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Why Japanese companies do so many different things

davidoks.blog

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Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#251

Post by jjmarr »

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.

> 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 in the long-term, people start fleeing the "stable" countries for already-grown ones.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#252

Post by decimalenough »

jdw64 wrote: post #227
dfabulich wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What article were you reading? This article isn't idealizing Japanese companies, and specifically discusses the drawbacks of the Japanese approach, including zombie companies. The article's thesis statement isn't "the Japanese approach is better," but that business practices like these bundle together, that they're very difficult to change, and that each bundle has different advantages and disadvantages. Ironically,…

[flagged]

> In Japan, mobility is fundamentally expensive, and relocating to a different region is much harder than outsiders realize.

Unless said mobility is paid for by the company.

As part of the job rotation mentioned in the article, larger Japanese companies are also notorious for reassigning job locations, often at short notice and with zero care for family dynamics. Hence the tanshin-fu'nin phenomenon, where the husband is sent off to work at some factory or regional branch in the sticks for years while the wife brings up the kids elsewhere.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#253

Post by zipy124 »

layer8 wrote: post #133
jandrewrogers wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk-free floor is around 4% these days. Because the return on any other use of capital must be risk-adjusted, the breakeven might be 6-7%. That is roughly a 3x higher rate of return than you needed to breakeven when the risk-free rate was ~0%. Small absolute changes in risk-free interest rates cause many things to become unprofitable when the relative change in interest rates is large. A risk-free rate of 1.0% a…

Yeah, but my experience with what is considered a profitable project is firmly in the two-digits percentage range. Anything single-digit would count as a fairly low floor.

Single digit is fairly normal in several of the industries I have detailed knowledge of. Though now interest rates are up most are targeting 10-12%.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#254

Post by jdw64 »

decimalenough wrote: post #252
jdw64 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> In Japan, mobility is fundamentally expensive, and relocating to a different region is much harder than outsiders realize. Unless said mobility is paid for by the company. As part of the job rotation mentioned in the article, larger Japanese companies are also notorious for reassigning job locations, often at short notice and with zero care for family dynamics. Hence the tanshin-fu'nin phenomenon, where the husband…

You seem to understand this deeply, perhaps even better than I do. When I worked in Japan, experiencing the corporate culture firsthand was much harder than I had anticipated. They even provided a translator for my boss and me during our business trip, but it was still incredibly tough. I do remember that, at the time, they were conducting suicide prevention training for employees in the wake of the Toyota new-hire suicide incident.

Anyway, you clearly know a lot about Japan, and I apologize if it came across as me just badmouthing the country. My original intent was simply to point out how drastically different things look from an East Asian perspective compared to a Western one. I didn't mean to keep painting Japan in a negative light—every system obviously has its pros and cons. I actually have fond memories of the unique, close-knit, family-like atmosphere that Japanese companies have

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#255

Post by dfabulich »

jdw64 wrote: post #227
dfabulich wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What article were you reading? This article isn't idealizing Japanese companies, and specifically discusses the drawbacks of the Japanese approach, including zombie companies. The article's thesis statement isn't "the Japanese approach is better," but that business practices like these bundle together, that they're very difficult to change, and that each bundle has different advantages and disadvantages. Ironically,…

[flagged]

I made a very small and highly defensible claim.

You argued that this article (by David Oks) is an example of "how Westerners idealize Japan." I argued that this article does not idealize Japan, and that, if you interpreted Oks' article that way, then you didn't understand the article.

I didn't say that Japanese business culture is more "horizontal" than Western business culture, or that Japanese business culture is better in any particular way. I didn't even say that the article is right or wrong about anything.

All I did was to restate the thesis statement of the article, to clarify what the article actually says.

I don't harbor any particular affinity for Japan, or Japanese business culture. I know very little about it. I'm not an authority to speak on it, and I didn't.

You assumed what I believe without understanding what I wrote. You did exactly the same thing to me that you did to David Oks.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#256

Post by shimman »

oceanhaiyang wrote: post #169
gigatree wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most recent video I could find about this was from like 7 years ago, very weird

Maybe try a book instead of YouTube. Not weird as it probably isn’t something that would get clicks

Any particular books you'd recommend?

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#257

Post by jdw64 »

dfabulich wrote: post #255
jdw64 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I made a very small and highly defensible claim. You argued that this article (by David Oks) is an example of "how Westerners idealize Japan." I argued that this article does not idealize Japan, and that, if you interpreted Oks' article that way, then you didn't understand the article. I didn't say that Japanese business culture is more "horizontal" than Western business culture, or that Japanese business culture is…

[flagged]

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#258

Post by Karrot_Kream »

marek77 wrote: post #128
alephnerd wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Japan has become much "chiller" from a work culture perspective, with hours worked being comparable to those of the UK and Ireland [0] thanks to regulatory changes in the 2010s. 2. While conglomerates remain prominent, a new generation of large Western-style employers like Rakuten, Mercari, LY, SoftBank, etc have arisen and operate with American-style (and -educated) management, and the stereotypical "salaryman" l…

I'd largely question the accuracy of point 1 IN PRACTICE. Japan is notorious for uncounted and unpaid overtime, vacation days no one takes, and paternal leave you'd better not think of if you don't want to instantly become your division's outcast. I worked in a host of countries, including the UK and Japan (the latter about a decade ago - I'd be surprised if things had diametrally changed since that time). The actual…

Yes but 2 ends up being a good check on 1 in the higher productivity ends of the knowledge work economy in Japan. I'd disagree a bit in degree to what alephnerd says and additionally think a lot of the actual "zangyou" ("overtime") work that Japanese do today involves drinking with the boss or going on business trips, but think his comment is largely correct. I also think the insistence in Japanese doing on-site work in Japan leads to a lot of inefficiency that Western businesses and governments have largely left behind 10-15 years ago.

I actually find the Western unawareness of how Japan has become an immigrant society, especially in service roles, to be hilarious. It's by far the biggest Japanese social change in the last 20 years probably up there with growing acceptance of LGBT lifestyles and is a massive, divisive political issue in Japan now. Also further goes to show how much idealized othering happens in these discussions.

The average konbini service worker a foreigner interacts with in Tokyo is going to be an immigrant. 12 years ago, I only met a handful of immigrant service workers.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#260

Post by cortesoft »

andrewmutz wrote: post #80
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…

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…

> Most citizens would prefer stability to growth, but I think the tradeoff has a lot of downstream consequences.

People want personal stability, which in our current society means a stable job.

That doesn't have to be the case, though.

Overall, economic growth is good for society as a whole, so it makes sense that a state should encourage it as much as it can.

This means that what is good for an individual is not the same as what is good for society.

I think the ideal solution would be to keep the risk-taking in business that you need for good growth, and instead provide stability through strong social support services, like healthy unemployment insurance or UBI. That way, everyone can take risks to try to drive the economy forward, but not starve if things go poorly.

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