Inside look at Japan's corporate culture : ThePost.ie


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Inside look at Japan's corporate culture
Sunday, March 20, 2005 - REVIEWED BY ALEX MEEHAN
BLUE EYED SALARYMAN By Niall Murtagh, Profile €24.45
Japanese companies are among the most successful in the world, and firms like Mitsubishi, Sony,Toyota and Honda have become household names.

Japan's corporate culture is quite different to that of the west and inThe Blue Eyed Salaryman, Niall Murtagh is uniquely placed to provide an Irishman's view of the inside of amajor Japanese corporation. An avid traveller and free spirit, Murtagh spent ten years touring the world before taking a PhD in computing at Tokodai University in Tokyo and applying for a job inMitsubishi. While he initially intended the job tobe a short-term measure, months turned to years and he was invited to become a permanent employee.

Eventually he settled down, got married and had children there,working withMitsubishi for 15 years. While the corporate culture outlined by Murtagh is not quite the stuff of workaholic salarymen sleeping under their desks, it's still fairly different to our experience in Ireland.

On joining the firm, Murtagh is unsettled to discover thatMitsubishi requires himto live only in company-vetted accommodation, so before he can rent an apartment, his boss must approve it.This level of company involvement with employees' lives is typical in Japan, as are some highly unusual work practices. For instance, official clocking off time is 5pm, but nobody leaves the office before the boss several hours later, regardless of whether there is work to do or not.

Employees are expected to put the company first, and can be permanently transferred to remote parts of the country without consultation. One of Murtagh's colleagues, who had a new baby and who had just bought a new house, was told he was moving fromTokyo to Osaka. Instead of protesting, as most Irish employees would have done, he sold the house at a loss andwent where he was told. Mitsubishi employees are given a generous 25 days annual leave per year, but are expected not to take more than a week or two, and never in one go. Sick days are deducted from annual leave, and ‘good' employees would never dream of claiming the overtime they're entitled to.

Rates of pay are determined only partially by rank within the company, and mostly by age, and it's inconceivable that a salaryman would resign from his job. If he tried, he would be encouraged to rethink the move as it would reflect badly on his superiors.While there are women executives in the company, they occupy token positions and still experience a very real glass ceiling. Surprisingly,there is a uniontorepresent workers' interests but, as Murtagh discovers when he becomes a rep, officials are obliged to submit questions in advance to their bosses for approval.

Japanese employees are encouraged to place more importance on the needs of the group rather than the needs of the individual. Times are changing in this regard, and many of the experiences related by Murtagh inTheBlueEyed Salaryman took place in the early 1990s.

But conditions like those he outlines are mild in comparison to other companies in Japan. Earlier this year, a senior Japanese executive in a transport company won a landmark anti-bullying court case against his employers. A skilled senior manager, he had been forced to pluck weeds from a car park for more than 30 years. His crime had been speaking out about his company's involvement in illegal cartels. With all this as a given, Blue Eyed Salaryman should be an engaging and entertaining read, but mostly it underdelivers. The book meanders along for 214 pages, and while I waited for the bit that inspired the author to write the book in the first place, it never really arrived.

We get a good feel for the mildly oppressive experience of being a cog in the wheel of the massiveMitsubishi corporation, but what'smissing is the incisive exposéof how a company like Mitsubishi harnesses the work ethic of the Japanese. In the course of The Blue-Eyed Salaryman,Murtagh doesn't learn any major lessons, doesn't undergo life-changing experiences and doesn't crack under the pressure and leave.

However, the book remains an engaging account of modern Japanese corporate culture and also of Murtagh's personal journey from carefree travel junkie to suited executive. There have been 101 books written on the experience of westerners in Japan, a country that can be first world in its economics and third world in its attitudes. Most of themare fascinating, in a gee-whiz type of way, and set out to sensationalise. This one doesn't, and is probably more honest for it. Anyone who is curious about Japan or who works for a Japanese multinational should enjoy Murtagh's take on how things are done in the East.