, Ouchi found not a mirror image complaint, but the same complaint. While generally satisfied with the Americans' performance, the Japanese said that "they just don't understand objectives (1981, pp. 40-41)."
What emerged was that the two sides had a radically different conception of what they meant by "objectives." To the Americans, "objectives" meant specific performance targets and guidelines of the quantitative sort proposed by familiar American management techniques such as Management by Objective (MBO). To the Japanese, it meant something less easily defined: the role of the firm in its relationships with customers, employees, the community at large. While the American concept of objectives was quantitative and narrowly "economic," the Japanese conception was qualitative and more broadly "social."
In other questioning, Ouchi found that American businessmen were frustrated by Japanese partners' slowness in reaching agreements, while the Japanese found the Americans quick enough to reach agreements, but maddeningly slow to
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