The Japanese giant, who could not say "no" to their superiors, collapsed

Japan's corporate culture,

It became "the straw that broke the camel's back".

Author: Yin Jie

On the occasion of the 130th anniversary of the founding of the Toshiba Group, Takatoshi Nishida came to become the new president with a red face.

The president of a Japanese company is equivalent to the CEO, and Nishida, who is sitting in this position, is full of ambition and is ready to do a big job.

But he never expected that 18 years later, Toshiba would be delisted.

Nishida Atsutoshi's "big gamble"

Nishida took office as president in 2005, after 30 years at Toshiba.

Founded in 1875, this Japanese company was an important supplier to the Japanese military during World War II. Later, due to the defeat of Japan and the occupation of the United States, Toshiba was forced to spin off many subsidiaries and close or sell some of its factories.

After the 50s of the last century, with the change of the world pattern, Toshiba began to expand again, acquired many industrial companies, produced Japan's first color TVs and notebook computers, and gradually became a global manufacturing giant, and entered the peak in the seventies and eighties.

Toshiba's early computers.

However, the good times did not last long, and the United States began to suppress the Japanese economy in the mid-to-late 80s, focusing on the semiconductor industry, and Toshiba became a live target, and the growth rate gradually slowed down.

However, in the 90s, Japanese home appliances were still in demand in China, and Toshiba took advantage of the times to export a large number of TVs, and later focused on laptops, making a lot of money from the Chinese market.

It's just that what many people don't know is that even in its heyday, the home appliance business accounted for only 1/3 of Toshiba's total revenue, and other revenues came from infrastructure, power generation, nuclear energy, semiconductors, medical equipment and other fields.

In 1996, Toshiba's operating income was $53 billion, in 2015 it was $63.1 billion, and in 2022 it fell to $29.7 billion. The turning point was Nishida's appointment in 2005.

Atsushi Nishida

Nishida graduated from the University of Tokyo with a master's degree in political science and joined Toshiba in 1975. He started his career in sales and believed in offensive management, and his "famous work" was to fight a price war with Compaq and regain market share, so he was reused by Toshiba.

Nishida is said to have liked German political philosophy and read many ancient Chinese books, and his motto "Solid, Truthful, and Practical" was taken from the aphorisms of Confucian scholars in the Ming Dynasty. But ironically, Nishida stepped down because of a fraud scandal.

After entering 2000, Toshiba's business development fell into a bottleneck, and it faced the rise of China's manufacturing industry - China's home appliances have large output, low prices, and good performance, and the main focus is a cost-effective one, which is rapidly sold all over the world.

What should I do? Nishida thought about it and decided to find another way -- nuclear power.

At the beginning of the 21st century, nuclear energy was favored by countries around the world, and Nishida bet his "treasure" on the field of nuclear power. In order to seize the market, in 2006, Toshiba spent a huge amount of money to acquire the American nuclear power giant Westinghouse, and suddenly became the world's largest nuclear reactor manufacturer.

It was also in this year that Toshiba came up with its best performance in 10 years: annual revenue growth of 12% and net profit increase of 76%. But no one thought at the time that these data were "water-injected".

Nishida relied on his performance alone for only two years, and he was dealt a fatal blow. In 2008, the U.S. financial crisis triggered a global recession, which led to a decline in demand for nuclear energy, a significant increase in the cost and risk of nuclear power projects, and Toshiba's revenue deteriorated rapidly.

Seeing that he couldn't hold it anymore, in 2009, Nishida gave up the position of president to Norio Sasaki and became chairman (equivalent to chairman) himself.

The "right-hand man" of constraints

Sasaki is a technician by training, and has always focused on the field of nuclear power. When Toshiba acquired Westinghouse, he was the head of the relevant department.

Norio Sasaki

At the presidential handover ceremony, Nishida called Sasaki "the man who helped put Toshiba's nuclear power business on a global trajectory" and called him his "right-hand man."

However, Sasaki's luck was just as bad as his predecessor's: the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 directly sparked concerns about the safety of nuclear energy in countries around the world, and they canceled or postponed nuclear power programs.

After two years of hard work, in 2013, Sasaki relinquished the position of president to Hisao Tanaka and became vice president.

Hisao Tanaka

Hisao Tanaka joined Toshiba in 1973 and was a senior executive in charge of corporate strategic planning, acquisitions, and production before taking over as president. But to the surprise of the outside world, Tanaka's seat was not yet hot, and the conflict between Nishida Atsutoshi and Sasaki broke out first.

