Character of Japanese Business Management

In the 1980s, two independent but disturbing trends caught the attention of students of American business management and of the American public at large. One was purely domestic: evidence that American business was not performing as well as it had in the past. National economic growth was sluggish, and managers seemed more interested in shortterm financial manipulations than in business fundamentals. By the late 1970s, America's industrial plant was drifting into antiquation and obsolescence, yet managers were reluctant to plow resources back into capital development for fear that the expenditure would depress earnings and shortterm return on investmentand, perhaps, cost them their jobs at the hands of irate superiors or shareholders (Moody, 1990, p. 38).

The second trend was the sudden emergence of Japan as an economic powerhousemost vividly brought home to Americans by the proliferation of Japanese imported cars on our highways, and by their generally acknowledged superiority to contemporary American cars. This was str

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alive it is can be taken from the terms used in Japanese for business management ranksthe equivalent of "chairman," "vicepresident," "manager," and so on. These words are not borrowed from English, like so much of Japanese business language (e.g., sarariman, "salaryman," the term for a white collar worker). Instead, the names for management ranks are simply the traditional Japanese names for military ranks, which go back in unbroken lineage to the samurai era (Sayle, 1982, p. 27ff). The Japanese manager, then, is a samurai in a business suit, and his "lord" is the company for which he works. It is for this reason, for example, that Japanese university graduates compete fiercely to be hired by the largest firms, in preference to smaller firms that might offer faster promotion and more autonomy, or to going into business for themselves and entrepreneurs. To work for a great company is to be the vassal of a great lord. Smaller firms have less status, and to go off on one's own is to become a sort of management ronin, holding only a marginal place in business culture. So, too, the Japanese manager's stereotypical readiness to sacrifice vacations, or even a home life, in favor of greater dedication to the office. While h
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Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page)

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