Rutgers, State University of NJ
Graduate School of Management
Contact:
Helen Paxton; 201-648-5177
[email protected]
DO JAPANESE MANAGERS HANDLE WESTERN WORKERS
DIFFERENTLY?
Japanese managers are more likely to use reason, reciprocity, and
rewards--and to be more controlling--in dealing with Western
subordinates, says Asha Rao, Assistant Professor of Managemnent at
Rutgers Graduate School of Management.
So many people have studied Japanese management, its
characteristics are now common knowledge. Japanese managers in
the U. S. have also come in for a large share of scholarly attention.
But what about the Japanese manager who has both
Japanese and western subordinates? Does the manager treat them the
same, or use different management styles?
Dr. Asha Rao, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior
at the Rutgers Faculty of Management, is the first to undertake such a
study. She located over 200 Japanese expatriate managers in Canada
who had both Canadian and Japanese workers under their supervision,
and she carefully questioned them about the way they manage.
The intricacies of her research methods, which take up most
of her recent article, need not concern us here. Instead let's go straight
to her findings.
The overall answer is Yes: In dealing with Canadian workers,
Japanese managers use techniques different from what they use in
dealing with Japanese workers. Here are five differences.
(1) They are more likely to use reason. They rely more on
data and information, on using factual and logical arguments, to
convince western subordinates to do the work.
(2) They also are more likely to use reciprocity, whereby the
manager offers time, effort, or skills to help an employee, in exchange
for the employee's willingness to do certain work.
(3) They turn more often to upward appeal, relying on more
powerful members of the organization to get subordinate compliance --
sometimes through formal channels, other times simply by asking
superiors to deal informally with the subordinate.
(4) They also rely more heavily on rewards and
punishments. This difference may well derive from the fact that
westerners are more used to such motivators than Japanese workers
are.
(5) Finally, they use more total influence over western
workers, probably because that's a well-known tendency of managers
who manage in new or less-familiar surroundings.
A few surprises turned up. Dr. Rao had expected to find that
Japanese managers would be less assertive with their Canadian
subordinates -- less likely to order them to do something -- but the
evidence showed no differences. Another unfulfilled expectation was
that Japanese managers would be friendlier toward their western
subordinates, and more willing to bargain with them. In fact, Japanese
managers felt that it was demeaning to bargain with their subordinates
of any culture, even though western managers often do so.
What's ahead? Since this study focused only on managers,
and on male ones, the obvious next steps are to repeat the survey from
the employees' point of view and to include female managers. Finally,
now that Dr. Rao has laid the groundwork for the study, important
refinements can be taken into consideration. Among the things that
have to be looked at are motives, trust, cross-cultural training, and
-- in this global age -- the degree of international exposure.
Besides these individual traits, moreover, the whole question
of a corporation's culture needs to be fed into the equation.
What we do know now, for sure, is that intercultural
management styles can't be accurately described in broad
generalizations. They depend not just on the manager but also on
who's being managed.
ASHA RAO teaches Organization Management courses at the Faculty of
Management. Before coming to Rutgers in 1995, she taught at McGill
University in Canada. She has done extensive research in
"impression management" and in international business negotiations
and has provided training in cross-cultural management.
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