Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Eui-sun's management moves are outspoken. Analysts say that Hyundai Motor Group, which has stood tall as a global company through completely different leadership from before, is leading the group. In particular, Chung's management style is best illustrated by the recent expansion of his product line, which encompasses active cooperation with rival companies, unconventional personnel, and all forms of mobility.
"The old pure bloodism of solving everything on one's own is no longer a virtue for global companies such as Hyundai Motor Group," a Hyundai Motor Group official said. "This is why Chairman Chung is boldly trying to transform himself into a convergent organization."
The most striking point of Chairman Chung's management strategy is to actively cooperate in areas that require cooperation while competing with competitors. The strategy, also called "frenemy," a combination of the words "friend" and "enemy," is highlighted in its collaboration with Toyota Group, the world's No. 1 automaker.
Hyundai Motor and Toyota are fiercely competing in many parts of the world, including the United States, Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. It also overlaps with the customer group in that it makes popular cars. For this reason, it is unusual for Hyundai Motor to recently announce that it will strengthen cooperation with Toyota.
Although the two companies continue to compete in the existing internal combustion engine and hybrid vehicle sectors, they are expected to cooperate in creating a future hydrogen energy ecosystem.
Chairman Chung's presence played a major role in such cooperation. "Toyota is a conservative company in decision-making, as there is a saying that it crosses after beating its stone legs three times," said a representative of a company that supplies parts to Hyundai Motor. "If Chairman Chung had not visited Chairman Akio Toyoda to Japan earlier this year and gave confidence in Hyundai Motor Group's vision and what Toyota could gain, Toyota would not have cooperated with Korean companies."
The same goes for collaborating with Google Waymo in the field of autonomous driving. Chairman Chung is making efforts to acquire 4T2Dot for autonomous driving technology and reorganize the research organization. However, it formed a cooperative relationship with Waymo because it was too much to compete with U.S. companies with enormous capital or Chinese companies that collect data by operating thousands of self-driving cars.
"From Hyundai Motor's point of view, it may be a 'crisis' to give up technology to the other party, but if it develops better technology using the technology it received from the other party, it becomes an 'opportunity,'" a Hyundai Motor official said. "If the former Hyundai Motor Company took a bigger view of the 'crisis' and spared itself from collaborating with rival companies, Chairman Chung, who emphasizes 'opportunity,' has no fear of this."
The second point is globalized greetings. President Jose Munoz, who was appointed as a foreign CEO for the first time in Hyundai Motor Group's history on the 15th, is a representative example. Recently, not only executives but also existing managers are recruiting talented people who have achieved results from global companies, including Meta and Google. A Hyundai Motor employee said, "Some departments naturally communicate with team members in English because the head of the department is not good at Korean," adding, "I feel with my skin that the company is rapidly globalizing."
Chairman Chung succeeded in changing Kia's constitution by recruiting Peter Schrier, a world-renowned automobile designer, when he was working at the company. BMW President Albert Biermann, who was hired afterwards, is also said to have upgraded the performance of Hyundai Motor Group's cars by two or three levels. "Looking at the success of the two, I would have learned that we need to reform the Korean human resources system to make products that will be used around the world," said an HR representative for a foreign company. "As a result, abandoning pure bloodism in human resources is one of the biggest reasons for the success of Chairman Chung's management."
The third point of Chairman Chung's management method is the expansion of all-round investment to transform into a comprehensive mobility company. Hyundai Motor Group is one of the few automakers that produce and sell all of the existing internal combustion engines to hybrids, electric vehicles, and hydrogen cars.
In addition, it is investing heavily in new types of mobility, including urban air mobility (UAM).
Through this, Hyundai Motor Group is creating an optimized portfolio that can respond to any market. If necessary, it is not impossible to work with a partner who has strengths for each product.
A good example is to cooperate with GM to develop pickup trucks suitable for the North American and Latin American markets. The same goes for continuously developing and launching small cars suitable for the Indian market.
"Other carmakers also tried to build an optimized portfolio, but gave up or failed," said Na Seung-sik, president of the Korea Automobile Research Institute. "The success of Hyundai Motor Group is so special that it is the subject of research by other automakers."
[Kim Dongeun is a reporter]
