Managerial/Employee Relations: Update Dec. 2, 2024

 

Managerial promotions often lead to arrogance, less effort to listen to opinions: Japan poll

Article Source:  https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20241129/p2a/00m/0bu/022000c

Ideas:

Japan and the US of course are two different cultures and two different work cultures. In Japan, usually, workers don't express their opinions or ideas and just follow orders, for the most part, compared to the US. 

In years past, or even decades past in Japan, there was such as thing as management listening to workers on the assembly line about their ideas as the best way to do things. But that might not have been in all companies in Japan.

Japan is still very much a hierarchy society or at least as it relates companies and positions in a company, so younger workers just follow orders and do what they are told, for the most part.

This might be the case in US or EU companies too, but at each level there are different kinds of challenges, as managers at different levels experience different kinds of challenges as they move up the ladder.

Its quite possible at the higher management levels in Japan, they might feel more secure as they might have lifetime employment and maybe they don't see or feel the need to prove themselves as much as the lower level managers.

Most likely as the higher they get in management, they see less and less of the lower group workers and only those just below them, as they have more and different challenges to deal with besides communicating with lower level workers.

And the need to communicate with lower levels workers is probably handled by those just above the lower group and if needed the next group of managers passed on the communication to the upper level managers, as needed.

In that way, because of the new challenges maybe the upper level managers just don't have the time to oversee what the lower level workers were doing or even talking to them.

Even in US or EU companies, how many upper level managers spend the time to listen to or see the lower level workers, and maybe they just have too many other responsibilities and don't have the time to see each and every worker in the company.

They leave the communication for lower level workers to those managers who are in contact with them everyday, and if needed they pass-on other important ideas or information up the ladder to the appropriate manager.

As Japan has become more westernized most likely, as human nature goes, managers in Japan and in the US and the EU might have similar management practices, but at the same time there are definite cultural differences among the three groups.

Have a nice day!