A foreign affiliate company in Japan can be a microcosm of businesses that are run across national boundaries in the increasingly global economy. Within such companies we often find individuals operating under radically different cultural principles, resulting in conflicts and dysfunction, as well as creating considerable synergy when such differences can be successfully channeled. Because of their relative small size, such companies can provide a source for understanding and finding solutions. The success of Japan in the 1960’s and 1970’s of the major export oriented companies, such as trading houses, steel producers, electronic manufactures, and to automakers, was one of mastering world class manufacturing efficiency that brought new levels of low cost and high quality. For an island people with a unique and rather closed social structure, exporting products globally could be done with little concern for cultural differences. Although, the “overseas global sourcing and production” model has since replaced the pure “make in Japan and export to the outside world” model, this has been limited primarily to exporting the manufacturing process. But, in today’s global economy, those Japanese businesses that have been limited to the domestic economy are now facing the need to act globally. For these non- manufacturing sectors companies it is vital to be able to successfully work with all different types of people in the world. To move from conflict and antagonism to achieving the desired synergy it is not enough to just improve foreign language skill and cultural understanding. Fortunately, there are now new techniques developed that can help the Japanese succeed at this challenge. This paper lays out the case for Japanese companies to improve chances of success in the global economy by adopting modern coaching techniques, such as Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Neuro- Linguistic Programming (NLP), to help Japanese businesses learn how to turn multi-cultural conflict and antagonism into global economic synergy. To the extent that Japanese companies, especially in the non- manufacturing sectors, are able to engage in the global economy in ways that lead to productive synergies they will succeed, and conversely to the extent that global engagement is characterized by conflict and dysfunction they will fail.

抄録全体を表示