Executive Summary of Chiba

Collectivism is doing something not just for yourself but for the good of everyone involved. It has nothing to do with the individual and everything to do with the overall group’s success. This is what the Japanese value highly. They always reinforce this throughout the movie about how they will do whatever it takes for the company to do good. One of many examples of this is when the Japanese show up to play the softball game. Before the game starts you see the Japanese team working together and participating in a team warm up. The Americans make fun of this and think of it as something that makes them weaker. When the game starts you are able to see exactly how this hurts the Americans. The Japanese play a “small ball” game and worry about getting runners on base and relying on everyone working together to get runs on the board. The Americans, who are less team oriented, try to do everything themselves and try to hit the ball as far and hard as they can every time they come up to bat.

The cultural behaviors of the “American” or “Japanese” in the video do not accurately reflect business behaviors in these countries so please do not generalize based on the video. The video is meant as a classroom exercise to analyze a specific cultural encounter. Total 20 points.

Costco Wholesale Corporation operates an international chain of membership warehouses, which carries quality, brand name

In Japan, for all its business and technological skills, social values take priority over purely economic ones. Reid's interesting description of a new-employee ceremony at a large Japanese corporation, in this case the electronic giant NEC, highlights his celebration of how Confucian ritual dignifies life in the Japanese workplace.

Therefore, Mexican workers tend to be very dedicated to their jobs. Mexicans do not hesitate to go for the extra miles to work longer hours to make additional money to support their family. One major cultural clash between Anglo Americans and Mexicans are concept of timeliness. Punctuality is not big concern for Mexicans. American culture featured promptness and timeliness; the Mexican culture could care less. Mexicans believe their supervisors know everything and should always show respect to authority and not ever questioning their supervisors and elderly ever. It is considered disrespectful to question supervisors and elderly. Therefore, in this case study, it is possible that Jose Alvarado could be a younger Latino manager. So, that could explain why he is having trouble and difficulty to supervise his Latino workers. Also, keeping a harmony relationship with their own fellows are also very important to them. Therefore, it will be a challenge task for Alvarado to criticize his fellow Latino workers. This could possibly be the reason why Alvarado is dissatisfied with his new title. In the workplace, the cultural differences in terms of personal sensitivity are the source of many, if not most, of the conflicts between Mexicans and Americans. Americans, for the most part, are individualistic, competitive, and comfortable working on their own. Americans think highly of personal initiative and are self-starters. When

Hierarchy and status are considered highly important in both Japan and Mexico in addition to a strong separation between the work and home life. Both Mexico and Japan rely on strong work relationships and loyalty in addition to having top down style of commination and information flow. Both countries have a belief in collectivism over individualism, according to Hofstede’s Value Dimensions, with Japan slightly higher on the index, similarly for the masculinity index. The implications of these characteristics can be viewed in each countries’ management approach. These societal values and characteristics influence each countries’ business behavior and methodologies. (Deresky, 2014)

1. The diverse mentalities presented in the movie of American workers compared to Japanese workers validate how different cultures have such a profound impact on management style and leadership. To the Japanese, work comes before everything. Their standards of efficiency and quality seem utterly impossible to the Americans. Throughout the movie, American workers exhibit a poor work ethic, along with a lazy attitude toward quality control.

The similarities between North American and Japanese working styles is that investing in the local community is an important business value in Japan as well. Both used Japanese and English language and feedback is indirect. These countries are both result driven. The differences in North American and Japanese working styles is that women in Japan were not as prevalent in the workforce as in North America. The employees in North America worked fewer hours than the employees in Japan.

In this case “Kelly’s Assignment in Japan”, we have an example of expatriation poorly managed and unprepared. Different cultures, customs seem very important between Japanese and Westerners. Added to this barrier, we also not that there

In high power-distance culture, people accept disproportionately allocated power (Hofstede, 1991) and tolerate inequality with natural assumption (Sagie & Aycan, 2003) while those in the low-power distance find “important to minimize or even eliminate social class differences” (Hofstede, 1991); there is uneasy acceptance of the privileges connected with the position (Mead, 2003). Particularly in business, people have a fear of punishment in the event of disagreement with the management’s decision in high-power distance cultures, but less strong in the low-power distance ones. (Mead, 2003). Kazuhiro is an example of people living in the high power-distance culture since he accepts more power along with higher status of his boss though his boss orders him to sing and chant in a ridiculous way as “Ribbon of shame” for his previous poor performance. However, as an American, whose country is considered low-power distance (Hofstede, 1991), Hunt takes it easy when his workers call him just last name in a host of scenes. In addition, his communication manner in conversations with his Japanese manager, Kazuhiro is relatively open and informal despite his lower status in the plant. He even fights against Kazuhiro when having conceptual contrast with Kazuhiro in worker evaluation with no fear of punishment. All of his above features depict a Western person belonging to a low- power distance

