OT-OT-long post-apologies in advance.
Jay, I'm not sure what you mean by "NYT explaination, Japan is not stupid". I doubt the NYT was saying the Japanese are stupid, but, that matters not.
Having worked for Japanese company's for more than 20 years and spent a great deal of time in Japan the strengths and weaknesses of that culture and the organizational structures they use has become pretty apparent to me. If you understand Japanese culture and behavior the problems there and the slow motion depression the country is in becomes much easier to comprehend.
Simplifying it to a great extent the great strength of Japanese people rests in their intense socialization around group behavior and group norms. People in Japan are brought up to be functional parts of larger groups, to sublimate their egos to the group's purposes and objectives and to be "team players" regardless of their feelings about the other members of the team and their desire for personal attention and glory. This is in stark and complete contrast to the obsession of U.S. culture with individualism and the triumph of the ego over the group.
Layered on top of these basic traits are others such as a meticulous sense of planning in Japan and attention to detail. Both of which work very well with groups, especially cohesive groups. For years, the U.S. did not place much serious emphasis on either.
The result of this was that from the late 50's through the early 90's the Japanese were able to take their very cohesive society and organize it around detailed, long range plans and dedicate huge resources to carefull quality control through meticulous attention to detail.
The end result of this was an economy that was rarely "first" to do something, but, inevitably did it better thanks to better planning and quality management. The only weakness was that the Japanese developed an almost complete aversion to having to change their "plans". Once something was decided through the long and arduous process that they use to plan it just couldn't, shouldn't, wouldn't be changed.
During the same period the U.S. economy floundered because while it continued to produce many things "first" it couldn't hold on to that position because of lack of effective planning to deal with cost reduction(required as products mature) and quality control.
So, what changed? Well, the world changed and things became much, much more unpredictable. While in the 60's and 70's it was fairly easy to predict the evolution of technology on a 5 and even 10 year basis; by the 1980's and 1990's this was no longer the case. Things were moving much to fast to have any real chance of accurately predicting where things were going in 5 or 10 years.
In the 80's and 90's the ability to adapt quickly, make changes on the fly and totally change direction as needed became keys to success due to the unpredictable nature of economic events driven by technology.
This was a worst case scenario for Japan and a best case scenario for the U.S. The grinding, make no mistakes planning that typified Japanese business moved much to slowly to deal with a rapidly changing environment. Group decision making takes much too long, especially when it must be bottom up, consensus driven decision making. Their total distaste for changing their plans left them flogging ahead with strategies that were no longer valid long after they should have given them up.
Meanwhile, in the U.S. the ability of Americans, in general, and U.S. corporations to make changes quickly increased dramatically. With the evolution of the computer, semiconductor and software industries a great number of very "smart" people were suddenly in businesses where they would have been academics, doctors, lawyers or research scientists a few years before. "Nerds" were now running businesses and they were not afraid to make changes and move fast and they were much smarter than the typical "businessman" that had driven U.S. business for decades. They also appreciated the need to develop cost reduction strategies and quality management strategies.
So, in a very short period of time the world was turned on its head. Japan was suddenly behind the curve everywhere while the U.S. was on top and staying there.
The reason that Japan has not emerged from its problems is that it can't really change its culture, it still relies on a very outmoded model for its decision making and it remains very inflexible about dealing with the unexpected. The Japanese will always trimuph over other nations where they have the time to copy what's being done, plan better than the other guy and build a higher quality product. They will continue to fail where they try to compete in fast moving areas that require great flexibility and the willingness to throw out last weeks plans to develop new ones this week.
You can actually look back at WWII and see the very traits I'm talking about. At the beginning of the war Japan was VERY successful. Primarily because they had time to plan carefully and when you are on the offense its your plans that the enemy must react to. However, once they stretched their resources too far they were forced to go on the defense which requires an abilty to react quickly and change your plans as circumstances dictate. Thus, once on the defense they collapsed against the U.S. despite the fact that 80% of U.S. war effort was directed at Germany and not Japan. Japan tried to rely on mindless devotion to cause and unbelievable courage to overcome their own inability to deal with rapidly changing circumstances.
Lastly, as you know Japan is a very closed society. They do not like foreigners and do not encourage or even make possible immigration to their country. This has limited them greatly. The U.S. on the other hand is very open to immigration, particularly to motivated, educated "smart" people and the economic revolution in the U.S. could not have been accomplished without thousands and thousands of very smart, hard working people from Asia, India, Europe and Latin America that came here in the last 20 years.
All in all, I think there is no doubt Japan will continue to struggle as long as the world remains a very rapidly moving place with unpredictable technological and economic events. |
