Abstract
Samsung Electronics, headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, is the flagship company of the largest and oldest of the Korean chaebol, the Samsung Group. It is one of the world’s leading conglomerates, with revenues in 2012 of US$ 248 billion and 369,000 employees (Samsung Electronics, 2012a). Samsung Electronics alone is ranked 20th in the Fortune Global 500 list, with revenues of US$ 184 billion and 222,000 employees (Fortune, 2013). The group started with the founding of Samsung Corporation, a trading company, established by Lee Byung-Chull in 1938, selling fish, vegetables and fruit to China. Within a decade Samsung had flour mills and confectionery machines. The trading function continued to be important, but from what was, according to Chang (2008), a humble beginning, soon embarked on a strategy of rapid diversification into sugar, textiles, various financial services, petrochemicals, shipbuilding, heavy machinery equipment and aerospace. By 1950 Samsung had become one of Korea’s top ten firms.
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