The First Reason Must Consider The Success

By Patrick Hanna

However, if the company is forced to change in just one aspect, that seemingly limited change can bring about many other changes. We have noted an example of a seemingly small change that has far-reaching consequences. That is, Japan's rapidly aging population makes it difficult for even the largest companies to recruit employees straight from s

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patrick Hanna
• Release date: Feb 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869209047

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The First Reason Must Consider The Success

The First Reason Must Consider The Success

Copyright © 2023 by Patrick Hanna

All rights reserved

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 : SOCIETY AND CHANGE

CHAPTER 2 : THE BANK'S HISTORIC

CHAPTER 3 : LARGEST POULTRY SALES

CHAPTER 4 : THE ARTICLE ALSO

CHAPTER 5 : FIFTEENTH THEOREM

CHAPTER 1 : SOCIETY AND CHANGE

The above chapters have described various features of the Japanese corporate context and operations. Now it's time to consider how those features fit together to form a system and discuss how corporate systems relate to a changing society.

Japanese company system

The easiest way to discern the logical consistency of a Japanese company's organizational layout is to place its most obvious features alongside those of generalized Western companies.

There are dozens of different types of companies in Japan as well as in the West. Furthermore, the characteristics themselves are more complex than the brief description given.

In Japan, for example, the fact that companies are part of an industry makes market share the natural measure of success and the obvious purpose of management. The distinction between managers and employees is not significant, especially when many managers come from workers and advance to management positions during their lifelong work for the company. There is a strong connection between a company's dependence on banks and trade credit, and the development of upward and downward relationships between companies. Unions are also more suitable for companies operating in a single industry, compared to companies involved in many different lines of business. The company also contributed to the rise of industry hierarchy by paying higher wages than small business organizations. The existence of the ideal of employing people for life is partly the historical result of the activities of factory unions. In every company, factory unions contribute to the constitution of the community by preventing segregation of workers according to skill or type of work; because the union itself represents the interests of employees.

Inside the company, managers and workers both perform tasks of a more or less specialized nature, related to the functions of a given company and, ultimately, to achieving financial success. finance. The level of concern of managers and workers for success is very different and is expected to be different. Management is placed in a position of power by shareholders and is expected to accept the company's goals. For workers, it is necessary to cajole and exhort them to contribute to those common goals - which are tacitly acknowledged to benefit them in a less direct way. An employee's attachment to the company is limited by his ability to change jobs, because he is a member of the union and also participates in other institutions outside the company.

It is worth noting that modern industrial countries may have developed in different ways, to the extent that people were tempted to assume that the Japanese company, after all, seemed unique – eventually it would changed to be more similar to Western companies. Why don't Japanese companies change, in the Western direction or any other direction, but keep their identity intact?

The first reason must consider the success of Japanese companies. The rise of the Japanese economy after World War II was the result of many factors, but among them must have been the organization of Japanese industry and corporate organization. We can see that many documents in the West written about Japan have gradually acknowledged that. Shock at the illogical nature of corporate Japan, with its disdain for universal principles of rationality and its precarious financial arrangements, gave way to a respectful awareness of a Japan's advantages. For example, it is now clear to Western businessmen that lifetime employment and age pay make it easier to introduce new machinery without having to renegotiate rates. salary or alleviate the fear of being fired. Industrialists everywhere envied the harmony in Japanese companies, between management and labor. In countries like Britain, and in industries dominated by Japanese companies, respect has been replaced by a mixture of admiration and fear. In the 1950s, the Japanese were humble about their institutions and eager to learn. By the mid-1960s, when Japanese companies were as productive as Western companies, their management showed strong faith in traditional methods. By 1970, their pride in those methods was well established, allowing them to ignore the less efficient Western manufacturers they had displaced through sloppy quality control. bad labor relations or outdated technology. But it is true that not all Japanese companies have the same status as Masushita, Canon or Nippon Steel. Large Japanese companies, thanks to their efficient operations, receive many privileges. Otherwise, they could not make such high quality goods and deliver them on time. No one, whether Western or Japanese, has to doubt the effectiveness of Japanese companies. It can coordinate and even motivate tens of thousands of people, from men to women, from the production of goods to transportation; and the efficient functioning of the organization is a powerful argument for leaving it undisturbed.

Another reason for the company's stability is the system's synchronization. Many of the important characteristics of companies are logically interdependent or at least closely adapted to each other, making it difficult to change one without simultaneously changing the others. For example, a company cannot make profit its primary goal without adjusting its relationships with shareholders, redefining management ideals, and changing employee behavior and attitudes. of the company's union. And a company cannot suddenly introduce job details without changing the relationships between the company and its employees and modifying the nature of power, with further consequences for the power of the company. the distinction between managers and workers in terms of the close solidarity of the company's union.

However, if the company is forced to change in just one aspect, that seemingly limited change can bring about many other changes. We have noted an example of a seemingly small change that has far-reaching consequences. That is, Japan's rapidly aging population makes it difficult for even the largest companies to recruit employees straight from school and makes it easier for young people to jump jobs. As a result, owners of large companies are having to change age-based pay systems, extend retirement ages and recruit people from the labor market. It is not difficult to imagine the need for better methods of recruiting mid-career workers to develop a job market based on skills rather than age and with an emphasis on skills. Inside the company can affect employees' attitudes about the company and each other.

