Research Article
Success Strategies of Employee Buyout Companies Divestitured by Large Corporations: The Case of Bixolon
1 Hanyang University
Published: January 2024 · Vol. 28, No. 4 · pp. 35-56
DOI: https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.17287/kbr.2024.28.4.35
Full Text
Abstract
In the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, many companies are being spun off from their parent companies. While most of the existing literature focuses on whether the spun-off company generates excess profits by analyzing the stock prices of the parent company and the spun-off company, there is a lack of research on how the spun-off companies can be successfully operated. This paper aims to identify the success factors by analyzing the performance indicators of the spun-off companies as well as the strategies and resources used by that the spun-off companies to succeed in independent management. Bixolon, a former POS printer team of Samsung Electro-Mechanics, was taken over by its employees in 2002 in the form of an employee shareholding system and has grown to become the world's second-largest global leader in the industrial mobile printer market. Bixolon's success can be attributed to three key factors. First, its leaders set a clear vision and shared with its employees. To achieve its vision of becoming a global leader in mini-printer solutions, the company took the lead in communicating with employees through transparent management such as one-day settlement, maximizing employee morale and aiming to be the best in the world in terms of quality. Second, it leveraged both the resources of its parent company and its own strengths as a startup. While bringing in the parent company's workforce, brand, customers, and management system, Bixolon, as a startup, established a flexible decision-making and rapid response system. Finally, Bixolon established and implemented strategies that were differentiated from its parent company, such as getting paid in advance, growing the market rather than competing, and executing strategies even if they seemed impossible.
