Abstract
The Chinese home appliance company Haier has transformed itself remarkably since 1984 under the leadership of recently resigned Chairman and CEO Zhang Ruimin. This chapter describes how the company evolved in a series of stages and shows how these developments led to the key principles and elements of Haier’s revolutionary management philosophy, RenDanHeYi. In 1984, the company was a struggling refrigerator factory on the brink of failure. Basic sound management and modern production methods enabled initial growth and expansion. Haier then used distinctive strategies and product innovation to expand internationally and began a radical self-transformation—shedding traditional management structures and becoming a massively “networked enterprise” to seize the initiative in the emerging IoT (Internet of Things) era.
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Notes
- 1.
In game theory, the Nash equilibrium, named after the mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr., is the most common way to define the solution of a noncooperative game involving two or more players. In a Nash equilibrium, each player is assumed to know the equilibrium strategies of the other players and no player has anything to gain by changing only their own strategy.
- 2.
The incomplete contracting paradigm was pioneered by Sanford J. Grossman, Oliver D. Hart, and John H. Moore.
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Steiber, A. (2022). Haier: A Traditional Firm Transforming into a Digital Winner. In: Leadership for a Digital World. Management for Professionals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95754-4_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95754-4_6
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