Japanese and Korean Managament Style
Interaction between individuals, organizartions have many similarities but also have differences, that´s why management slyte could be a very usefull tool that help people to get a better environment, relation and communication between people. Exist different types of management style that “can be employed dependent on the culture of the business, the nature of the task, the nature of the workforce and the personality and skills of the leaders”(1)
In this case we are going to analyze the japan and the korean management style to understand better the convergence and diferentiation terms.
Japanese style consider that in every business is very important the approach to the cultural context , also is essencial stablish good relation with the suppliers, because they know a lot about the market and also have a very useful information, so the japan people see the supplier as a partner, every company think that is neccesary to cooperate and coordinate with them,if you want to growth and take advantage to competitor, that why for japanese is very important to have a good relation with the suppliers.
A key factor in the japanese style is the Price that why in almost all the companies use economies of scale for get more pieces with lower cost and in this way could compete to other industries.
“Zaibatsu is a Japanese term referring to industrial and financial business conglomerates in the Empire of Japan, whose influence and size allowed for control over significant parts of the Japanese economy from the Meiji period until the end of World War II.” (2)
This group gain a position in the Japanese economy and could influenced in several factors such tax policy, finacial regulation because they are the owners of all the banks.so thats why they could control a good part of the economy.
In the other hand we are going to analyze the Korean style. this has many similarities with the japanese style but in this model the role of government is prominent because without active support from the government, no enterprise can survive and prosper, so the govermennt intervenes mainly in credit, foreign exchange rationing, and so on. As aresult for it, many firms grew faster and diversified better.
Like Japan, Korean also has a representative group called Chaebol ,both organism has many diferences for example the source of capital for Zaibatsu is organized around a bank, but Chaelod were prohibited owining a bank, that means tha t banks were nationalized.another diference is that the goverment favored Chaebol giving privilegies so they grew not because they were profitable but merely because they could borrow vast funds.
After the analyzing of those types of managament, and knowing that each country has differents set of cultural norms, we can said that is very difficult to apply a specific model in all the countries because exist Domestic pressure and international pressure, but is possible to converge some aspect to adapt better in a specific situation.
So Covengece means: “the approach toward a definite value, a definite point, a common view or opinion, or toward a fixed or equilibrium state” (3). That why we can implement strategies that could by applied in a international market despite that exist cultural, legal, political barriers.
What is isomorphism? Do you think organizations change management styles to adapt to the environment? Which environment is stronger: national environment or international environment?
Isomorphism comes from isos “equal” and morphe “shape”; it is a similarity of the processes or structure of one organization to those of another, being it the result of imitation or independent development under similar situations.
I think Organization do change management styles to adapt to adapt to the environment and in fact they should do it, because as we can notice, now we are living in a high developed and globalized world where it is suffering continues changes which the organizations have to be aware of, otherwise it could have bad consequences not only in management processes but also in production, marketing, etc.
I think it depends in what is the organization about, what is it core business and where is it objective market, if it is a national company which supply only to its national market, it should focus and pay attention to national environment as it doesn’t get very affected by international environment as could be a company that is a multinational one that have to be aware and change with the international environment.
In the case of Korean and Japanese management styles, do you think they tend to converge or diverge? Are they likely to converge to each other or to other management styles (Western, Asian, etc).
I think those methodos amplied both terms, Converge and diverge. In the korean style initiallly they were aware that should use similar aspect from the japan style because in some way they have common values, cultural aspects, behavior and others, for that they though that could be a good idea applied the same strategies to be sucessfully, Because for both have the same priorities such: establish long them relationship, economical growth etc but in another point of view they recognized that they needed more the goverment intervention to survive and prosper so that means that they have differences so they must find others alternatives to achieve their goals.