Management Style Between American and Japanese free essay sample

A case in point is Japan and United States. A management style is an overall method of leadership used by a manager, or in other words, it is a type of staff employed and the way they are organized. Generally speaking, management can be categorized into two different styles: paternalistic form and democratic style. Moreover, Japanese and American leaderships correspond with these two styles. According to researchers, paternalistic form means autocracy, which reflects more opinions and personality of the leader. Conversely, democratic style put an emphasis on the innovation of subordinates, in which circumstances, employees are involved in decision-making. These differences appears to be taken into account in different aspects of local civilization. Thus, three key factors might be inferred as cultural environment, organization forms and industrial focus. This essay is designed to find out the reason why different parts of world adopt different management style and make a comparison of two nations, such as the internal culture and the external structure. Therefore, it will be a comparison not a judgement. To give a brief comparison between J (Japanese) style and A (American) style, the most concerned distinction is supportiveness. Ouchi and Jaeger (1978) in the paper quoted: Japan provides models of work systems which organize life and society but we in America have been unwilling to borrow these models, because they do not permit the individual freedom that is valued in American life. As freedom is regarded as a national philosophy rooted in each American s heart, they value independence as a most important individual freedom. On the other hand, J style concentrates on group cohesion and is depend on the leaders decision and guidance. In A style a man might prefer to stand out as an exclusive contributor among his conventional colleagues; however, in J style the approach to work and responsibility is collective and non-individual. These J characteristics are largely resulted from the lifetime employment policies of the large companies in Japan. Ouchi and Jaeger identify seven aspects in contrasting these two styles (Wellence, 2007). For A style, it is qualified with a short-term employment in the first aspect; on the other hand, J style tends to have a longer length of service. It seems that long employment can promote familiarity of business. In the second aspect, individual responsibility is essential to A style, which means that companies are determined on an assessment of individual contribution; for J style, collective responsibility has been adopted as a main mechanism of reliability. Evaluation and promotion can be seen high in A style but low in J style, which are caused by the other characteristics. Slow promotion means that employees become more assimulated into the culture of the organization. Thus in A style, it has an explicit and formalized control, but J style is excluded. That directly makes employees a Specialized career path in A style; in contrast, there is a nonspecialized career path in J style. From a whole perspective, A style possesses a segmented concern; on the contrary, J style has an advantageous of holistic concern (Wellence, 2007). Management scholars have suggested that contextual factors, especially culture, have a strong impact on subordinates reaction to various leadership style. Furthermore, a recent study by Walumbwa and his colleagues indicates that cultural environment plays a crucial moderating role in management styles (Walumbwa, et al. 2007). Japan is an island nation in East Asia. It has a long history might be traced back to the Upper Paleolithic Period. Influence from other nations followed by long periods of isolation has shaped Japans history. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries victory in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism. In other words, in the long history of Japan, it has been a representative of a highly centralized state power. Therefore, the practice of militarism straightly results in a organization type of absolute compliance with leaders, which is reflected in the management style correspondingly. Different from Japanese history, America is famous for its War of Independence, by which American people fight against the British colonization and declare their independence. Moreover, United States is an immigrate nation and her citizens are mostly from Europe, who are strongly aware of democracy and individual rights. Thus, decision making is found to be dominated by the force of most members rather than leaders. It is undeniable that cultural boundaries separate people who are in a same event and create obstacles among them. In addition, that is a reason why can also account for the difference of management style, such as American and Japanese. The work of Walumbwa and his colleagues (2007) imply that leaders are supposed to revise their management style when interacting with subordinates from different cultural environments to expand their effectiveness and to build stronger organizational commitment. It is a clear illustration of different culture values may produce different management style. Culture values are mostly manifested in ways of thinking and doing. For example, the Japanese have a tendency to issue orders rather than ask for cooperation. However, the American are also much more outspoken and direct (Wingrove, 1995). Furthermore, Japanese values a seniors orders as principles, and the compliance would be admired; but in America, personality and individual independence have been deeply rooted in each citizens thought. Consequently, cultural value introduces different managing strategies. An entrepreneurial style is not desirable in all situations, it seems to be regarded as good or bad when considered in a particular organizational or environmental context. Jeffrey and Dennis (1998) have stated that the high level of performance achieved by many innovative firms with flexible, non-bureaucratic structural attributes suggests that the fit between organization structure and firms entrepreneurial orientation may be particularly crucial to the effectiveness of that firm. Therefore, a well-defined, clearly related organization structure could realize a reasonable management style. According to Charles (1977), the socio-economic situations in the U. S. and Japan during the three decades following the Second World War were wholly different. In domestic and foreign market, the Japanese economy has grown up as an external-oriented industry. It is essentially that a highly import dependent economy and Japanese executives have kept this in mind. Although the economy is vulnerable due to external variations, Japan achieves a rapid economic growth that even exceeded the United States (Charles,1977). On the other hand, U. S. economy concerntrates on the development of technology. As new technology is in demand of endless innovation and creativity to make a breakthrough, the conservative Japanese management style is bound be a second choice, however, the indvividual motivated American style is firstly needed. While American business had to keep up with technological progress in almost all major fields during this period, Japanese business achieved technical success in some specialized fields. To sum up, different styles of management applied in different parts of the world are due to different culture backgrounds and industry modes. As seen in the comparison example of Japan and America, both these two styles make contributions to their own culture relatively. For example, American style stresses on the individual innovation but lacking in discipline and supervision; however, Japanese style focuses on absolute leadership and partnership but lacking in creativity work. Although each of them has been found some defects, both of them develop a specialized path. In fact, management style is a dynamic and fluid concept that interacts with cultural differences and organization structure. It is a challenge for a international leader or a manager to choose a proper management style that works for them and best matches the values of the subordinates. It might be predicted that different management styles will be mixed to produce more effective and positive decision makings.