Work Culture Differences and its Relation with Nation’s Growth: India and Japan

Work culture of a place encloses its history and the beliefs which are developed over time. Further, it also relates with the way the society interacts, preferred personalities of individual and society, social orders and hierarchies, etc. While we can claim about the reliability of the above correlations, there are no concrete dependencies found between the work culture and the nation’s growth. One can derive some conclusions on the basis of available examples though.

Japanese business associates are generally known for being quick decision makers. They are strict about their schedules and deadlines. They tend to follow a collective decision-making process where they involve every individual who is remotely associated with the outcomes, irrespective of the hierarchy. The work place is treated more as a society where individuals form relations within the constraints of work distribution. The environment is more open for discussion and easy reaching out for consultation to higher authorities to ensure faster accomplishment of work. Japanese people are also known to have faith in work and in building trust via building respect, as I came to know while reading articles from people who had experienced working in Japanese firms. This kind of culture is termed as small-power-distance situation, by Geert Hofstede(a known Dutch psychologist) as one of the culture dimensions defining a nation’s culture, where subordinates and superiors consider each other as existentially equal; the hierarchical system is just an inequality of roles, established for convenience. Organizations are fairly decentralized, with limited numbers of supervisory personnel. Salary ranges between top and bottom jobs are relatively small; workers are highly qualified, and high-skill manual work has a higher status than low skilled office work. Privileges for higher-ups are basically undesirable. This collective procedure of decision-making serves an advantage of improving quality which takes into account, more or less, the needs of all kinds of communities and facilitates collective growth, which is an important factor to be considered. This ensures that the nation’s various economic averages really depict the situation and should not hide wide disparities within it.

Japan saw a tremendous transformation during Meiji Restoration(1867-1912). The period saw rapid industrialization in Japan, with urbanization (and its problems) to match. Both the long-suppressed merchant class and noble and ex-samurai families tried their hands at commerce and building industrial empires. The reforms were promoted with the following slogans: ‘Fukoku kyōhei’ (rich country, strong military), ‘Shokusan kōgyō’ (increase production, promote industry), Bunmei kaika (civilization and enlightenment), and ‘Wakon yōsai’ (Japanese spirit, Western learning). Japan also grew greatly in the sector of film making (anime and comic).

While Japan’s main focus during its recovery from wars and dominance of other empires was to build the nation as a whole and establish a collective work culture, India was struggling hard to settle peacefully with its wide diversity and is still struggling with it. Evidences from Indian history suggests the profoundness of Varna/Caste system. The roles and responsibilities were assigned as per the social ranks or the castes - Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra. The decision-making power had a tall hierarchy, which is still prevalent in the country at some places to considerable extents. The classification of work was clearly laid down in old manuscripts, ancient sculptures of Manusmriti, and one of the all time popular book Economics and Politics - Arthashashtra where Kautilya examined the roles of a King. So is the work culture in India today. Most of the firms have established tall hierarchies with distribution of roles and positions from most important to least important. Moreover, Indians tend to allocate the decision-making power in a few hands, the history and culture provide proofs for the fact that power was centralized to elder male members of the family, without involvement of the younger or less experienced or female members. These practices are also taken to the prevalent work culture, where decision-making is mostly in the hands of a few higher rank officials. The inclusion of other lower ranked officials is not considered important. Many times there is discrimination on the basis of caste, class and gender as well. This situation is defined as large-power-distance situation by Hofstede where superiors and subordinates consider each other as existentially unequal; the hierarchical system is based on this existential inequality. Subordinates expect to be told what to do. Subordinates remain dependent upon supervisors. Salary systems show wide gaps. Workers are relatively uneducated, and manual work has much lower status than office work. Moreover, superiors are entitled to various privileges.

