.

With the aforementioned diversification, he was principled in the ideal that even with a superior product, there was a great value and necessity for creation of the selling capacity. Thus, by concentrating more on the building of the sales capacity and less on manufacturing, he was able to devise the sales avenues for his various products. This culminated in the foundation of a dynamic retail store network, which was to later be credited with placing the corporation firmly into Japan’s retail and electrical manufacturing industry. Through the creation of specialized divisions with their coordinating national sales’ departments located throughout Japan, he was, thus, able to meet the demand through his consistency and effectiveness in both manufacturing and sales coordination. Hence, the manufacturing angle of the corporation was dependent on the existing sales’ volumes, thereby stabilizing the entity’s overall operations (Sintjago, 2013).

By being true to his culture, he was able to encourage his various employees to think in the long term through a personal visualization of results from existent projects as opposed to just enquiring on the ways of building/developing a product. This is best espoused in his ideal of developing a business plan that would be able to last for a thousand years. This was based on his perspective of developing products, for not only present the market arena satisfaction. It also aimed at competitively existing in the future. Both his unusual strategic planning as well as management style guided him. These ones were principled on seven spiritual company’s values; these being a national service through industry development; social relations that were based on cooperation and harmony; fairness in all endeavours; assimilation and adjustment; humility and courtesy; a struggle towards betterment and gratitude towards all existent participants.

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These are the core driving principles through which he was able to develop and, hence, sustain a global electronics giant; passing on a leadership mantle to his son after his retirement. This were to be imparted to his various employees through the aforementioned Institute, which was rooted on Buddhist principles, hence, placing his personal reputation behind the company’s determination towards achieving greatness not only for itself, but also for the country, at large. Through ethical leadership that was rooted on the attributes of Altruism, encouragement, the character and integrity, and collective motivation, he was able to guide the company through the good and bad times. Into that the corporation was in the contemporary arena. Furtherance was his instilling of in the group pride, a humane orientation and loyalty towards the company’s vision, missions and goals, hence, enabling him retain most of his employees and the larger consumer base.

Through the ethical leadership, he was able to instil respect for others and, thus, build the entity as a communal affair. That was driven by honesty and justice/equality of all. Decisions were made through various inputs from different employees, with the implementation being based on a wholesome consensus. His wealth emanated from his existent company stock as either dividends or bonuses, but not from his salary. Furtherance was his respect for all humanity best espoused by his norms of often bowing to junior employees in addition to his courteous behaviour. Unlike other employers that often viewed labour unions as potential negative aspects, he was of the contrary view, being courteous enough to be present (personally), during the signing ceremony of the Matsushita Electric Labor Union (1964). In addition, his leadership styles had the cultural implications on both the individual and group levels. Personally, he was very visible, espousing a family man as portrayed by his various appearances with his wife Mumeno Iue (Kotter, 1998).

As aforementioned, he was a practical leader who endeavoured to be involved in all aspects of the corporation, and, hence, espousing the servant leadership. Closely associated with the above, he provided this form of leadership through his ethical behaviour coupled with the wholesome creation of the value for society. This is best espoused by his division-management system where each existent division was given the significant amounts of independence and authority towards self-determination. Through the aforementioned institute, he provided education, management and sales’ skills prerequisite in a competitive environment. This was characteristic of Japan during his lifetime. His employees would also enjoy life in addition to family bonding, as he changed the working week into a five-day week, and the same wages were sustained. Through raising his employees’ wage levels aimed at reaching the North American standards, he espoused his belief in the industry being an avenue towards the overcoming poverty, through relieving the society as a whole form existent poverty/misery.

His exceptional influence in the form of the transformational leadership was critical on the overall company’s legacy and impact. Through this, he was able to instil in his employees/followers a hard work ethics towards accomplishing more than existent expectations. Thus, his vision, continuous inquisitiveness, the ability to inspire and challenging the existent status quo went from the norm of corporate heads and, hence, inspired the quadrupling of sales best espoused in the year 1961. For him, such a goal was not set out of greed for both profits and fame, but rather as an avenue/means of fulfilling the requisite duties as a manufacturer towards the larger Japanese society. This is primarily what made the corporation becoming one of Japan’s most efficient great enterprises, where infinite possibilities existed and, thus, could be achieved.

