CNN, NPR, BBC, and Bloomberg TV—all desperate to know what was
going on, absent any clear statement from Samsung. Its public relations
people, one reporter complained, were refusing to hold a candid on-record
chat.
“Samsung won’t tell us anything,” a news anchor at one of the big
media outlets said.
I’d seen this all before. I had spent the past six years reporting on the
company, both through official sources within Samsung and through my
own backdoor sources. Samsung, I knew, was a strange labyrinth of a
company, the product of a vastly different business culture from what
Americans were accustomed to.
Samsung wanted people to believe the exploding Galaxy Note 7 was
the result of a problem with the batteries the company used. But my years
of research into how Samsung operated had revealed that the underlying
problem wasn’t just a snafu with the power source. It was a problem that
began with the corporate culture, which the company had long been trying
to reform.
In more than four hundred interviews, I documented an organization
with a unique, almost military-style management system that conducted
business as if it were issuing battle orders. Samsung was no Apple, with its
personalized relationships among engineers, designers, marketers, and the
vast millions of users who had fallen in love with its elegant cellphones,
iPads, and computers and integrated them into every aspect of their lives.
Samsung, on the other hand, was highly regimented. But the Samsung
Way, as employees called it, was becoming a liability in the face of the
Note 7 debacle. The company’s defensive approach to its public relations
disaster was only hurting it further. Engineers and designers were
discouraged from speaking up about potential problems. The Note 7 was a
casualty of that culture.
Over decades of struggle, growth, and gradual success, Samsung had
instilled a sense of respect, loyalty, and fear in its employees, as well as a
reluctance to challenge Samsung management, either internally or
publicly. Samsung had connected its fate to the fate of its homeland.
“[Samsung’s South Korean headquarters] didn’t want anyone touching
anything or anyone saying anything,” a senior marketing consultant told
me, exasperated by how the company was handling the exploding Galaxy
Note 7. “So you’ve got these long delays in being able to actually talk to