I spent most of the day researching Japanese management and corporate culture as I am currently job hunting for a position after I graduate. The most interesting I've realized after poking around plenty of English pages about Japanese work culture, is that I can easily find huge slews of analysis and explanations about Japanese corporate culture. Much of these webpages talk about significant differences between Japanese and Westernized business culture, things such as group-think, fitting in (and then doing your own thing privately), over-time, seniority pay- structure, how things are decided top-town (and even possibly bottom up!?) and more.
Then I started thinking about how some Japanese people view Western culture. For example, I've heard from some that it's to competitive and jobs can be quite insecure, or even University life is very competitive since students can fail courses (professors in Japan pretty much pass all students in their classes). I am quite certain that not 100% of the views my Japanese peers have of western culture is not entirely correct, so I am willing to venture a guess that perhaps not 100% of the Western views of Japanese culture is correct either. I am wondering, if this is the case? It's hard to tell.
After doing all this research on Japanese culture from a Western perspective. I am rather curious to figure out what is the Japanese view of Western culture and if they line up with my own perspectives.
I have on occasion, tried talking to some Japanese friends on their views of Japanese culture and I haven't been able to get consistent answers from different people. Seems to me that many people have different views of their own culture. My conversations in the past (more like about 6 months to a year ago) have been quite numerous and varied that even I have a hard time keeping track of what I've heard. Even now, I can't think of anything concrete.
When I have some more time, I will spend some time scouring Japanese webpages on their opinions of western culture.
3 comments:
things such as group-think, fitting in (and then doing your own thing privately), over-time, seniority pay- structure, how things are decided top-town (and even possibly bottom up!?) and more
This sounds like work life in Western culture as well!
Does it? Probably sounds like the working culture in a large company perhaps 20~30 years ago?
Interesting thing is that I've been reading a lot about how Japanese corporate culture work at the moment (before choosing a company, even if I decide to go with a Japanese company) but I am not really well versed in corporate culture back in North America.
The funny thing is that I have a hunch that I might find better articles written in a different language other than English.
We shall see.
From talking to Japanese friends, I usually get the same idea from each person on their views on Western Culture. Some of them are true, but a lot of them the stereotype of how Japanese ppl think of Westerners.
I'm now more interested in how the Western culture views the Japanese.
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