At a press conference at which Sasaki and Hisao Tanaka took over the presidency, Nishida said, "If you ask me, can someone who has only been involved in one type of business take care of all aspects of the company? ”

It is clear that "someone who has only been exposed to one type of business" refers to Sasaki.

In response, Sasaki said, "I have completed the task of putting the company on a development track. ”

The implication is that when you handed over the shift, the company was a mess, and I at least filled in the hole.

At that time, some media analysts believed that Nishida originally hoped that Sasaki would share some responsibility for himself, but he did not expect the nuclear leak to make the problem even more serious. And Sasaki felt that the earthquake was a natural disaster, and he was too wronged to "take the blame".

Once the rift arises, it begins to expand. The suspicion, prevarication, and accusations between Nishida Atsutoshi and Sasaki have intensified the contradictions. The new president, Hisao Tanaka, will not be inevitably affected.

Since he wants to suppress Sasaki, Nishida Atsutoshi naturally wants to win over Hisao Tanaka. At the beginning of his tenure, Tanaka said in public: "Tanaka is very humble and can do his job wholeheartedly no matter how difficult the environment is. ”

However, in the whirlpool of contradictions between the first two presidents, Tanaka really couldn't be single-minded.

According to Toshiba insiders, Tanaka's presence in the company is "very weak", and some Japanese media have even ripped off the fig leaf: "The first two presidents acted arbitrarily and opposed to each other, and the current president was cowardly and incompetent." ”

While the infighting was a headache for Tanaka, it was Toshiba's financial crisis that made him even more uneasy. Looking at the financial statements left by the two exes, his heart should be broken.

Paper can't hold the fire

As for why Toshiba falsified accounts, some analysts explained: "None of the three heads obeyed anyone, and they fought openly and secretly to seize the right to speak. Because Toshiba's biggest problem is the financial deficit, whoever has good performance and can turn losses into profits will have the greatest confidence and authority. But the company's problems could not be solved by three people in a short period of time, so they had to fake. ”

In fact, there is a deeper social and cultural reason: in Japanese corporate culture, the goals set by the superiors are unconditionally obeyed by the subordinates. When it can't be done, the only way to maintain the superficial prosperity is to falsify it, and so on from generation to generation, until the last straw crushes the camel.

As the initiator of Toshiba's fraudulent accounts, Nishida Houcong has been continuously "injecting water" into the performance statement since 2008. According to a third-party investigation report, he has increased his operating profit forecast in the name of "pursuing challenges" and increased his book profit through accounting.

After Sasaki succeeded him, his biggest task was also to turn a profit, so he continued to "retouch" the balance sheet. When I arrived in Tanaka, the performance pressure was even greater, and the only way was to fake.

In this way, in 8 years and three generations of presidents, the "water injection" amount of Toshiba's financial report is as high as 1.6 billion US dollars (about 11.4 billion yuan).

It wasn't until 2015 that under the report of Toshiba's insiders, the East Window incident occurred.

On July 21, 2015, Hisao Tanaka announced his resignation and held a press conference to bow and apologize. On the same day, Atsutoshi Nishida and Norio Sasaki also announced their resignations to show responsibility for the scandal.

Hisao Tanaka (right) apologizes at a press conference.

After Hisao Tanaka, Toshiba appointed three more presidents, but he was unable to recover. Toshiba, standing on the edge of the cliff, can only keep selling property:

In 2015, it sold its image sensor business to Sony, in 2016, it sold its home appliance business to Midea, in 2017, it sold its TV business to Hisense, and in 2018, it sold its computer business to Sharp......

In 2017, Toshiba began to turn to foreign capital for help, and by the end of March 2022, foreign shareholders accounted for more than 50% of the shares.

Although this temporarily solves the problem of funding, it also brings new contradictions. Some foreign shareholders frequently intervene in Toshiba's strategic decisions in order to maximize profits. The most typical example of this is that Toshiba's most profitable semiconductor business was sold to an American company with strong interference from foreign shareholders.

In the end, when the contradiction between shareholders and management cannot be reconciled, delisting is the inevitable result.

Toshiba's fate was already sealed the moment Hisao Tanaka bowed over the fraud scandal.

Producer: Zhang Jiankui

Editor-in-chief: Xu Chenjing

Editor: Ling Yun

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