United States Vs Japanese Style of Management
United States Vs Japanese Style of Management
Japan , today is one of the super economic powers in the world . Japan had to start its development process from the scratch after losing the 1945 war . Its economic environment and infrastructure was destroyed and dominated by other powerful countries . The economic conditions worsened the condition of people and they could not even afford the basic necessities of life . Nevertheless , the war could not affect people ’ s enthusiasm and energy about their social cultural value system and their exceptional efforts towards their national development made them get back to life .
Characteristics of Japanese style of management as offered by Ouchi in his book , “ Theory Z , seven key characteristics of Japanese organization ” are as followed :
1 . Life time employment 2 . Slow evaluation and promotion of employees 3 . Non specialized career paths 4 . Implicit control mechanism 5 . Collective decision making 6 . Collective responsibility 7 . Holistic concern ( full employer-employee relationship )
Japanese Managers place more emphasis on two way communication , strong interdepartmental relationship and paternalistic orientation . Whereas the US managers focus more on supervisory style , using best decision making skills and an efficient control mechanism . Also the Japanese managers consider their business units to be more effective than their counterparts in US .
Communication in Japanese firms is more ‘ open ’ and mostly face to face by reducing barriers to enable effective flow of information . Openness of communication provides support for strong feelings and bonding with other employees . Paternalistic orientation is a very father-like orientation , which make organization ’ s employees feel as though they have some say in the organizational affairs . Japanese firms are also more considerate to the concerns and activities of employees outside their workplace . They try to maintain group harmony , employee loyalty and co-operation .