In Japan, business organisations use wa for practice, which is different from China that use guanxi as their practice. Both of them have different use for the organisation but they will provide many benefit to them. The competitive advantage that Japanese’s firm receive from wa or teamwork is actually base on its own characteristics. Wa refer to the value that Japanese give to loyalty and consensus. According to Altson (1989), Wa is the existence of mutual corporation that encourage the employees to put all of their energy and work together to achieve the common goal. Personal interest is disregarded that all of the member in the group need to discard the idea of personal gain before the group benefit. However, this does not mean that members will not receive any benefit from their work but will be rewarded after the group’s goal is achieved. Group membership is more important than specific position. Wa demand employees to work as the team and trust each other during the process. Japanese think that do business with friends is better and having a proper introduction will initiate the business relationship to be established. Contract was viewed as the personal agreement in Japan and it will change when conditions change. Social relationship will be formed through the third parties or mediators who will smooth thing out for both parties and are respected from both of them.

Mr. Fisher, President of Central Steel Door, made many mistakes in his efforts to hire a sales manager in Europe. First, advertising in the International Herald Tribune is only going to attract Americans who lack the intelligence and in-country expertise the company needs to successfully compete in unfamiliar markets. Second, he fails to make the most of these candidates that these ads generate by asking them for referrals and offering an incentive. He fails to use the limited success of the ads to successfully network into the international community. Third, the lack of sensitivity ot living costs in Belgium and Germany for sales manager led to them quickly resigning. Fourth, Mr. Fisher didn't coordinate with the Belgian government to ensure employment taxes were paid on time, leading to a bill for back taxes of thousands of dollars. Fifth, the hiring of ten local people to staff distribution centers and the firing of five of them not only had to be communicated months in advance to local government authorities, Central Steel Door is legally obligated to pay them for a full year of their salaries based on German law. Sixth, the ignorance of local, regional and national laws ends up costing the company more than it made on any sales in the region ruing the case study's timeframe. Seventh, Mr., Fisher neglected to consider how the cultural differences between the Untied

The managers were also not trained properly and maintained a centralized management approach. An HMSI manager was quoted in the statement saying, “The Japanese do not understand the workers’ language.” Management failed to understand the ideas brought to them by workers, “could not understand the organizational working from the employees’ point of view.” It was said that the Japanese failed to give Indian managers enough power to solve problems. The Indian managers were production specialists, who had very little understanding of industrial relations issues.

The book I read is Terry Besser’s TEAM TOYOTA-Transplanting the Toyota Culture to the Camry Plant in Kentucky. It mainly described the issue that Japanese automobile company Toyota transplanted a plant in Kentucky and intended to use “Japanese Management” to manage and guide the daily operation of the factory. In order to adapt to the foreign environment and American employees, Toyota cut some of the features, which are commonly used in “Japanese Management”, like “the company union” or “Seniority pay and promotion system” and introduced a certain features like “lifetime employees”, “group responsibility” and “welfare corporatism” to the workplace which significantly increased the employees’ sense of belonging and job satisfaction. Also, differently with other Japanese organizations which paid little attention to female employees, Toyota made a series of policies and rules, like “multi-shift” or “children-care services” which smoothed the participation of female employees and successfully received the support from wives of the managers. However, based on the researches and surveys that Terry made towards the company, she believed that actually Toyota was “unwilling to change the essentials of its production and management systems in its overseas operations” (Besser, 1996, P.1) but because at the time when Terry Besser wrote this book, the plant was just operated for a short while, so the long-term effects of management still need to be examined in the

The main issue in case study 4-7 focuses on what the Japan company Nippon Cash Machines and their recent US merger National Office Machines should do to their Japanese sales force who has always followed a salary based payment plan and lifetime job security because they are quickly loosing market share in a highly competitive market. Therefore, the main statement for the case is as follows: