Western Influence on Japanese Business Management

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Japanese management: how the western influence and the 1990s crises have modified management practices in Japan, and in Japanese companies broadly speaking?

Introduction

Japan has been the second largest power in the world for several decades, now. As a quite remote island in Asia, its history and development shaped a country with its own way of thinking and behaving, and as far as we are concerned, with a great economy and a technological lead over its Asian neighbours.

After the Second World War (WWII), Japan started from scratch, and its business succeeded very well, first on the domestic market and then on a world-scale. In the 1970s, Westerners were looking at Japan in awe, and tried to know how it could be such a good competitor in various sectors (e.g. electronics, car making and so on). The Japanese management myth was born to last. Some of the main characteristics are: participative decision making, bottom-up management, lifetime employment, "amae-dependency relationships", lean production, total quality management, total cost management, and infrastructure support. Though, since the 1990s, with intense globalization and several crises which impaired their economy, Japan companies have changed their way of running a business, but to which extent?

One will try to tackle this issue by first analysing the core components of traditional Japanese management, and how it was shaped by culture and history. Then one will the influence it had on other countries, and reversely how Westerners made this style of management evolve into a new one.

General background

- Cultural elements

Japan was quite isolated from the rest of the world for a long time, under the Tokugawa dynasty (17th and 18th), thus the inimitab...

... middle of paper ...

...isation of work. History, too, fashioned Japanese management: the need for revenge after the humiliation of WWII was used in a very positive way to foster industry and achieve the Emperor?s dreams in a pacifist way, that is conquering Asia on an economic viewpoint.

As a conclusive word one will cite Mauri Kaoru Kobayashi?s essay: in Japan, ?The traditional paradigm of organizational structure is no longer adequate for [its] long term survival... adult business education provision in private sector shows that employees are increasingly taking initiatives for their professional education rather than their companies? dictating what skills they should have?. Even though the core components of Japanese management are still present, today the country?s companies must their Human Resources policies evolve in order to keep a central position in the global market economy.

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