Heading West : Book Looks Inside Japanese Companies

From as few as 10,000 in the late ‘70s to 600,000 today, the number of Americans working for Japanese companies has mushroomed. Indeed, by the turn of the century, a million Americans are expected to be working for U.S. subsidiaries of Japanese companies.

Two new books by Orange County authors--”Yankee Samurai: American Managers Speak Out About What It’s Like to Work for Japanese Companies in the U.S.” by Dennis Laurie of Fullerton, and “How to Work for a Japanese Boss,” by Jina Bacarr of Huntington Beach--provide insight into Japanese management methods and the cultural differences between the two nations.

Their timing couldn’t be better.

Twenty-five percent of new manufacturing jobs in the United States during the last three years have been with Japanese firms, according to Laurie. And Japanese firms in general in the United States have been growing at a faster rate than corresponding American companies.

“The role of Japan is going to be enormous,” predicts Laurie, who puts a new spin on the mid-19th-Century suggestion to “go West, young man.”

“Today,” he says, “I think the same counsel holds, except now that counsel reads, ‘Go West, young man and young woman.’ And going West means standing at the shores of the Pacific and looking at the setting sun to Japan.”

“The Japanese work very long hours,” says the American distribution manager for a Japanese auto firm. “You almost cannot work long enough to be the last one out of the building. I have left here at 10 or 11 o’clock at night and still seen Japanese on the job. It’s not terribly uncommon for them to stay here all night if there is an important project to work on.”

A strong work ethic is de rigueur in Japan, where it’s not uncommon for white-collar employees to work 12 to 14 hours a day six and sometimes seven days a week. Many workers even put off taking vacations.

But how does the fabled Japanese sense of self-sacrifice and company loyalty play in a culture whose unofficial motto might be “Thank God it’s Friday”?

Surprisingly well, according to Dennis Laurie, whose book “Yankee Samurai” (HarperBusiness; $23) is based on interviews with 250 American and Japanese managers and executives working at 31 Japanese firms in the United States.

Laurie, a retired Arco executive who has taught global business at UC Irvine and is a research fellow at the Drucker Graduate Management Center, says his book “provides the reader with a window through which he or she can see what it’s like inside a Japanese company.”

Working for a Japanese company may not be for everyone.

It is those Americans already working for Japanese companies--the Yankee Samurai, as Laurie has dubbed them--who are in the forefront of bridging what amounts to a vast cultural gap.

“One of the most singular differences between the Japanese approach to business and our approach is the team orientation versus the individualistic orientation,” Laurie said, “and the Americans who are doing well at these Japanese companies are the ones who have adapted themselves to this team orientation.”

The people who have trouble with Japanese companies, he said, “are the table-bangers whose egos are so strong that they just don’t fit into this more group-oriented environment.”

An independent-minded maverick like Ross Perot, for example?

“Ross Perot would not last 10 minutes inside a Japanese company,” said Laurie.

Laurie best defines Japanese-style “team orientation” by describing a recent visit to the the Toyota Motors manufacturing facility in Georgetown, Ky.

He was walking through the main office--a large, open area half the size of a football field--where administrators, supervisors and analysts were seated at row upon row of desks. As Laurie was introduced to the employees, most of whom were wearing blue shirts with their first names stenciled on their breasts, he came to a gentleman seated off by a window.

It turns out, Laurie said, “he was the top American in this operation.”

The executive, Laurie said, was sitting in open view with no sign of the usual perks associated with his high rank: No personal secretary. No plush carpeting. No mahogany walls. No private dining room.

“It’s shockingly egalitarian to anyone who’s worked in American industry,” said Laurie. “A lot of American CEOs would have a lot of problems in that environment, but it’s a superb way to lead.”

A lot of the so-called Japanese-style management, he said, “is really just good management. The fact is that the Japanese practice it but a lot of Americans are beginning to practice it as well.”

Indeed, Laurie said, many of the same management techniques can now be found in American companies such as Nike, Microsoft, Boeing, Wal-Mart, Xerox, Motorola and DuPont.

The American companies either stumbled upon it on their own, he said, or consciously adopted Japanese management methods.

“Chrysler just launched its new line of cars, the LH line,” said Laurie. “Some call it ‘Last Hope’; a better description is ‘Like Honda.’ Chrysler executives have been very upfront in saying they spent the last four years carefully scrutinizing Honda’s operations and copying the best of Honda’s methods into their own system.”

Although Americans have had to adapt to the Japanese management style--it also includes a relatively slow promotion system, long-term thinking and an extraordinary attention to detail and quality--Laurie said, the Japanese also have had to adapt to the American way of doing things.

In fact, he said, “the Japanese have accommodated to the Americans more than they should have. They have really taken each of those factors and yielded to American individualism and the American shortness of attention span and the American work ethic to a degree beyond what I’d like to see them do.”

Laurie says, however, that “little by little you’re going to see Japan pressing their management style. What that means is those Americans who are comfortable with that will excel, and those who do not will fall by the wayside.”

One of the greatest areas of conflict, according to Laurie, is communication skills.

“Very few of the Americans are fluent in Japanese,” he said. “What that means is the burden of the communication all falls on the shoulders of the Japanese. Some are quite fluent (in English); others have speaking skills that are not so well developed.”

Laurie said an American with “some fluency in the Japanese language and especially an understanding of Japanese culture together with a background in business is nicely positioned for a career with a Japanese company.”

Despite the cultural differences, Laurie said he’s “seeing more Americans adjust to these things and doing well inside the Japanese companies.”

In fact, one of the surveys he conducted for the book indicated that some 74% of Americans felt favorable or very favorable about their Japanese work experience. That compares to about 52% for Americans working for American companies, according to a Fortune magazine poll.

Part of the reason for that, Laurie said, “is that job employment is far more stable inside these Japanese companies than it is in American companies.”

“In American companies,” he said, “the first knee-jerk response for a bad two quarters is, ‘Let’s lay off 7%.’ That’s not the knee-jerk response inside a Japanese company. In fact, in Japanese companies you’re going to see top management cutting its salary. So, it’s just a different attitude as to the value that’s placed on the employee.”

In writing his book, Laurie said he “tried not to draw value judgments, but certainly the evidence is starting to emerge that the way we (in the United States) have been operating in this country over last quarter of a century has been a disaster in terms of the adversarial relationships between labor and management and between government and industry, in terms of the power that has moved to Wall Street with mergers and acquisitions and inattention to product quality and service.”

Currently, Laurie said, the Japanese economy has slowed somewhat, and many Americans look at this as a sign of hope that perhaps the best of Japan is over.

“I think they’re wrong--because all the fundamentals are still in place. The Japanese have the most highly educated and trained work force, close government-business ties, stable social order an inordinately strong work ethic and high rate of savings. So the Japanese are really poised now for the next global surge over the next three to five years.”

And, he said, “I think the next group of (Japanese) companies we’re going to see in the United States are going to be the retail outlets, department stores and grocery chains--all those all those very service-oriented industries. The Japanese are superb at service-oriented activities.”

Despite some American resentment to Japan’s business success in this country, Laurie says he believes “we should feel indebted to the Japanese because they forced us to look into ourselves and the way we operate and our own business activities in relationship with management.”

The Japanese, he said, “have been superb competition for us, and competition makes us better.”