Some Japanese Firms Moving to Segregate Staffs : Workplace: Companies such as Nissan, Toyota and Mitsubishi are separating American and Japanese workers and managers.

Several Japanese corporations acknowledged Tuesday that they have moved to segregate their American and Japanese staffs by nationality so that American employees report only to other Americans, while Japanese nationals report only to other Japanese officials.

The segregation policy at one major company, Nissan Motor, was revealed in internal company documents obtained by The Times. Nissan’s Carson-based American sales and marketing subsidiary has decided to separate the functions of employees by nationality, a memo indicated, and has also apparently increased the authority of its Japanese managers.

“In brief, our organization will be realigned so that American staff members, with few exceptions, will report to American managers, and Japanese staff members will report to Japanese managers,” wrote Kazutoshi Hagiwara, president of Nissan’s U.S. sales operations, in the May 1 staff memo.

Officials at U.S. subsidiaries of Toyota and Mitsubishi acknowledged in interviews Tuesday that they also have moved to segregate their staffs.

“From the beginning, we’ve had a strategy that those areas that have a direct relationship with (Japan) should be handled by the Japanese staff,” said Daniel McNamara, a senior vice president for administration at Mitsubishi. American sales and distribution jobs--requiring a knowledge of the U.S. market--are handled only by Americans, he added.

The Nissan memo also defines the role to be played by Japanese managers: The Japanese are there primarily to monitor the Americans’ progress and to provide the sole link with Japan. The Japanese managers will, the memo says, assist in “the planning and checking of department activities, with the American staff carrying out and adjusting day-to-day operations.”

In addition, the memo goes on to describe in detail a bureaucratic structure in which American managers must still inform Japanese managers of virtually every move they make, despite their organizational separation.

American staff members must, Hagiwara wrote, “consult with Japanese staff member before important (non-routine) telephone conversations or discussions,” with the parent company in Japan. They also must “invite appropriate Japanese staff members to important meetings, discussions and to off-site trips or conferences.”

The memo cautions the Japanese managers--who have virtually unlimited access to company information--to “exercise authority carefully” and “avoid routine requests for information without a specific purpose.”

Nissan officials, who confirmed the policy change, stressed Tuesday that the moves were made only to better reflect the existing jobs and lines of authority held by the company’s Japanese managers.

“The purpose is to clear up any confusion about how to work with the Japanese staff,” Nissan spokesman Don Spetner said. He added that since there are only about 25 Japanese managers in the organization and few Americans report directly to them now, many American staffers considered the memo a “non-event.”

“It’s always been like this, it just has never been documented before,” added Miki Kurosu, a Japanese staff coordinator at Nissan. With expansion and an influx of new employees, Kurosu added, “we thought there was a necessity to document it.”

Still, Nissan’s action comes at a time of heightened tensions over trade between the United States and Japan and amid growing fears in the United States of Japanese economic supremacy.

It also follows reports that increasing numbers of American managers working for Japanese companies have become dissatisfied at their lack of decision-making authority and by the fact that their Japanese colleagues often don’t share confidential company data with them.

In fact, the new rules requiring all Americans to clear their phone conversations with Tokyo through the Japanese managers at Nissan in Carson will effectively ensure that the small cadre of Japanese managers controls the flow of information between the United States and headquarters back in Japan.

Kurosu stressed that that was needed in order to avoid communications foul-ups, which have occurred in the past when Americans who did not speak Japanese attempted to work with engineers and product planners in Japan.