Japanese management

Gen Mgt, HR

a management style with particular emphasis on employees and manufacturing techniques, to which the Japanese economic miracle that began in the 1960s is attributed. Japanese management practices have been studied in the rest of the world in the hope that the economic success they brought to Japan can be recreated elsewhere. These practices emphasize forming collaborations, particularly in times of uncertainty, human resources, closer superior-subordinate relationships, and consensus as a means of facilitating implementation. Richard Pascale and Anthony Athos suggested that the Japanese competitive advantage stemmed from skills, staff, and superordinate goals, the softer features identified by the McKinsey 7-S framework. Other dominant characteristics include people-centered management, loyalty to employees, just-in-time, kaizen, continuous improvement, quality control, total quality management, and the ideas of W. Edwards Deming. William Ouchi expounded Theory J and Theory Z, which demonstrated the differences between U.S. and Japanese styles of management. With the downturn in the Japanese economy in the 1990s, management practices were reappraised, and there emerged a focus on radical change as opposed to incremental improvement. Customers were offered less variety, there was a shift toward simplicity, and an alternative to consensus-based decision making was adopted, with individuals making decisions based on high-tech information systems.