Unlike the other neighboring nations, Japan has a very individual culture. Ranking on Hofstede’s Insights as a 46, while this number is low compared to the United State’s 95 Japan values family and the people are loyal to the companies they work for something that can’t necessarily be said about the United States.
Japan is said to have a collectivist culture meaning that what’s done is done for the good of the group, not the individual. This dates back to the masculine paternal aspect of family’s who settled in Japan. “The most popular explanation for this is that Japanese society does not have an extended family system which forms a base of more collectivistic societies such as China and Korea. Japan has been a paternalistic society and the family name and asset was inherited from father to the eldest son. The younger siblings had to leave home and make their own living with their core families.” (2. Hofstede’s Insights) This collectivist idea is what we lack in America, sure we put family first and we try to do what benefits the group best but at the end of the day, we will do what brings food to our table. Which could also be seen as collectivist depending on how you look at it.
Japanese tend to have business loyalty, unlike in the United States where the average time spent at a company is decreasing every day. What makes this so surprising is when it is compared to the neighboring countries who like the United States have a tendency to spend a shorter time at companies.
While Japan is a very forward and progressive moving country by Asian Standards they still have a long way to go. In Japan, women are still struggling to gain titles of power in the workplace. Women are paid on average 30% less than their male cohorts. It is still expected that when a woman is married she will leave her job, or perform lower grade tasks. There are also significantly fewer women entrepreneurs than men as women struggle to find venture capital.
While Japan has many ideological values that we can inspire us to be better businessmen and women and leaders, hopefully, we can do the same for them. In the United States, women are able to perform better. We can adopt the Japanese values of putting family first, or at least, considering them more in business decisions. At the end of the day, equal rights and family are what is most important.
References
- Moran, R. T., Ph. D., Abramson, N. R., Ph. D., & Moran, S. V., MA. (2014). Managing Cultural Differnces(Ninth ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.
- Country Comparison. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison/japan,the-usa/
3.Warburton, K. (n.d.). Women in Business in Japan. Retrieved from https://www.worldbusinessculture.com/country-profiles/japan/culture/women-in-business/
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