core, full-time employees. However, nowadays the number of the so-called peripheral staff, who are hired according to the dictates of supply and demand is increasing. 81
From the point of view of the employer life-time employment has a double-sided feature. On the one hand, if the hired employee works well, this is a successful relation.
If not, this causes a huge burden on the company, because it is very difficult to fire a full-time employee. Of course, there are several technics how to deal with the underperforming employees, however, this is a big disadvantage of this system.
Underperformance does create a problem that is difficult for those practicing Total Quality Management to deal with. The Japanese approach to the problem is not to fire the person, but to warn him/her and then to try group pressure. The Japanese way is, not to fire people but to keep them on even if their performance is poor.
The Japanese feel that if they are going to put money and effort into training people and carry them along through the company for many years it is probably much better for everyone to have to take a reduction in salary in the short term rather than fire employees. Once economic recovery occurs, then all the company members share in the benefits. Japanese managers believe that they have a ready-made trained loyal workforce. To fire them and then hire new people during an upturn means that they can't be sure of the loyalty or quality of the new employees. 82
10.3. Decision-making process
In Japan, with the process of "nemawashi" and "uchiawase" (see above), decisions tend to be made between employers and employees not just from the top down but also from the bottom up. Although top managers may sometimes float ideas, they are actually discussed and analyzed throughout company and then put forward for ratification at the top (the ringi system) once there has been a great deal of discussion at all company levels. The final formal approval is called „ringi' and occurs when the document decided upon is passed from office to office for responsible officials to stamp with their seals.
On the contrary, in Hungarian companies, strong leadership is expected from the top and this occurs despite the fact that there might not be agreement at the bottom.
Leadership in the West may vary from an autocratic type of system where the company chairman alone makes a decision or it may include a group of managers, privy to certain information, who actually make the decisions informally. In most cases, decisions do not tend to float up and down throughout the company with managers making their decisions based on the feedback that they can gather from each sector in the company. 83
The Japanese have a decision-making process in which problems are minimized through pre-impact extensive evaluation. Such an evaluation seeks feedback from up and down and cross the corporation and only when consensus is reached is action taken.
In the Western decision-making process, it is still largely the case that action is taken and extensive evaluation is carried out after the decision has been implemented.
81 Ruth Taplin, pp. 21-22.
82 Ruth Taplin, pp. 87-89.
83 Ruth Taplin, p. 26.
This tendency towards solving problems after they have been created rather than eliminating them before they occur fits in with the whole Western perspective of scientific management and the assembly-line.
The Japanese style is the following: to evaluate first, making action as risk-free as possible to involve as many company members as possible in this process, and to empower actual operators in decision-making processes in their production sphere. 84
In the Japanese company, control is delegated down throughout all levels of management, not just held by the most senior officials. Delegation operates through the entire ranking system from „shacho" (president), ,juyaki" (director), „bucho"
(department head), „kacho" (section head) and the many other titles of ranking. The
„hira-shain" or ordinary worker, is mainly involved in decision-making through quality circles and the suggestion system or in other limited ways that have direct implications for their jobs. 85
10.4. Group management
Job rotation ensures that the majority in the company have done the jobs of others and the ranking hierarchical order usually means that the managers at the top level have worked their way up through the company so they know how every facet of the company is organized.
Group management in the Japanese case, therefore, is genuine group management in that people can readily replace each other. The people that fill the positions at the present time are not the most important part of the company. They are valued, but in the sense that they, like a family, ensure the continuity of that particular lineage branch of the company but not that they in themselves are the most important parts that will make or break a company.
In the Western companies, because of the greater emphasis on leadership, when a good leader departs, the company may often go into crisis. A charismatic and individual leader is of the greatest importance and can make or break a particular company. 86
10.5. Some professional characteristics of management in Japan and in Hungary Currently in Hungary manufacturing businesses are not run by those expert in manufacturing but by lawyers, PR marketing people and financial executives who are usually unexperienced in manufacturing. As long as people who lack manufacturing experience are attempting to run manufacturing plants, they will not be as effective or as prolific as Japanese companies which are run by the very people who are hired to produce the goods.
In Hungarian companies, specialists predominate whether they are practitioners or not. By comparison, in Japan people are generalists through job rotation and on-the-job training rather than specialists. They then become actual practitioners in a particular company, dealing with day-to-day problems and integrally involved with that company.
84 Ruth Taplin, p. 57.
85 Ruth Taplin, pp. 27-28.
86 Ruth Taplin, pp. 40-41.
In addition, if people are not involved in the day-to-day workings of the company at different levels and do not learn of many different jobs from their own experience, they do not have the long-term commitment that is needed to allow a systems approach based on Total Quality Control and management to work. The workforce, including management level, needs to know the ins and outs of the jobs that they do before they can implement quality control. 87
10.6. Performance assessment
The manner in which performance is assessed is another major difference between Japanese and Hungarian workplaces.
The Hungarian management decisions are motivated by goals that are related to objectives while in the Japanese case decisions made by management tend to be far more consensus based. The majority of Hungarian managers saw that the link between pay and performance was their main motivating force in obtaining the best from their workforce. The important point in the Hungarian management behavior is where one can achieve the highest rates of pay, in the most direct and shortest way possible.
On the contrary, in Japanese companies the main motivation for working hard is not pay as such. Managers are motivated by how quickly they and their peer group members are promoted. It is considered quite status enhancing to be promoted relatively quickly along with one's university peer group.
A conflict exists in that, although consensus is the norm and the goals of the group are the most important. There is fierce competition between individual group members that actually serves to increase motivation for promotion. Therefore, ideas of consensus and harmony do not exclude a very rigorous sense of competition. The difference between Japanese and Western competition is that the competition is contained within the group and there are certain accepted rules within the group that usually ameliorate the bad effects of this fierce competition. 88
11. The personality of Japanese workers and basic conditions of Japanese labor