Leadership in Organization

Organizational Culture

"...Japanese culture is very different from ours. For one thing, it consists almost entirely of Japanese people." (Barry, 43) Perhaps that seems an obvious statement, but how true it is. The culture of any business, organization, or even government is made up of the people that make the organization. Throughout this paper we will use the culture of the Japanese government as a medium, to see how culture affects the management and decision-making processes. Specifically we will look at how the culture affected the decisions of the government, and how those decisions affected the very lives of the Japanese people on a very dreadful day just over six years ago.

A 20-second earthquake, measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale, devastated the city of Kobe, Japan on the morning of January 17th, 1995. Many were still sleeping at 5:46 when the earthquake struck, but they would soon awaken to find great frustration as the lack of public and personal transportation, communication lines, and open roads became increasingly apparent. Indeed, Japan's 6th largest city was facing a problem, and one that needed to be addressed immediately. (Adamson, par 1)

q Is America an Autocracy?

You have probably read in a newspaper, or watched on television a documentary about a natural disaster on American soil. It could be anything from an East-coast hurricane, to a Mid-west tornado, to a California earthquake. Typically, by the time you are just hearing about the event, the President of the United States will have already declared a "state of emergency." Local and national armed forces are immediately dispatched to help assist in any way possible. The way that the President took the information available at the time, and promptly made the decision reflects an autocratic leadership style, as defined by Dessler. (301) Why wasn't there a session of congress held to determine if it was really necessary to declare the emergency? Why weren't the citizens allowed to vote whether or not they deemed it wise spending of their tax-dollars? The President of the United States (obviously, by his title) has the authority to make decisions that affect the United States. Our culture allows him to have the power that he does, whether he is backed by congress or not. We allow him to declare a state of emergency because our culture defines a "state of emergency" as a problem that needs to be fixed. We do not define it as an international embarrassment, nor do we define it as an internal breakdown of part of our society.

q Culturally defining the problem...?

The Japanese government happened to define their problem a little differently. They looked at the disaster as a weak link to their strong nation. They were embarrassed and unwilling to accept help from foreign nations who readily offered. As a matter of fact, due to cultural boundaries, response time to this whole disaster was so bad that it took over 5 years to finally fix all the damage.

"There was no immediate response when the quake subsided. Four hours passed before the governor of the Hyogo Prefecture asked for help from the Japanese Defense forces. It took the JDF another 5 hours to respond and a full two days before they arrived in Kobe in force. Japanese Prime minister Tomiichi