Japanese Management Style

Japanese Management Style

Japan was totally destroyed during the World War II but in less than

40 years Japan has risen from the ashes to world leadership in many

areas of technology and business. This success is attributed to its

unique managerial techniques.

Some of the main characteristics that Japanese management have are:

participative decision making, bottom-up management, lifetime

employment, "amae-dependency relationships", lean production, total

quality management, total cost management, and infrastructure support.

Applying all these, have produced high levels of teamwork, an

atmosphere of innovative ideas and a willingness to constantly

improve.

To take all these elements from the Japanese management and try to use

them in the west as goals would probably be beneficial. However, to

take them as a methodology without realizing the enormous cultural

base on which they rest and which makes them successful in their

setting is to risk to failure. The general culture in Japan prepares

people to participate in its processes through ways they often are not

even aware of. So, probably that is why the efforts to apply Japanese

managing insights have met with limited success outside Japan.

There are many positive and fundamental concepts in this management,

that probably can be applied all around the world, such as the total

quality management that devotes the responsibility of quality to

everybody working in the firm, and also the cost control production

which tries to improve quality while reducing costs by setting budgets

based on future costs rather thatn on historic costs.

Other characteristics of the Japanese ma...

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...ly important to see the

organization as a whole and act as a whole and the culture excellence

approach is constantly underlining segmentation, decentralization,

autonomy, empowering employees, concentrating in the core and not in

the whole.

The characteristic that both approaches share is the search for high

quality and to innovate as much as possible with new ideas and

technologies, because this is the only way to have a competitive

advantage and therefore be a successful company.

Each managerial style has its advantages and disadvantages, both have

been efficient, even though that they are different. The Japanese

management style obviously has been successful in Japan but not that

much in the western culture. Unlikely the culture excellence approach

is more successful in the west but not in oriental cultures.