Viewpoints : Japanese Management: Good...

What would you do if your boss told you that you were being transferred to Saudi Arabia for three years? And that you would be leaving in two weeks, despite your wife’s being eight months pregnant? Would you ask to discuss the matter further with your boss? Would you threaten to or actually leave the company if management were not more understanding?

Not if you’re a male Japanese white-collar worker. Because Japanese men have none of those options, despite the conventional wisdom about Japanese management’s virtues.

No, Japanese workers would never contest such a transfer or most other problems; they risk being ostracized or fired. And as for leaving the company--voluntarily or otherwise--most Japanese would be terrified. That’s because they know that large companies won’t hire workers who’ve left another large firm. And we thought loyalty, not fear, made the Japanese stick with their companies for life.

During my year in Japan, I unearthed many similar but unreported half-truths and misperceptions of Japanese management. For instance, lifetime employment exists only if you’re male, employed full time and at a large company; 70% of Japan’s workers have no such guarantee.

Advancement by seniority often means the existence of frustrated workers whose talents are wasted while they wait for promotions. The rotations that Japanese take through various corporate departments often produce workers with knowledge bases so thin that they can’t start their assignments.

And the Saudi Arabia scenario shouldn’t be so shocking: Countless Japanese workers receive similar unrequested transfers every day, despite the supposed paternalism of Japanese companies, the emphasis on bottom-up decision making and premium on interpersonal communication.

But what about Japanese women? Forget the whole scenario. There are almost no female white-collar workers or managers in Japan. Japanese men wouldn’t hear of it. After all, who would pour the tea and answer the phones?

Pundits who’ve never worked in a Japanese company may say otherwise, but make no mistake: Japanese companies are regimented, almost feudal, hierarchies, swamped by office inefficiency and plenty of numbing overtime. They afford their workers little personal freedom, choice or enlightenment. Japanese companies succeed at the expense of Japanese individuals, so many faceless pawns in the financial chess game the Japanese call business.

So what if Japanese companies are not the humanistic, nurturing supporters of the Japanese psyche that we believe them to be? Japanese companies do succeed--financially, at least--don’t they? Surely there must be some secrets behind Nippon’s Economic Miracle.

But in seeking Japan’s magic answers we ironically glossed over corporate Japan’s not-so-complex foundations: long-term planning, sacrifice, commitment, cooperation, hard work and a concern for quality. Maybe we missed these simple but effective values because they might be painfully difficult to instill in our workers.

Ultimately, however, there’s no hocus-pocus. Japanese corporations have healthy bottom lines, in part, because Japanese workers toil long hours, receive lower pay than Western workers and accept a lower standard of living than their American counterparts. That doesn’t require Theory Z to understand, does it?

Likewise, we overlooked the Japanese worker’s motivation. We assumed the social underpinnings of Japanese management (to be) irrelevant or similar to those of our system. Many Japanese men, however, will happily tell you that they place their companies first, themselves second and their families third. Unlike Americans, Japanese workers not only derive their identities from their work, but they essentially live for their jobs.

Given these realities, would we still want to import Japanese techniques if we could? Some businessmen continue to admire Japanese management, claiming that their system effectively socializes workers to identify with companies and their goals. But at what psychological and social costs? Would Americans be willing to sacrifice our families, endure random transfers and live with such pressure that nightly drinking becomes an accepted antidote?

Even the Japanese know better: A recent survey of Japanese workers showed that only 5% found that their jobs met their expectations, and only 20% would recommend their jobs to a friend (“disgruntled” Americans were far more satisfied). Rather than extolling Nippon, maybe it’s time we examined our dangerous tendency to ignore Japan’s negative side.

All of which begs the question: Could Japanese management even work in corporate America? To me, implementing Japanese management here would be like transplanting a banana tree without its roots into some Arctic tundra. Like the ill-advised transplant, Japanese management in corporate America would quickly wither without its invisible but necessary social roots and cultural nutrients.

Unfortunately, in embracing Japanese management, we failed to consider these roots and nutrients--the context in which Japanese management “works,” to whatever extent it does, in Japan. Instead, we looked at Japan, as we tend to do, as a collection of statistics and techniques. But by studying such isolated aspects of Japan without their underlying social context, we distorted what we saw and fooled only ourselves.

In the end, the Japanese management fad probably had less to do with Japanese reality than with an American business community’s looking outside itself for quick answers to a serious recession. The Japanese business community, not willing or able to expose its shortcomings, buttressed our illusions. Unexpectedly, our look at Japanese management only highlighted the problems we have in seeing Japan accurately and suggested inadequacies in our own problem-solving methods.

I’m sure one day another fad theory about Japan will materialize. But next time, so we don’t get taken by all the hype, maybe we should call it Theory Zzzzzz.