"Making a small company into a big company is a great adventure," says Yamada. "But what's important is maintaining the character of a small company." A large company can be inspired, Yamada thinks, if it has a vision appropriate to it He notes that owners of larger Japanese companies have struggled to develop visions that would unite their workers and that they seem to be able to do this better than the U.S. companies he has read or heard about.
Mitsuboshi Cutlery Co., an exporter with 200 employees, illustrates how a company vision and other aspects of the household ideal function in a mediumsize company. When Japanese companies grow much larger than Yamada's, entrepreneurs typically adopt a company slogan or statement of ideology to keep their company spirit intelligible to the growing number of employees. Mitsuboshi has at least seven company slogans. The official "management ideology" is a brief slogan adopted just after World War II when the owner, Zenkichi Watanabe, realized that Mitsuboshi should move itself from dependence on the domestic market toward exports.
"Aim at developing the international economy through trade," Watanabe told his company, and the phrase still appears on the first page of the company's brochures. lt indicates not just that the company will seek orders abroad but also how it will seek orders that provide long-term benefit to both the receiving country and the people of Seki, the rural city, population 50,000, where Mitsuboshi is located. James Parker, owner and president of Parker Cutlery Inc. in Chattanooga, Tenn., an importer who has knives custom-made through Mitsuboshi and about 25 other Japanese cutlery companies, says that Mitsuboshi employees really are committed to building long-term international relationships -- passing up orders from small companies, for instance, while giving excellent service to companies that are big enough to maintain a long-term relationship. That, he says, is a key reason he chose Mitsuboshi as a long-term partner in a joint venture that will make bone-handled knives under a new brand name, American Blade.
But company ideologies are supposed to inspire a company's people as well as give them some basic business strategy. In addition to the one central slogan, Mitsuboshi has simple slogans for each workday. Although homespun slogans written by Japanese in English inevitably sound stilted, English is used at Mitsuboshi to encourage a sense of unity in serving foreigners. Before work on Monday employees recite in unison, "Respect customers' advice and knowledge." Tuesday, "Be nice to sources of supply." Wednesday, "Try to tackle the whole world," and so on until Saturday (many Japanese companies still work two Saturdays a month), "Try to create somethingnew."
Whether it is because of the slogans, the culture, or a combination of the two, Japanese companies do possess a cozy enough spirit to command a significant amount of mutual familial loyalty. Toshio Yamada, manager of the section of Mitsuboshi Cutlery that supervises exports to the United States, acknowledges that he might earn twice as much working for foreigners in Tokyo as he earns in Seki. Yamada (no relation to leyoshi Yamada) speaks English well and understands international trade. But he insists that he wouldn't change jobs, because his best friends are at Mitsuboshi, his work is crucial to the economy of Seki (which is heavily dependent on Mitsuboshi subcontracts), he wouldn't like the crowding in the big city, and he wouldn't want his neighbors to say, "Look at that guy, he changed jobs." Although Mitsuboshi constantly trains poorly educated rural recruits to speak English and understand foreign trade, Yamada and other Mitsuboshi managers say it has never lost an employee to a better-paying trading company.
Just as the culture fosters employee loyalty and company policy that is well thought out, it encourages managers not to make decisions without considering the opinions of employees. Indeed, even the Japanese story of creation revolves around a group decision, with a conference of some 800 deities. The group concept was deeply institutionalized 300 years before the opening of Japan to the West in 1858, when rulers decreed that entire villages would be punished if a resident committed such crimes as practicing a trade forbidden to his caste. Today, enryo, or self-restraint in deference to the group, is a cornerstone of Japanese etiquette. (The idea that a proper person should let others assert their will before he acts has occasionally left several members of leyoshi Yamada's family standing indecisively at home because none wishes to suggest which restaurant to visit for the evening.)
Self-restraint helps the Japanese manager determine what others are thinking before he makes a decision. ln studying Japanese business methods, Rodney Clark, a British specialist, examined a medium-size company that was unusually autocratic by Japanese standards -- its president had achieved the title of general manager by age 29 and retained overwhelming power for 20 years. But, when he was planning something as important as a new factory, the plan was explained at a meeting of employees not as a final decision but as an example of "how upper management is thinking." If the rest of the company acquiesced, the plan proceeded. But if upper management's "thoughts" became the subject of wry jokes or cynical comments about how out-of-touch the top managers were, the plan was changed.
Virtually all Japanese managers say that everyone in a company should be included in decision making. At the company Clark studied, vast quantities of paper, including reports on all major decisions under consideration, circulate to everyone. Similarly, at Matsuura Machinery Corp., a small machine toolmaker by the Japan Sea, vicepresident Masamori Matsuura notes that designers' reports on possible changes in production methods sometimes spark months of discussion among employees. He frequently sends ordinary production workers abroad to examine foreign factories, and he encourages Americans to do the same.
Japanese culture doesn't directly encourage all Theory Z approaches. But virtually all family businesses employ one element of Theory Z: a refusal to let numbers alone determine decisions. And most employ another: the shifting of people from department to department.
In Japan long-term employment, well-communicated corporate philosophies, and group decisions make these last two family-style approaches possible and extremely useful in large organizations. The commitment to group decision-making almost precludes making long-term judgments purely on the basis of financial calculations Ouchi notes that internal accounting systems, which large U.S. companies have constructed to rationalize decision making, are much less well developed in large Japanese companies.
