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Why Japanese companies do so many different things

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Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#141

Post by lacewing »

kibwen wrote: post #134
qurren wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how Westerners idealize Japan Westerners are taught by the media and education to idealize Japan and hate China almost everywhere. They present cherry-picked aspects of both countries that make China look bad and Japan look good. In reality every country has its good and bad aspects. This is just part of the propaganda machine and what politicians want you to believe, in an effort to align their populations to be s…

> Westerners are taught by the media and education to idealize Japan and hate China almost everywhere. As an American educated by the American public education system and indoctrinated by American media, our government is certainly stupid and vengeful enough to make me want to support this if it were true, but it's just not. The much more banal truth is that Japan is extremely talented at exercising soft power by pro…

Not being a single-party, notionally communist dictatorship may be helping with the image too? I don't know, spitballing here.

I think the default approach in the West - and that's not a US-specific thing - is to treat exotic faraway lands with a mix of curiosity and awe. But China is a geopolitical rival with a political system that rightly makes many Westerners queasy, so it doesn't benefit from that anymore.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#142

Post by seabass-labrax »

busterarm wrote: post #78
djeastm wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested in hearing your experiences. Are we talking mob association? Arm-breaking thugs?

What is this, the 1970s? No, far more basic negligence and corruption. Negotiating deliberately bad contracts and collecting bribes. Diverting hours and cushy roles to union reps and their personal friends. Overwhelmingly siding with management against employees (which is what you think they're going to be there NOT to do). The kind of day to day petty shit that over time makes your job intolerable. Oh and that one t…

Your example is exactly the same problem as "admissible evidence" in a court of law. In the USA, it's very common for evidence to be rejected because the collection of that evidence was itself illegal - this is intended to protect the integrity of the system in general, no matter how heinous the alleged crime in a specific case.

So I'm sceptical: was the union really defending that specific employee, or were they trying to prevent a precedent from being set that could be used against other, more upright employees?

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#143

Post by throwaway2037 »

sofixa wrote: post #135
throwaway2037 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're a very car-centric society, and the Japanese auto makers have been a part everyday life to 3 full generations of Americans now. I assume "we" are Americans. I keep writing this over and over again on HN: There are NO highly developed non-micro states that are not car centric outside of major cities. Yes, literally, Japan, outside of a few large cities, is incredibly car centric. Sure, the cars are small and c…

> There are NO highly developed non-micro states that are not car centric outside of major cities. That's an argument. Lack of density means that public transportation is hard to have enough scale. But the US is uniquely bad at both density but also lack of transportation options. In countries like the UK and France (just because I'm familiar with them, I'm not claiming they're the only ones or it's something unique…

Your response is excellent.

    > So there are layers of car centricity
Hat tip. I agree (and concede defeat). To be honsest, normally I am only replying to (anti-public-transit) fanatics. You are the first (in a long time) that provided a well-balanced reply!

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#144

Post by jimbokun »

showerst wrote: post #17
jdw64 wrote: post #7

It’s always fascinating to see how Westerners idealize Japan on platforms like HN. It makes me wonder(i'm korean): how would a Westerner react if they saw me romanticizing the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain? They’d probably find it strange and out of touch with reality. This essay on Japan's corporate diversification and physical tacit knowledge is an interesting read. However, as an East Asian, my assessment is tha…

I didn't feel like this article necessarily idolized it; the author seemed pretty even-handed about strengths and weaknesses. The interesting question in all of these kinds of things is "are there ideas we can take to gain the strengths of other systems or patch the weaknesses in ours?". Looking at Japan specifically, I think I speak for most westerners in saying that if we could get a little more stability and less…

Interestingly this article argues very strongly that you cannot have some of those things without taking all of them. That the various aspects of corporate culture reinforce each other and make performance worse if taken piecemeal.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#145

Post by poncho_romero »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #88
ryukoposting wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll preface this by saying there are lots of other factors at play, but here's an interesting one I can speak to personally: Car culture. We're a very car-centric society, and the Japanese auto makers have been a part everyday life to 3 full generations of Americans now. Even most Baby Boomers are too young to remember a world without Honda or Toyota. Across all age groups, a lot more Americans grew up with a fondne…

