The Japanese are so ethnocentric that they do not learn even after having paid huge price for their policies without testing their (policies') relevance in the specific cultural milieu. A Japanese MNE's policies led to severe violence and burning of company property by the workers in July 2012 in Gurgaon, India. In this violence, the chief of the HR got burnt alive, so much anguish was there amongst the rank and file workers. Similarly, many Japanese MNEs in the same and other regions in India have witnessed employee violence against the company's policies.

You have an interesting answer to your own question. On the other hand, is that an Indian-centric answer? If one looks around in the Western world, Japanese MNEs do not seem to really have huge issues, especially if one looks at auto-manufacturing in particular. In many respects, Japanese management seems to have been taken up quite enthusiastically, for example 'The Toyota Way'.

I don't completely dispute your answer, and I quite agree with you regarding the rigidity of the Japanese corporate culture. Perhaps the lack of a violent conflict in other nations where Japanese interests are is due to the ability of other cultures to yield and accomodate the Japanese, while the same thing may not have happened in India. This is an interesting question, and worth further looking into. A well-designed set of questionnaires sent to Japanese company employees all over the world may help to tease apart the details of the issue.

I agree with Debi Saini

@Prof Debi, for the past few decades, we in Malaysia have this Look East policy, where we are encouraged to learn the business ethics of the Japanese, their ethics, loyalty etc . The Japanese companies do not seem to have problems here that I know of. In fact, we are thankful for their investment in our country. Without foreign investment what will be happening to countries like mine...

Prof. Saini,

I have been working in Japan, and can say that Japanese highest technology, culture, ethics, and corporative loyalty create high expectations of Japanese staff abroad that often contradicts to local reality. But, weak points of Japanese corporative culture are 1) lack of methodology of teaching these basic for any Japanese person things to people of other cultures, especially, with recognition of specific cultural differences in each country, 2) low tolerance and readiness for any violation of ethics and corporate loyalty common in other countries

I would say that Japanese companies can work well with foreign people who admire Japanese style of life, but have problems with anyone who does not accept it.

Dear Alex

I agree with both sets of points that you have made. The biggest problem with the Japaneses is that they do not want to understand the aspirations of people from other cultures. For example, they mostly provide two tea breaks of 7.5 minutes each to the employees working in the automobile sector. In countries which are high context cultures or where relations amongst people are more important than the economic transaction themselves, this does not work. People from these cultures want to show emotions to their peers, and meet them and share things with them to meet their psychological needs or what we call needs of the soul. Also, depending upon the climatic conditions, their working style may be different. Japanese do not want to understand that, which often causes problems. In Indian automobile sector, other employers provide about 10 to 15 minutes tea breaks.

Dear All,

In Hungary we have experiences but with some Japanese orchestra conductors. They behaved finely.

It would be interesting to ask Japanese scientists!

Dear All,

Many of you mentioned big cultural differences. I have heard that most of Japanese people cannot or will not properly learn English? This can be another symptome.

Andras,

most of Japanese do learn English, still they make some common (systemic) errors linked to different phonetic and Grammatic structure of Japanese language. It is difficult to learn Japanese for Europeans as well.

Dear Alex,

If there is a language or understanding barrier it is sufficient for not finding the tone.

I believe your question arises from the different system of hierarchy in decision authority. The layers are way too much. The style of this pyramid like structure hasn't changed basically from the Edo-era which lasted from 1600 to 1868(?). The Shogun (CEO) has all the authority and the rest is for executing. The outsider like companies like early days of SONY, HONDA, Kyocera, the unique ones that stood for Japanese creativity didn't follow this style. They either gave the authorities to the ones who where working on it, or the CEO actually came down to the factories and actually solved the problems. It was either 1. the workers felt the trust from their superiors, 2. the workers had to admit the fact that their superior can do a lot more then they can to they looked upped to the managers.

Besides these irregular examples, Japanese, not just in companies alone, as a tribe are not raised in a way to express themselves. Japanese education is more like a quiz learning that lasts for 12 to 16 years. The exams don't question how they got the answer, it's just "does he/she has the right answer?" We're never asked of how we would like to make our living after graduating from education after 2nd grade in elementary school. We don't debate because it doesn't account for entrance exams for universities and employment. Practically, the so called most brightest in terms of Japanese measure are people that are equal to encyclopedia or better wikipedia. I am a returnee from abroad and experienced both oversea education and Japanese education, but boy does Japanese education is so intense on grade and GPE avg. s and so on, numbers. Not their passion, their will, their ability to overcome something that they haven't confronted before... And this won't change no matter how severely Japanese companies cry out for better personnel because the one who are screaming was raised within this system, and the ones graduating from education is basically trained in the same fashion. Probably, if the univ. Tokyo changes the way they operate, then the Japan as a country might gradually change.

We as a tribe are extremely vulnerable  to change. We tend to fear change. And boy do we feel sooth of status quo.

