Business Insight Zone

Witness the painful spectacle, courtesy of Justin McCurry of the Guardian, of Sony’s recall of Vaio laptops that may be at risk of catching fire:

Sony recalls nearly 500,000 PCs worldwide

Shares in Sony plunged today after the firm was forced to recall hundreds of thousands of Vaio laptop computers amid reports that some models have caught fire and injured their owners.

Shares in the electronics giant fell more than 4% – their lowest level in almost three years – following the sudden recall of 438,000 PCs worldwide.

Wait a minute — haven’t we heard this story before? Why, yes, we have:

The recall is a major embarrassment for Sony. In 2006 it was forced to recall 10m lithium ion batteries, at a cost of ¥51bn (£272m), amid fears that they could overheat and catch fire.

But hold on, it gets worse:

A Sony source, who did not wish to be named, admitted that the firm had known about the problem since last August and could have acted more quickly.

“We fully recognise that there were problems with the speed of our response, but we are doing our best to address the problem and make sure it doesn’t happen again,” the source told the Guardian.

And here is where my complete lack of pity kicks in.

We join organizations — whether companies or churches or softball teams — on the premise that the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts. I have no skills in corporate finance, but I can write up a storm; therefore I do the writing while the crackerjack Hoover’s/D&B financial team handles the money. We all benfit from capitalizing (literally) on individual strengths while filtering out individual weaknesses.

That’s why they call it an organization — because it’s supposed to be organized better than any individual could be.

And then we see an asinine failure like this one from Sony.

If I want to be disorganized, I can handle that all by my lonesome. I don’t need any institutional help to put off writing my will, going on a diet, saving for retirement, finishing my dissertation, or any of the hundred other things that people commonly delay.

Why put up with performance reviews, corporate politics, the slog of commuting, dealing with Wall Street, and all of the other hassles of corporate life if you’re not going to benefit from a higher level of organization — one at least efficient enough to act swiftly to fix a quality problem remarkably similar to the one that humiliated your company just a couple of years ago?

Sony deserves the egg on its face.

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Related posts:

• The Nintendo Wii: Hitting its way into the Hall of Fame.
• Possibly Sony has merely targeted the wrong audience for the PlayStation 3.
• It makes us lots of enemies among our customer base, but at least it also loses money.
• Company of the Day: Sony.
• Spider-Man is a real-life hero — for Sony, anyway.
• Gaming notes.

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