Word: ouchi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Never-Say-Diet Book, Simmons (2) 4. Cosmos, Sagan (9) 5. Miss Piggy's Guide to Life, Piggy with Beard (6) 6. The Eagle's Gift, Castaneda (5) 7. The Alpha Strategy, Pugsley (4) 8. Survive and Win in the Inflationary Eighties, Ruff 9. Theory Z, Ouchi 10. How to Make Love to a Man, Penney
...developing his case for Theory Z, Ouchi wisely skips over the sour-grapes complaints by many U.S. businessmen about unfair Japanese competition and zeros in on the style and substance of Japanese management. Using a mixture of business-school scholarship and pop sociology, he concludes that Japanese managers get more out of their employees than American bosses do because the whole structure of Japanese society encourages mutual trust and cooperation. This allows collective enterprises like large corporations to flourish. Japanese companies are structured around a powerful, bonding attachment between workers and their firms, and Ouchi focuses on the ways that...
...Ouchi admits that not all Japanese management techniques can be easily transplanted into an American setting. Unless everyone in the decision-making process is willing to cooperate, for example, consensus building as practiced by the Japanese might all too easily tie an American corporation in knots. And, Ouchi concedes, the absence of a specialized career path often leads to a lower level of professional skill...
...other hand, the Theory Z companies in the U.S. already use at least some of the management practices that are so commonplace among Japanese firms. Ouchi notes that Intel Corp., a technological leader in the microelectronic field, has fostered a collective work eth ic by dividing employees into project teams. At Hewlett-Packard, worker turn over has been kept to a minimum during economic slumps by reducing the work hours for all employees and by cutting back on perquisites. In many of its plants, consumer products giant Procter & Gamble uses semiautonomous work groups that allow employees to govern their...
...Ouchi points out, Japan's sense of the collective is rooted in the nation's experience as a densely populated, resource-poor country in which teamwork and compromise are absolutely essential. Without those characteristics, Japanese society could never function as success fully as it does. The U.S., in many ways, now faces problems similar to those Japan has known for many centuries. The world has become much more competitive, and resources like energy are increasingly scarce or expensive. Although individualism and self-reliance have been the very basis of U.S. culture since the nation's founding, companies...