Question

What are the unique problems faced when attempting to compare a Japanese company to a company from another country?

Answer 1

any researchers have studied the Japanese people and Japanese management practices. The basi problems when comparing the two are mentioned below in tabular form:-

Exhibit 1 Workers Characteristics and Attitudes
Characteristic	Typical Japanese	Typical U.S.
Self image	Belong to a group. Okay to show feelings and weaknesses.	Individual. Macho. Hide feelings and weaknesses.
Nationalism and image of Race.	Strong sense of nationalism based on a single superior race.	Strong sense of nationalism, but many racial conflicts.
Education.	Rigorous system through high school.	Relatively weak system through high school. Click for Summary of 2001 ASCE Report card on U.S. Infrastructure.
Social cooperation and willingness to work together.	Team players. No stars allowed. The individual is not important. Uniformed teams are self regulating.	Competitive. Engage in political power plays to become stars. Few team players.
Respect for authority.	Substantial.	Minimal.
Attitude toward work.	Live to work. Self sacrifice. Highly self disciplined. What can I do for the Company? High tolerance for personal discomfort. Decline vacations and sick days. One family service day per week acceptable.	Work to live. Self gratification. Little self discipline. What can the company do for me? Low tolerance for personal discomfort. Take all vacation and sick days allowed. Family demands require weekends plus.
Attitude toward work-place, property and environment.	Everyone's job to keep it clean. Respect property of others.	A clean work-place and environment is someone else's job. Less respect for property of others.
Loyalty.	Loyal to Company. Company first. Individual and family second. Belong, to or married to, a company for a lifetime.	Loyal to Self. Individual and family first. Company second. Work for a company to gain experience to obtain a better job elsewhere.

Exhibit 2 Management Policies and Attitudes Towards Workers
Policy or Attitude	Typical Japanese	Typical U.S.
Workers suggestions.	Way to achieve continuous improvement (kaizen).	Threat to management.
Employment.	Lifetime. Paternalistic. No layoffs. Promote from within.	Revolving door. Workers laid off during economic decline.
Training.	Use cross training and job rotation to develop human resources as a competitive weapon.	Little commitment to training. De-skill so all are expendable. Use other firms training programs as leverage by scavenging workers.
Incentives.	Recognition. Pats on back. Trophies, plaques and metals. Group approval and praise. Profit sharing. Charts or boards (andon) over work stations show goals and current rate of achievement. Dress code to promote team spirit.	Mostly monetary. Individual ego.
Participation in decisions.	Worker participation expected to reach consensus decisions.	Pseudo participation. Autocratic decisions.
Managers accessibility.	Accessible to workers. Wear same uniform. Open office policy in plant.	Inaccessible. Aloof. Offices separate from plant.

Exhibit 3 Management Competitive Focus and Policies
Policy Area	Typical Japanese	Typical U.S.
Overall focus.	Long range focus on competitive strategy.	Short range focus on the bottom line.
Operating strategy.	Continuous Improvement (kaizen).	Optimize with a given set of constraints.
Inventory and other resources.	Just-in-time (JIT) or just enough resources (JER). Squeeze out waste, (muda, mura and muri). Minimum workers must be highly skilled and flexible. Fewer parts, inspections and job classifications.	Just-in-case (JIC) keep lots of slack inventory and resources. Highly specialized jobs based on scientific management. Dehumanizing repetitive tasks. EOQ for resource decisions.
Quality control.	TQC. Seek perfection. Zero defects. Use as strategic weapon.	Inspect for optimum level of defects.
Vendors and customers.	Long term partnerships. Have co-destiny. Frequent deliveries, few vendors.	No special relationships. Obtain best price from multiple vendors.
Equipment.	Design in house to maintain technological leadership. Used, but not abused. Emphasize preventive (operator centered) maintenance. Replace parts before they break.	Buy turn-key systems as a form of leverage. Abused and overused. Maintenance discretionary. Wait until it breaks down to replace, to enhance current performance.
Union.	Company. Emphasize cooperation. Promote team approach. No strike policy.	National non-company. Adversary. Rules prohibit cross training and flexibility. Strike used as weapon.
Production.	Small focused plants. Work performed in sequential order to remove inconsistency according to program work sheets.	Less focused plants. Task not programmed.

Exhibit 4 Management Accounting and Control
Policy Area	Typical Japanese	Typical U.S.
Overall reporting strategy.	Used to influence behavior. Emphasis on non financial measurements of strategic activities with charts on wall.	Used to inform management. Emphasis on financial measurements. Management by the numbers, i.e., net income, ROI, and EPS.
Planning and control.	Bottom up. Goal setting and feedback. Worker involvement. Near fanatical commitment to four step Plan, Do Check Action approach. Budget and compare actual to market driven dynamic target costs continuously reduced.	Top down. Roll down financial budgets to lower levels. Budget and compare actual to flexible budgets based on engineer driven standard costs for given plant and resource constraints.
Cost.	Long run plant wide life cycle costs.	Short run production costs.
Measurements.	Life cycle costs. Quality, lead time, flexibility (e.g., average number of jobs mastered per employee, average setup times) number of line stops, down time, process times, amount of inventory, number of customer complaints.	Cost variances, labor efficiency, machine utilization. Meet due dates.
Investment justification.	Long term perspective. Emphasis on growth, increasing market share, flexibility, customer needs and business unit interrelationships.	Short run emphasis. Quick pay back.

The comparison of the U.S. and Japanese workers and management attitudes and policies paints a rather bleak picture of America's position and potential in the global economy. However, it should be emphasized that the summary comparisons provided above are based on a great many generalizations that do not apply equally to all workers and companies. Many American companies began to develop a different strategic mind-set in the 1980's and currently use many of the concepts previously attributed exclusively to the Japanese. One of the most notable examples of the changes taking place in the concepts underlying U.S. management practices is provided by the CAM-I cost management systems (CMS) conceptual design document. The CAM-I publication embraces the overall concept of continuous improvement and most of the accompanying sub-concepts including just-in-time, total quality control, life cycle costing and a portfolio approach to investment management. The CMS conceptual design was developed by a large group of individuals employed by CAM-I's sponsoring firms and organizations who continue to work together to develop better cost management and performance systems.