'로이타 통신'의 Tony Munroe 그리고 Ian Geoghegan 란 이름의 2 기자들이 한국사람 SE YOUNG LEE(이세영)그리고 SOHEE KIM(김소희)의 글을 정리해서 2014년 8월 7일에 발표한 것입니다.

엊그제( 8월 5일 '14)에 내가 언급한 한국인들의 '창의력' 도전의 문제에 부합하는 내용인지라 참고로 열린마당에 전재했던 것을 오늘 다시 올립니다.

놀라운 사실은 표면적으로는 미국식의 경영을 하고 있는 것으로 알려졌으나 전체 사원들 중에서 서울에서 근무하는 1/3은 군대식의 하향적 명령체계를 견지하고 있다고 한다. 수뇌부에 해당할 것으로 여겨지는 서울의 인사관리가 내가 경험했던 48년 전과 하등의 변동이 없는 구태의연한 연령적 자리다툼을 연상시키고 있으니... "자신부터 새로이 變身(변신)하라는 요구"가 나옴직 하구먼.

삼성의 이재용 부회장이 특검이 구속해서 계속된 조사를 위하여 수감되었다는 뉴스(어제:2017년 2월 16일 발표)로 인하여 한국 뿐만아니라 전세계의 뉴스의 일면을 장식하고 있는 판에 어째서 이런 일이 일어난 것인 가를 살펴볼 수 있는 좋은 글이라 생각되오. 한국 기업들의 고질적인 병폐의 일면을 재조명해서 한국기업을 이해하여야 하는 현실에 직면하고 있오이다.

무슨 말이냐? 기업구조에서 원주(原主)라는 재벌이 있고 그들에게서 하청(下請)을 받는 중소기업으로 구성되어 있지요. 그 原主는 한국노동자의 10%를 호령하고 있고, 남어지 90%는 그 명령에 따라서 생산하고 이를 주로 수출해서 그동안 4-50년에 걸친 고도의 경제성장을 이루었던 것입니다.

어제 핏자의 크기가 줄어들면서 어째서 한국의 노동자들만 유독히 못살겠다고 아우성을 치는가를 물었다. 하루가 지나도록 설명하는 사람이 단 한사람도 나타나지를 않고 있오. 잘 나갔을 적에는 하층노동자들도 어느 정도 배를 채울 수가 있었으나, 국가 전체의 경제가 3% 이하로 떨어지다 보니 재벌 즉 原主가 우선 자기네 이익을 챙기고 남어지 下請업자들 그리고 下下請의 말단 노동자들의 배를 쥐어짜다가 보니 국민이 골탕을 먹게되는 현상이 나타난 겁니다.

이러한 原主人(원주인)은 비단 재벌만이 아니오. 국가조직의 거의 다가 웃사람은 거드럭거리면서 '밑의 것들'이 알아서 기는 형태로 사회가 구성되었고, 그래 진행해왔다는 사실을 국민이 알고 '윗 것'들을 잡아족처서 그들도 응당의 노동을 해야 하는 국가건설을 재 발명해햐 하는 현실에 직면하고 있오이다.

관료집단과 재벌, 그리고 그 윗자리에 앉아있는 대통령 및 국회의원 나아가 정치판에 맨도는 장돌뱅이, 노조의 간부들, 대형교회, 학교집단, You name it... 이조 500년, 일본통치 36년, 광복 70년에 골수에 박힌 "남 쥐어짜기"가 그 땅에서 사라지지 않으면 한국은 다시 망했다가 밑바닥 인생들이 살길을 찾아나서게 되겠지오.

이번 최순실, 박근혜, 그리고 이재용이의 사건에서 이 근본문제의 곪아터진 부위를 바로 알고 돌여내는 계기가 되고 있다는 점에서 참으로 다행한 일이란 생각을 한다.

禪涅槃

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INSIGHT - Samsung's next reinvention challenge: itself
BY SE YOUNG LEE AND SOHEE KIM
SEOUL Thu Aug 7, 2014 4:34am IST

Reuters) - As its smartphone sales stutter and a generational leadership succession looms, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is under pressure to reinvent itself - to be more innovative, but not lose the rigor and focus that made it a global powerhouse.

One effort this summer to foster a more worker-friendly environment and a more creative culture is to allow staff at its main Suwon campus south of Seoul to wear shorts to work at weekends. Working hours are more flexible, and female staff can take maternity leave without worrying about job security.

The flagship of South Korea's dominant conglomerate, or chaebol, is also trying to address shifting cultural values at home by curbing some of the excesses hardwired into corporate Korea. Forced late-night drinking sessions, long a staple of local office life, are out.

