Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 2,0, University of Cologne (Unternehmensführung, Organisation und Personal), course: Managing Organizations and Supply Chains, language: English, abstract: Royal Philips Electronics N.V. is a Dutch company that was founded in 1891 and has since then become a major player in the electronic equipment industry. The company is headquartered in Amsterdam and employs 119.001 people worldwide, of which 78% are employed outside the Netherlands. Philips has operations in over 100 countries and identifies the Netherlands, the US, Germany, France, Brazil, Japan and China as their main markets. These countries make up 57.8% of total sales and 82.9% of total assets and are standing mainly in competition with Siemens and General Electronics. From 1990 till last year Philips was in a phase of organizational transformation. Without restructuring the companys portfolio in a simpler way Philips would have had extremely difficulties during the finance crises in 2008. Today the organization represents predominantly a classical Managing Diversity of Mintzbergs five configurations which divides the companys business into three segments: Healthcare, Consumer Lifestyle and Lighting. In the healthcare sector Philips is leader in areas such as cardiac care, acute care and home healthcare. In 2010 Philips healthcare business was able to generate sales amounting to 8.6 billion EUR. The US is the largest healthcare market currently representing almost 50% of the global market. Philips consumer and lifestyle business is very broad covering areas such as television, shaving and beauty, multimedia and domestic appliances. Currently this business unit employs approximately 18.400 people worldwide with registered sales of 8.9 billion EUR last year, of which 59.9% were generated in Western Europe and 40.1% in emerging markets. Philips Lighting spans the entire lighting value chain from lighting sources, electronics and controls to full applications and solutions. The company maintains sales and service organization in over 60 countries and runs manufacturing operations in 15 countries worldwide with sales of 7.6 billion EUR in 2010.5