Ina Food Industry, Case Study Example

Americans have a culture that contradicts with the Japanese culture. Japanese have a high context culture, while the American contextual culture is low. This affects the way these two nations conduct business. For instance, Tsukakoshi manages his business with the aim of maintaining customers and keeping the business growing. During his time of service, he explored many possibilities of expanding the business. For example, he considers the possibility of exporting goods to other nations. With this, he considers the possibility of incurring losses. Weighing of options is important in business. Some moves in management can cost the whole company leading to employees losing their jobs. In American management, they believe their moves are always the best. Thus, they do not explore other possibilities while making decisions. To keep the company growing, quality of products is critical. This is the principle with which Ina Company works with. Their agar product is always kept at the best quality possible. Thus, they always imported the best raw materials to produce quality agar. Good quality of products helps in marketing products. This helps in expanding business in the long run. Raw materials were imported from nations they believed produced the best. On the other hand, America believes it has the best of everything. They rarely import raw materials because they believe they offer the best.

Tsukakoshi believes that on making the business prosper, he believes in retaining employees and suppliers. He also researches on other uses of agar. In America, employees are fired when businesses go down. Tsukakoshi did not terminate employees’ contracts even when the business incurred great losses. The business is a corporate entity according to Japan. This is the mentality that Tsukakoshi works with. Thus, the society and employees are essential in any decisions. The company should first work towards retaining the livelihood of the employees and the society in general. In America, companies are personalized. Managers make decisions to benefit the company first. Thus, employees come second in the list.

In another aspect, Japanese managers are afraid of the market thus tending to be apprehensive in promoting their markets to the global and domestic market. Tsukakoshi is afraid of making his company’s business international. This helps them in expanding the market. This is different to the American managers. American managers are aggressive and have no interest in stepping out to push their products to the global and domestic market. Thus, American goods tend to be centralized within the nation. Japanese goods are distributed all over the world. Generally, the two nations are in the opposite ends of the spectrum.

The theory that explains how the two nations differ in management is Ouchi’s theory, named theory Z. In this theory, it is believed that people are much valuable and should not be lost under any circumstances. The Japanese people do not fire employees when the business is down. Contrary to this, Americans are fast to fire workers when the business goes down. Thus, they end up losing experts and skilled people. Japanese people strive not to give people a reason to distrust them. In American community, distrust is not their concern. Japanese involve all employees in the company to make decisions. This slows the process. US decision making is individualistic and extremely fast.

The problems can be overcome in US by learning the different cultures, which will be of help in conducting business. For example, US managers should try to understand the significance of body language in communication. This is common in the Japanese managers. The US managers should also learn on ways of conducting businesses without offending people with different cultures. This is critical in business management.

Reference

Misawa, M. (2012). In a food industry: A new management philosophy for Japanese businesses, Asia Case research centre: University of Hong Kong