Additionally, there is the authentic leadership style that he portrayed based on his strong sense of purpose, self-discipline and a vibrant expression of strong moral values. The latter ones were aimed at not only finding his life’s purpose or meaning, but also at the company’s position, influence and impact on the general Japanese society. Through the PHP model, i.e. Peace, Happiness through Prosperity, he recognized and, therefore, promoted the ideal that all human beings were inherently responsible and good. Through this understanding, he was able to acknowledge that the human race has and continues to demonstrate the capacity towards both growth and progression in the aspects of spirituality and material accumulation. This he would constantly demonstrate through his expression that people have the capacity to bring both intellectual and material resources towards alleviating the existent difficult problems facing global (populations) nations.

Thus, he alluded to the fact that in order to solve difficult problems, necessitated above all both the willingness to learn (from the past mistakes and experiences) and the open mind. Another fundamental is his global leadership through cross-cultural experience, where his different trips abroad enlightened him more on the existent and interrelated global social arenas. He was to learn and later appreciate the fact that sending his employees abroad was necessary towards transferring the company’s culture and, hence, building a global enterprise. He envisioned that it was necessary for his corporation to collaborate in joint ventures with other global enterprises aimed towards enhancing sales’ volumes and maintaining the existent consumer bases. His ventures included a partnership with the Dutch entity N.V Philips and the establishment of a sales’ company in the US under the brand names Panasonic and National (Kotter, 1998).

It is such venturing into the unknown arenas and, hence, entailing a risk taking, which then enabled the corporation rake in billions of dollars as both the European and American markets proved to be lucrative. Such was the success that the explosive growth placed if firmly in the league of such success stories as Sony and Honda. Students from the MIGM, i.e. Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, are taught to enhance in them five crucial qualities, mostly rooted in the seven spiritual company values as aforementioned. These include a sincere belief in the fact that the real personal determination can overcome nearly any existent obstacles; the willingness towards learning from the one’s personal experiences; a cultivation of the spirit of independence in both an action and thought; a capacity towards the collaboration and cooperation with others; and the ability to disentangle from existent traditional thinking and old stereotypes.

The cultural ethics instilled in the institution are greatly ingrained such that the existing alumni often keep a close contact with the institution, generating various projects for the institution’s students. Furtherance is the fact that they help each other in Japanese elections rooted on their collective mission towards changing the nature of existent Japanese politics. This is best espoused in the 1993-year national elections where 23 alumni ran for the existing seats in the Japanese national Diet (equivalent of America’s Congress.) As a philanthropist, he was influential in awarding various professionals that excelled in their fields through championing the human enhancement, with the Japan MK Prize Award. With an increase in age, so did different philanthropic endeavours, with the most remarkable ones being during the years 1988 and 1989, when these charities totalled to $276 million. All these ones went into portraying the need to aid others as a means of enhancing the social cohesion.

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Apart from all the above, it is during his retirement that he authored over 44 books as a way of developing and, hence, explaining both his commercial and social philosophies. The best example is the book developing a Road to Peace and Happiness through Prosperity. It went on to sell over 4 million copies. Adding on to that was the institution’s publication of around 400 books on an annual basis aimed at strengthening and solidifying the core values that he espoused and which he aimed at instilling in not only his employees, and also the overall Japanese and global society. Through listening to various pieces of advice, he would then enrich his own perspectives as pertaining to different social contexts. Perhaps, the most memorable ones were his at times radical perspectives on management and government/governance issues which he viewed as pertinent towards the overall positive social enhancement (Steers, Nardon, & Sanchez-Runde, 2013).

In conclusion, through his great visionary ability, skills and ethical values, Konosuke Matsushita was able to guide his creation of the Panasonic Corporation into the today’s billion-dollar enterprise. Through his various ideals, he was able to guide the entity to what it is today. These ideals include the love of your job so as to do it well, engage in what the common sense dictates and follow the given natural laws. Management is but the perpetual creation, leadership entails possessing a vision, and dreams/ideas should be shared and never assumes that something is impossible. That transparent management eventually fosters the growth; and that bad times/experiences do possess a bright side. Through the particularly important management style, he was able to prepare both his company and employees for tougher times. The business was able to level out during unexpected changes in existent business conditions. Through existent strong internal (entity) structures, as either the capital or equipment reservoirs, he was he able to guide the entity through both the good/prosperous and bad/ loss-making times.

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