Dear All, 

i agree with the point that Japanese HR practices abroad bring many examples of failures; for me mainly due to huge cultural differences between the practically host country and Japanese managers. i can confirm these failures from my own experience, I used to do some consulting for Japanese take-over in Poland. From technical point of view they did a great job and they even managed to convince half of a staff - mostly women, but they failed to negotiate with boisterous union members and one fine day a Japanese CEO was physically sacked out of the company...this was the end of their investment, they withdrew with great losses but it was beyond their imagination that their own workforce could raise hands against the bosses. 

BUT i cannot agree that Japanese do not try to  learn other cultures and adapt (see eg. their successes in USA, Germany, here in Poland they also operate quite smoothly ), for me they try to adjust a lot, simply the gap is so huge, that as a result we can see this still big difference...

as for this English as a communication problem - ok, I admit it's sometimes hard to follow and even harder to answer but it's the same with Europeans or Americans trying to learn Japanese or Chinese, my trials were simply hopeless, 

regards 

Dear Beata

Thanks for sharing your experience of working woith the Japanese and their inability to adjust with other cultures. Surprisingly, the most amazing thing is that despite this a number of Japanese companies are in the forefront today globally, which of course is common knowledge. We need to know the causes of that to happen, and how they are able to survive especially in a turbulent global environment.

The Japanese managers are extremely ethnocentric and thinking about themselves as best managers. So, this stereotype stops them to believe on others and to understand others' cultural variations. This is one of the reasons of disturbances in industrial relations in Japanese collaborated/MNCs in India.

Dear Debi,

My friend is an architect. She worked with a Japanese company on an urban design project, in Doha, Qatar. Honestly she has a very disagreement about one major thing: They refuse to participate the local people in main decisions, what lead to very big mistakes like ignoring all the heritage buildings, wich means alot to the people, by adding instead of them new buildings and streets according to their own design. My friend didn't stop complaining and refusing the whole concept and after all, they ended her contract.

Dear Jeanan, I am so happy to see you sharing your friend's experience about working with the Japanese. This is called ethnocentrism in global HRM parlance. They have had some major problems in India too. Personally, I entirely agree with this experience. 

I watch this debate , and I find it very interesting! Globalization induce problems created by cultural differences, thus we learned much more about each other, but in local context It is important to take into account cultural differences!

I have no experience of working with Japanese organizations, but because I teach about quality, and because Japan is recognized as model, a benchmark of good practice and methods to improve processes, systems etc. the world is looking at Japan as a reference in many ways.

I read a lot trying to understand Japanese culture and philosophy of life, and I believe that human resources issues and the issue referred by Debi's question is related to the enormous gap between Japanese culture and the culture of the place where there is localized organization in this case!

The discipline, rigor and adaptation to the environment in which had been developed the Japanese civilization, is due of the Japanese spirit , that has no free flexibility, I think this is due of the environment: e.g. nature and the resources that the Japan has. Something like: this is our wealth, this is it, so you go forward, no matter what effort ,we are determined to achieve our goal, or "Who can, well, who does not , is need to disappear!" The inflexible approach leads to misunderstandings , conflicts, and even violence. Something like: you have to deal with limited resources

In fact, I deeply believe that action implantation, without an understanding of the local culture is an action born to die soon.

Robotics and human emotion hardly match

Dear All,

Mitra, you have me there! But I have to point out the disparity about despite the facts shared by Debi and Jeanan, Japanese take-overs in the far east is not always in vain. But true that in India, U.S., EU, the more distance the place is from Japan, the more failure happens, this being a very mild distinction. I agree with just about all of you and your sayings about this topic. But if Debi wants to qlarify the phenomenon more vividly, then my suggestion is to realize that all of the sayings above is about what is going on NOW (like in a 1 to 50 years). I am a Japanese, I've lived my youth in U.S. east coast due to my fathers work, which was building a IC circuit chip factory in a foriegn country. Just telling how it worked out, he was sent in to U.S. with nothing to start with but a vague bugget he's allowed to spend, meaning he had to start looking for the land in that I-don't-know-how-many of acres across the whole continent, and with in about 5 years he's got the factory line started. The factories started to earn profits after the 6th year, paying back all the deficits. He was sent home to take over the management of a bad cashflow factory back in Japan shortly after. As for the factory made in U.S., he told me that it fuctioned about 15 years with the last 5 years in a bad finantial state and the board of directors decided to sell it to a U.S. company.

  What I'm getting at, is that my father suceeded because he didn't impose the Japanese style, but listened to the workers that he hired in U.S. he used his time rearranging all the systems to answer the workers need while the Japanese style of quality control, efficiency, and KAIZEN(Toyota word). I'm not trying to brag about my fathers small success, I'm trying to point out that not all Japanese that come to manage foriegn companies and factories are not ethnocentric. But, yes, the majority probably are ethnocentric. So why are we ethnocentric and why are a small portion of people not?

   This is a domestic issue that doesn't have a agreed understanding with in Japan, and a lot of experts and consultants are working on it. How? Some are delving into history backgraounds on why this tribe attributed this mentality. Just talking about NOW will not give you much of a insight in to your question.

In my opinion the matter is generated by the cultural differences as results from many things, beliefs (diversity, ethnicity, education and individual backgrounds, environment, conditions, moral, resilience, religion, customs, or how it are approached: discipline, work, gender, human relations etc...).It is a big challange to work as expat!

