“The Japanese Management Metamorphosis: What Western Executives Need to Know About Current Japanese Management Practices”

Markus Pudelko and Mark Mendenhall

Organizational Dynamics

Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 274-287

The authors of this article analyzed data from 68 Japanese firms “to better understand the perceptions and opinions of Japanese managers regarding the viability of adopting Western management practices”.
Some key findings were:

• The Japanese managers perceived their management systems to be in a state of crisis.
• Japanese companies are undergoing profound strategic reorientation. There is a shift to shorter-term orientation, to less over-diversification, and the scaling down of traditional company networks (or “keiretsu”).
• Japanese companies are opening up more to outside influences.
• There are major shifts in HR practices, including more focus on individual performance (instead of seniority) for compensation, more flexibility in recruitment practices (including less emphasis on lifelong employment), and more focus on specialists instead of generalists.

The article also discusses where the authors think Japanese management is heading and how Western companies should react to these changes.

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