In the current situation, India tends to follow Individualism more than Collectivism. People care more about themselves and their immediate family members. While Japan has achieved a group-fulfilling development structure and tend to protect each other in exchange for unquestioned loyalty. As per the surveys as well as individual feedback, the work culture in Japan is taken more as a family than an office. People remain more involved along with being efficient, and they do not separate their families from office folks, while in India the workplace and the home are the two different entities.

According to studies done on Japanese management style and its relation with its tremendous growth there exist some reliable correlations. Robert H. Hayes(1981) suggests that Japanese success formula was their best manufacturing and management practices and policies such as clean facilities, responsible employees, little or no inventories by ensuring the absence of work stoppages, almost no rejected products, and the “just-in-time” and good risk management system. Japanese, unlike Americans, gave comparatively greater priority to quality over deadlines, both the factors were extremely important to them though. Employees in Japan are more eager to contribute and managers are more adaptable to new management practices which resulted in improved productivity through higher levels of motivation, greater sharing of decision-making, stronger employee commitment, and increased job satisfaction. Ouchi(1981) says that once the collective decision is taken, it becomes the sole responsibility of the group to accomplish it. Three pillar of Japanese industrial relations system are lifetime employment, the seniority wage and promotion system, and enterprise based unions. Such practices promote their culture as well as faith in work. Or in other words, the Japanese culture teaches the idea of faith in work and social benefits. The fuel behind their strong organizational structure is the trust they develop in relationships. A survey by Expedia found that Japanese workers only take around half of their vacation days, and many workers reported feeling guilty whenever they took time off. These results again establish their faith and willingness towards work.

Indian business and management system is featured by individualistic growth, power distribution, optimistic towards new opportunities, open towards research and entrepreneurship, the nation lacks at many fronts though. Domination of family, highly bureaucratic government systems, labor laws and human resource practices are some areas where managerial gaps needs to be addressed. Nevertheless, the changes coming along with the rise of sectors like software, services, automobile, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology have proved the nation’s capability to fight at international standards set by developed countries. India, being a land of contradictions, becomes a place for all sorts of diversities and conflicts. The workplaces accommodating these diversities in a confined zone gives rise to hierarchies in several dimensions, namely position, caste, religion, etc. along with their existing minority and majority. Along with the huge financial gaps and the unavoidable problems of corruption ranging from punctuality towards work to the matters of trust on an unknown individual sitting at a government desk, becomes a part of the big challenge standing against the nation towards its growth. People remain more focused on individual benefits, rather than community benefits. The work culture itself promotes such lusts by providing extra benefits to higher rank officials. This structure, arising from the financial gaps, in turn, contributes to widening of this gap. Thus, the economic averages shown doesn’t depict the true picture, representation of very poor gets neutralized when added with stats of very rich. India has several internal fights to overcome before competing with those standing outside.

Nevertheless, India’s global image in economic success has boosted recently. In recent years, India’s GDP grew with the rate of 8 percent average. Demographically 70 percent of India’s population is less than 35 years of age. Instead of huge population of 1.1 billion, effect of growth can be seen everywhere in India (Since 2005). Indian product quality is reaching world standards. It emerged as leading supplier of IT and IT enabled services. It produces the largest pool of Doctors, Engineers, and MBA’s per year. India’s competitive advantage lies, firstly, in large pool of English-speaking knowledge intensive human resource and second, India offers very attractive cost structure (Chatterjee & Nankervis, 2007). Recently India emerged as favorable destination for business in world. There’s a lot of scope of development in human resource though.

In the conclusion statement, culture-wise Japan manages to stand out by making their work their faith, and their office their family. Such a culture proves to be productive and beneficial for the nation in terms of growth and development. While India’s culture is more focused towards promoting their community, be it religion-wise, caste-wise, class-wise, or gender-wise, lacks faith and motivation towards work. A predominant chauvinistic behavior leads to cultivation of corruption and ill-direction, thus treating work as a duty which is important for money and survival instead taking it as duty which is necessary for nation’s growth. These arguments, thus, can be included while talking about why India lags from Japan.