Tag Archives: Japanese

The Japanese Corporate Culture that is famous[vague] in the West is generally limited to Japan’s large corporations. These flagships of the Japanese economy provide their workers with excellent salaries, secure employment, and working conditions .[citation needed] These companies and their employees are the business elite of Japan.[citation needed] Though not as much for the new generation still a career with such a company is the dream of many young people in Japan,[citation needed] but only a select few attain these jobs. Qualification for employment is limited to the few men and women who graduate from the top thirty colleges and universities in Japan

Devotion to the Company

It is simply a fact of existence that to the salaryman, the company comes before family. Of course, deep down, he is making this sacrifice in order for his family to live better, but the price he must pay is one of long days at the office, often followed by long nights out drinking with the office staff, and suplemented by long trips — sometimes assignments of a few years — away from the family to some branch office. As I mentioned before, this devotion to the company was cultivated during the years of and immediately following the Allied Occupation. Labor unions continued to exist, but they tended to be enterprise unions — that is to say, they consisted of workers for a single employer rather than all workers of a particular trade — and therefore, even though they sometimes held protests, rallies, etc., they tended to be more cooperative with management than in some other countries.

Japan: General Careers and Slow Promotions

Because many Japanese companies offer lifelong tenure, career paths in Japan are more general when contrasted with their much more specialized American counterparts. Also, job promotion is much slower in Japan with higher emphasis on age and seniority. Promotions for top performers in American firms are granted many times faster than in the Japanese system.

A major difference between Japanese and American mindsets is that Japan focuses on the long-term while Americans frantically chase short-term goals.

Japanese Corporate Decision-Making

U.S. executives sent to manage an American subsidiary in Japan might suffer culture shock if they try to assign corporate decision-making powers to individual Japanese managers.

That’s because Japanese businesses traditionally make decisions in groups. Responsibility for those decisions is shared collectively, unlike in America where individual managers are held accountable.

Japanese Employee Controls

Japanese management is much more focused on relationships with their employees than rules to ensure corporate goals are met. Therefore, Japanese performance control mechanisms are informal. Managers in Japan depend on the honour system to get work done, relying on their workers’ trust and good will.

These informal employee controls come down to the fact that Japanese employers are concerned for their employees’ interests — both at work and home with their families. American businesses mostly focus on their employees’ work lives.

Japan’s Guided Missile Project Culture

Alfons Trompenaar designed an organizational model based on Japan’s strong emphasis on equality in the workplace and the strong Japanese task orientation.

Trompenaar used the guided missile as a metaphor for Japanese corporate culture because of the following characteristics that distinguish businesses in Japan:

• Formal hierarchal considerations are given low priority.
• Teams and project groups are common.
• While individual expertise is important, all project team members are treated as equal.
• Japanese teams take a problem-centered approach to their tasks.
• The Japanese focus intently on the work with all members committed to the team goal.
• Japanese managers use extensive suggestion systems and quality circles to solicit employee feedback, and are always available to listen to team member concerns.
• Because supervisors and subordinates work closely together, changes are executed quickly.