Leadership

3 Pages 749 Words

The Japanese Approach

U.S. scholars have paid attention to Japanese management systems and contrasts in leadership styles for several decades. This interest has increased along with the exceptional success of Japanese industry and highly visible advantages gained by those companies in quality production.
The Japanese system is widely known for its lifetime employment guarantee, a seniority system that rewards loyalty and commitment to organizational harmony. In fact, Japanese management success has rested on three pillars: developing employee loyalty, improving productivity, and pursuing continuous quality improvement. Within this broad outline, several characteristics of Japanese companies emerge. First, employees, once hired, rarely leave for jobs at other companies even though they always have that choice. Second, because of Japan’s insular character, it has retained a homogeneous population that maintains cultural and linguistic integrity; in effect, it is a closed social system of relationships among companies, groups, and political interests. Third, Japan developed a so-called bottom-up decision-making environment that relies on active participation by all employees. The name of this management approach, ringi-sei (or ringi), literally means “reverential inquiry”

Japan’s approach to leadership is difficult to understand apart from its industrial history, beginning with the Meiji Restoration in 1868. At that time, growth depended heavily on the strength and private fortunes of feudal families. These social institutions amounted to military clans with strong internal networks of political and merchant relationships. As they began to establish Japan’s industrial base, they created family-dominated holding companies that began competing with on another in commerce much as they had in war. Known as zaibatsu, these conglomerates competed by establishing huge trading companies to reach beyond Japan for technology and ...