Corporate and social systems

A series of built-in questions are organized to account for a company's impact on society, by correlating them with a simple concern: who gains and who loses through the activities of its companies. company and how the company is organized? We will have to look at this problem in three stages. First of all, how does industry in general place itself in relation to the rest of society and how does that contribute? Second, how are wealth and power distributed within the industry, among different types of firms? Finally, how does a company's organization affect the individuals associated with it?

As we have seen, at the beginning of Japan's industrialization, peasant prosperity was sacrificed for industrial development. After World War II, too, Japan recovered from decline by putting every possible resource toward industry. Even today, when Japan has a thriving industrial economy and many of its companies dominate world markets, business and industry are still favored, affecting people in particular.

Another evidence is the flow of deposits to the main sectors of the economy: private, business and government. Each year the surplus of the private sector compensates for the deficit of the business sector. In fact, private borrowing takes place on a large scale. Most are borrowed through the banking system, with interest rates set by the Government at or below the inflation rate. Individual depositors therefore receive a negative real return.

It is perhaps too early to say that the increase in government debt in the years following the oil crisis and the current reluctance of companies to borrow money are indicators of a change. frequent changes in currency flows. However, it is possible that in the near future, the Government will benefit more than industry and commerce, because the Japanese tend to save at low interest rates.

A further form of alienation has taken place in industries in which the Government has used its influence to allow manufacturers to exploit consumers by raising prices excessively in the free market. . Government intervention of this type is more evident in agriculture than in industry. However, in a wide range of industries, the Government protected domestic producers against cheap imports until liberalization was deemed possible. Some industries remain protected or tightly controlled by the Government, and in some industries, especially the food and financial industries, consumers strongly favor domestic producers.

The economic interests of industry, and of those who operate in industry, relative to the rest of society tell only part of the story. Workers have contributed a lot to industry from strength, health to happiness because industrial pollution is largely the combined effect of priorities given to industrial needs, placed above the needs of individuals. workers in crowded, cramped conditions. That explanation seems mild and unsatisfactory when applied to terrible tragedies that are now well known: Minamata disease, caused by organic compounds of mercury found in human waste. the chemical plants of two companies, Chisso and Showa Denko, which killed or seriously affected the health of hundreds of people: and the case of cadium poisoning involving Mitsui Mining and Smelting. It is difficult to justify the unconscionable behavior of some parties involved in these cases. Chisso's board of directors refused to cooperate with the university's medical research team that had to search for the cause of Minamata disease. With support from the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, this company seeks to dissuade victims from seeking legal compensation. However, most pollution incidents are not as terrible and are much easier to explain.

So far we have discussed the distribution of wealth between industry and the rest of society. The next question is, how wealth and influence are distributed in industry.

Companies have sprung up in Japan for the same reasons as many other countries. Because it has legal status to win the cooperation of many people: shareholders, employees, lenders, material suppliers and customers, which an individual contractor cannot do; and because it has or can have an indefinite duration, the company can plan and conduct business on a time scale beyond the reach of any single individual. Corporations, in many countries, also tend – and Japan is no exception – to be taxed much more lightly than individuals. The maximum tax rate on their income is lower, and they are exempt from interest tax; of course in addition to being exempt from inheritance tax.

The dominance of large companies over small companies also exists, to some extent, in other industrial countries, but perhaps in Japan is more evident. We have seen that the larger the company, the more efficient it is (at least in some respects), the better the equipment it has, the better the financial resources it has, and the better it is able to attract talented workers. Just as one victory leads to another, the advantages of large companies give them even more advantages. They can obtain low-interest financing, allowing them to undercut smaller competitors and become larger and larger companies. Talented college graduates run their jobs more efficiently and make the company stronger and more attractive to talented job seekers. Rounding out that virtuous circle, big companies can use one more advantage. They can rely on small firms to have a safe position when the situation worsens. During a recession, Hitachi, Toyota and Nippon Steel can maintain high profits by offering tougher terms to small companies and, in the worst case scenario, they can even sacrifice Small firms depend on them. Suppliers and contractors can also exert strong pressure on their subcontractors. Therefore, the larger an enterprise is, the more its economies of scale and market influence allow it to dominate smaller competitors and control and exploit dependent companies.

The final thing to consider is how wealth and influence are distributed within the company. If we take Marumaru as a typical example, it seems that women are paid less than men and are excluded from the power circle in the company.

So what is the combined effect of those constitutive influences? Who benefits and who loses by the industry's position in society and by the arrangement of companies within the industry as well as by the company's internal organization? It is clear that the corporate system favors men over women, the educated over the uneducated, and the middle-aged over the young.

The things that the company system brings to men and women are also very different. Women shoulder more than their share of the burden that industry imposes on consumers and citizens. At the same time, within the industry, women are paid less than men doing the same work and have little ability to gain power. Everyone admits that it is true that no industrial society gives women true equality with men, but Japanese women face even more rigid discrimination than Western women. In addition, their position is made worse by the lack of skills in the labor market, making it impossible to find a better job by way of special professional talent.

If the corporate system gives all men an advantage, then it rewards the highly educated much more than the less educated. People who are highly educated and go to the best schools are more likely to land jobs at the largest and most powerful companies, and then advance within their chosen companies. The less educated a person is, the fewer prospects he has in the industry. If they do get into a big company, to a certain extent, they will lose in the promotion competition. If they join a smaller company, they often cannot reach the pinnacle of success in the industry.

Strictly speaking, a person's chances in life are not entirely determined by his education. There are many ways in which he can improve his lot even after he leaves school and starts working. It is always possible for a person to be promoted within the company despite their low