> We're a very car-centric society, and the Japanese auto makers have been a part everyday life to 3 full generations of Americans now. I assume "we" are Americans. I keep writing this over and over again on HN: There are NO highly developed non-micro states that are not car centric outside of major cities. Yes, literally, Japan, outside of a few large cities, is incredibly car centric. Sure, the cars are small and c…

I think when people criticize America for being car centric, they mean that even urban and suburban areas often rely solely on car travel (e.g. Houston). Cars in rural/less developed areas are perfectly reasonable.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#146

Post by ryukoposting »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #88
ryukoposting wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll preface this by saying there are lots of other factors at play, but here's an interesting one I can speak to personally: Car culture. We're a very car-centric society, and the Japanese auto makers have been a part everyday life to 3 full generations of Americans now. Even most Baby Boomers are too young to remember a world without Honda or Toyota. Across all age groups, a lot more Americans grew up with a fondne…

> We're a very car-centric society, and the Japanese auto makers have been a part everyday life to 3 full generations of Americans now. I assume "we" are Americans. I keep writing this over and over again on HN: There are NO highly developed non-micro states that are not car centric outside of major cities. Yes, literally, Japan, outside of a few large cities, is incredibly car centric. Sure, the cars are small and c…

> They came for a single reason: To avoid import tariffs. Please stop romanticising this for any other reason.

Where did I suggest they came for any particular reason? I just said they got here first. They've had more time to become entrenched in people's lives than the Korean or Chinese companies that followed. That's all! Nothing "romantic" here!

At no point did I indicate any nostalgia for the idiosyncracies of the "GM patriarch" family. Is that what you're suggesting?

And yeah, "we" is Americans. As evidenced by the sentence that starts with "I grew up in middle America."

I genuinely don't understand this comment. It's like you saw "we're a car-centric society," stopped reading, and started typing.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#147

Post by jimbokun »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #127
andrewmutz wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese and American companies have different purposes. In Japan the corporation primarily provides stable income and employment for society, and secondarily returns on capital invested. In America, corporations primarily provide returns on capital invested and secondarily provide stable income and employment. This shows up in the data too. Japanese corporations are less likely to go out of business but provide wors…

Stability is preferred to growth in the moment, but in retrospect and in comparison to others most people don’t want to give up what they have and go back in time.

And arguably growth could lead to better overall stability in the long run, as people find employment in new companies at higher wages over time with lower overall unemployment.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#148

Post by jimbokun »

qurren wrote: post #81
jdw64 wrote: post #7

It’s always fascinating to see how Westerners idealize Japan on platforms like HN. It makes me wonder(i'm korean): how would a Westerner react if they saw me romanticizing the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain? They’d probably find it strange and out of touch with reality. This essay on Japan's corporate diversification and physical tacit knowledge is an interesting read. However, as an East Asian, my assessment is tha…

> how Westerners idealize Japan Westerners are taught by the media and education to idealize Japan and hate China almost everywhere. They present cherry-picked aspects of both countries that make China look bad and Japan look good. In reality every country has its good and bad aspects. This is just part of the propaganda machine and what politicians want you to believe, in an effort to align their populations to be s…

China being an autocratic, authoritarian system with galling human rights abuses may have something to do with it, too.

(For the record, I would put Japan above both China and the US at the moment in that regard.)

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#150

Post by arjie »

toephu2 wrote: post #42

> So why are Japanese companies like this? Why do they do so many different things? And how do they manage to do so all those different things so well? Author says: Japanese companies excel in lots of very different domains because it’s inherent in how they’re structured. My response: No mention of culture? Sure maybe it is because of how they are structured somewhat, but it's also because of their culture. Japanese…

I’ve always had the flip position of this. It’s that the ultra smart Japanese guy doesn’t have that much economic mobility. So he practises excellence in his field. Patio11 pointed out The Sort on his Twitter feed and after that I’ve been convinced of this.

EDIT: I forgot about this other thing. He also does describe a mechanism for that culture.

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