Masushita and Changing in Japan’s Culture
Questions and data from Closing case of International Business, Charles Hill: 1. The triggers of cultural change in Japan during the 1990s are the followings: ? The generation born after 1964 had grew up in a richer world where Western ideas affects their thinking and the possibilities seemed greater. Therefore, they tended not to be tied to a company for life ? In 1990s, a prolonged economic slump in Japan had leaded to the changes in Japanese firms’ traditional ways of doing business. The cultural change is starting to affect traditional values in Japan: ?
Companies started to fire older workers, ?The younger tended not to be tied to a company for life, to be a “salaryman”. 2. Japan’s changing culture might influence the way Japanese business operate in the future: ? Companies will have to modify traditional practices. Instead of paying bonus and salary based almost entirely on seniority, this would be based on performance. In the past, although an junior employee had better performance, he still got lower benefit/salary than the senior employee because of age and ranking.
Therefore, this did not encourage employees to devote all themselves for the company. ?Now, employees are exactly valued by their performance rankings by managers. They will try to think more, to work more effectively and devote more for the companies’ development. The potential implications of such changes for the Japanese economy are: ? In terms of employees: If they would like a better income and benefit, they have to try more and more to improve their performance to managers.
Therefore, they have to improve their knowledge and experience; to try hard to work more effectively and diligent; to raise more new ideas. The encouragement in individuality, in personnal performance leads to the higher productivity for companies and thus, leads to the more active economy. ?In terms of managers: They also have to think more, to try more to go ahead of their staff. ?In terms of companies: they have to change their old way of doing business, the employee evaluation system.
They need to continuously find the way to evaluate employee’s devote to the company most exactly and reward them worthy, develop an active cultural and business environment to adapt with the human development. 3. Traditional Japanese culture benefited Matsushita during the 1950s -1980s: ? The existence of Confucian values in the workplace in Matsushita is contributed to the Masushita’s success. By provided employees with a wide range of benefits (cheap housing, guaranteed lifetime employment, seniority-based pay systems, generous retirement bonuses), Masushita got loyalty and hard work from its employees.