Debi,

As a Japanese with experiences in a corporate and academia (this is not the part that really counts, though it was insightful to my way of understanding the Japanese over sea takeover problems), I think I can contribute a bit more further to this issue. I stated earlier that taking just about the CURRENT ERA won't be so fruitful. Here's an example, one may agree and some may not, but this should show why historical expedition of cultures of many places and people does come to use.

I want to pick up Debi's example, the tea break issue. Why do Japanese divide the 15 min required break by law in two 7.5 min break? And why does it fit foreign cultures? Here's how I see it. Japan is a small island with its nearly 70% of the land is covered by woods and forests. We don't have that much land to grow crops and vegetable and fruits. But that's only because you see Japan after the 1900's. Did you know that the 30% plane land is pretty fertile? Before we had the Chinese (or Korean...I don't know which..) came across Japan sea for the first time in ,I believe it was in somewhere in 100 B.C...I don't know, my apologies, and told us about farming, Japanese spent a pretty similar life as people in Europe did many years before that; hunt for meat and go into the woods for some fruits and root vegetables. Now, farming did start way before it did in Europe compared to Japan, but the way it influenced the peoples life is very different. Japan is smaller than the state of California. And we only have 30% of the land to live and do activities in. Our population back then wasn't so large due to the small lands. But think about Europe. Yes, not every had a decent meal everyday probably, but because the land is bigger hence the larger population. Despite it were the rather small areas that was suitable for agriculture, not only did it needed a bit more fertility, but the whether. It's cold. Europe already had Greek and Rome empire with vast heritage of knowledge and technologies, population flourished but the amount of food was still a luxury. If they weren't lucky to have a fertile land, then they have to hunt to live. This is the basic trouble that Europe never had a complete time of peace because every landlord was looking for a better, more fertile, woods full of berries and potatoes around them, and they fought for it. Fighting, or confronting with their peers in a peaceful way or a barbarous way was the best way to get a good land to feed their people. While that, back in Japan, after being told how to grow rice and a lot about agriculture, because the land was pretty well fertile, they were able to grow so much crops that they couldn't eat the whole harvest of the year. They started to come up with a preservation of food. Now let me be clear about a fact that their were a lot of fights over food and lands. Many people died. But the ones who succeeded on achieving wealth was always the people who didn't kill for the land, but did trading and diplomatic negotiations. This means that the more conformity led to more wealth. This is very different from the situation in Europe. Of course there are very fertile lands in France and Italy, yes. But is that enough to feed the whole Europe region? On the other hand, Japan's fertile land only had to feed population that can live no more on a piece of land that is smaller than 30% of the state of California. This is a great difference.

As a summary, this tribe has a mindless(because it came from so much in the past) belief that conformity is the best to the whole society, and institution. So we don't emphasize as much as other tribes do in individuals, we are almost mindlessly focused on the performance of the whole. Japanese don't care how each individual feels, they think individuals think about the whole because the more the whole produces, the more pay individuals get. They are mindlessly on that assumption. They don't have a clue to say "realizing ones life through corporate activities." Yeah, you hear it a lot in job meetings and recruiting sessions, but boy can I tell you those people who I assume are from the personnel division has the slightest clue to what it is that they want to achieve ore realize with in the corporation they are working for. That's why we have job rotation because it is BETTER FOR THE WHOLE for everyone to have an idea about other divisions and will count more when they become executives. That's why you rarely see a 20 to 30 year old specialists of a single field.

It in Japanese genes, if you like, to concentrate on the whole. Conformity works far better than individual stand play. Don't get me wrong, I'm never saying conformity is the best and with way to do it. But it's one way of looking at the 7.5 min of 2 tea breaks, like your on an interval of a track-and-field with a timer waiting for the next run. 7.5 min for a 3 more hours of works rest? I'm out of there.

Hope this will give an clue with an image.

My observation about this is that Japanese Products are Innovation driven and not customer driven. Also Japanese products are not modified to suit the host countries conditions. many Japanese organisations believe one size fits to all.  

IIn my opinion, all problems come from cultural gap. Japanese people are use to follow a taff discipline. This means an inflexible behavior, rigid. This is based on empirical observation... Too much rigidity, spoil the relations, stifles creativity etc ... Again arise in my mind that ”the middle way is GOLD WAY!!!

Dear Prof.Saini,

                            I agree with the points you have mentioned about Japanese companies in India. I was curious to know whether same cultural issues are faced by the other MNC's from US and Europe in India? 

I totally agree with your opinion Mr. Debi. The situation is even worse for a non-Japanese employee working for a Japanese company in Japan. If they continue to be adamant with their policies and hierarchy system which basically has not changed from Edo era, Japan is never going to learn from failures and they can never establish good connection globally. It will remain to deliver the least foreigner friendly working environment. I had a very good impression about Japan until I started working here. Now I feel like spoiling my life with a bunch of robots, who only live to work even without any motivation or goal in life. No doubt why there is a declining trend in population here. When are they going to learn the real values of life?