"It's 1-1-9 for evening company outings now: one type of alcohol, in one place and only until 9 p.m," said a Samsung employee in his eighth year at the firm. "Younger staff are no longer forced to stay, and the senior workers will be careful not to upset their subordinates," he said, asking not to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Samsung last month posted an unexpectedly sharp drop in second-quarter earnings, squeezed by falling market share in smartphones, and with no obvious driver in sight to reverse the decline. Chairman Lee Kun-hee, 72, who has famously managed Samsung with a sense of "permanent crisis", remains hospitalised following a May heart attack.

The ascension of his son and heir-apparent, the Harvard-educated Jay Y. Lee, 46, could be a breath of fresh air, but effecting wholesale change in the way the sprawling company operates would be a Herculean task and could prove a mistake.

"The company is in somewhat of a Catch-22 when it comes to changing its culture," said Jay Subhash, a former senior product manager who left Samsung in April. "It desperately needs to adopt a culture that fosters openness, creativity and innovation. But doing so would jeopardise its greatest existing cultural asset, its militaristic hierarchy, which enables it to operate at lightning speed to outpace the competition."

"SOUL SEARCHING"

Samsung has long emphasized the need for creativity while hiring more foreign talent as it operates in increasingly diverse markets. Along with relaxed rules on work hours, it stresses a "Work Smart" philosophy to reduce unnecessary time spent at the office.

While it's hoped a looser environment will help stir new ideas, some insiders say progress is slow against what's often described as an entrenched culture of rigid, top-down management.

"Samsung's doing some soul searching right now, it's asking itself 'who am I, and what should I do next?" said Chang Sea-jin, a business professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and author of "Sony Vs Samsung".

"In the long term, the company needs to become global and open. Giving employees more autonomy can lead to loss of control, but this will in the long run benefit the company by developing talent that can run the business from a global perspective."

The drop in second-quarter profit triggered some symbolic belt-tightening at Samsung: Handset division managers gave up part of their bonuses and downgraded to economy class for shorter flights - acts of loyalty that are part of Samsung's culture, which emphasizes urgency in action.

While the company is a market leader in smartphones, TVs, refrigerators and memory chips, it's saddled with a perception that it's a "fast-follower" and not an innovator like Apple Inc or Google Inc.

Samsung is hardly alone in the culture struggle.

Many Korean firms deal with the same issues stemming from the legacy of the country's Confucian, conformist culture, which has also fuelled its industrial success. Several Samsung employees interviewed by Reuters said that those who "stand out" from the norm struggle and often end up leaving.

"The core challenge for Korea is that as a Confucian culture that has deep respect for age, hierarchy is very important and so what you'll find is that it's hard to innovate in an environment where challenging your boss is not something you can easily do," said Shaun Cochran, head of CLSA Korea.

SIGNS OF CHANGE

Samsung is making efforts to address that.

In July, Chief Financial Officer Lee Sang-hoon asked how Samsung can respond to rapid changes in the tech industry in the first "Grand Discussion", an initiative for more dialogue, through the company's newly launched Mosaic internal message board. The discussion generated 4,221 ideas and comments.

"Samsung takes pride in the creativity and diversity of its talented people and will constantly strive to create an environment where they have the opportunity to grow," the company said in a statement to Reuters. The company did not make an executive available for an interview, but provided Reuters with written material on various initiatives.

Under its "Creative Lab" programme, employees can individually or in teams take a year to develop an idea they come up with if it's deemed worthy of pursuit. Samsung says it had some 14,000 ideas last year through this programme and other company initiatives.

Employees and Samsung watchers say cultural change is inevitable as a younger generation of Koreans increasingly demands more than just high wages.

In a survey this year by job portal Incruit, Korean Air Lines Co ranked as the country's most desirable employer, snapping Samsung's 10-year run at the top. Incruit said Samsung's reputation for imposing a heavy workload and limiting personal time jarred with a growing preference for work-life balance.

That said, some two-thirds of Samsung's nearly 300,000-strong workforce is outside South Korea, and the vast majority of its revenue is generated away from home.

Among leading South Korean firms, Samsung stands out in that it doesn't discriminate on where job applicants were educated, said Im Chan-soo, head of LCS Communications in the southern port city of Busan, which offers private lessons for those preparing for interviews at Samsung.

Staff turnover at Samsung in South Korea was below 3 percent last year, against almost 17 percent at its overseas facilities.

"Samsung looks for honest people who are crazy about the company, people who have only looked to Samsung, who have done a lot to try to get in," said Im.

One former Samsung Electronics employee, an American in South Korea, said top managers are globally minded, though many employees and observers interviewed by Reuters said the core of its culture remains distinctly Korean.

"I think change is inevitable," said the current Samsung employee. "It's not because the company decided to be a trailblazer, but because the societal trends are changing. There's a desire to change the system."

(Editing by Tony Munroe and Ian Geoghegan)