Globalization

The man who turned Hitachi around #5 – globalization of people

As well as the train business in the UK, the other case study that Takashi Kawamura, former President of Hitachi gives as a model of globalization is the data storage business, which was turned into a “solution” business rather than just selling Hitachi’s hardware. Kawamura says the person responsible for starting this change was the CEO of Hitachi Data Systems in the USA, Jack Domme. The key words which changed the business were “disaster recovery” and Domme hired people who weren’t just salesmen, but engineers, who could listen to customers and make proposals.

As well as having a strong local leader heading the UK train business and HDS, Hitachi’s China elevator business is also headed up by a Chinese President. According to Kawamura, all these businesses have switched to being “solution” oriented, to compete with IBM, Siemens and GE – this could not have been done if they were led by Japanese “sheltering under the umbrella” of Hitachi.

3 of Hitachi’s 13 board members are non-Japanese. The executive officers are still all Japanese but Kawamura thinks this needs to change too, so that non-Japanese are heading up Hitachi’s business divisions. “If our European rail business expands, then it might be better to have a British person heading up our transport systems division. If diversity advances in this way, then there will be much more lively debates and innovation, and it will be easier to undertake structural reform”

Hitachi aims to reach an operating profit of 7% (from the current 4.7%) by FY 2015, to close in on Siemens. “What is needed to be a globally excellent company is speed” says Kawamura.

From 2011, around 1000 young employees are sent out each year to work overseas for a maximum of 3 months. This is 10 times more than previously, and represents about a quarter of each cohort. Kawamura says it is done not just because Hitachi can afford it, but to show that the company is serious about globalization and also to act as a wake up call to the young employees about how much further they have to go in order to speak English or other foreign languages fluently, and to create relationships with local customers.

Around 60% go to developing countries – Kawamura says they have to survive some tough challenges, which in some cases have really changed employees’ mindsets.

There are are also top down diversity initiatives to globalize people, through the governance of the company. In 2012 Kawamura increased the number of external directors from 4 to 7 out of the 13 board members, and raised the number of non-Japanese from 1 to 3 and this year added the first foreign female board director, Cynthia Carroll, formerly of Anglo American.

“This diversity should have an impact on the mindset of our employees, but the other effect is to liven up board meetings. Japanese board meetings usually do not have much debate or discussion – the decisions have already been made at the management committee or operational committee level. And in companies like Hitachi which are very vertical, executives do not comment on other business divisions – they feel they are not qualified to criticise.

So our board meetings have become extremely “frank”, actually I feel beaten up by them – they ask why we have not reached 5% operating profit, why such elite Japanese graduates don’t seem to be very motivated, why we are so mild and not competitive. We use simultaneous interpreters in the board meetings, so the comments come bouncing out at us in real time. It’s not just criticisms, but also new business ideas come out of these meetings – new technologies we should adopt or businesses we should collaborate with. We held one of our board meetings in India, to show we were serious about tripling our business there. We are thinking to hold our board meeting somewhere in the USA this year.

George Barclay, who was CEO of 3M is actually British, and the current CEO is Swedish. Although 3M is an American company, Americans are in the minority on the board. Barclay tells me that’s normal if you want to compete globally”

It will also help with structural reform. Hitachi has just completed a global database of 300,000 personnel. This will be used for unified appraisals and global mobility of staff. Kawamura would like to see more non-Japanese in Japan, in team leader or General Manager positions. Seniority based promotion will probably come to an end.

Kawamura finishes the series by saying that he was too old to be President, which is why he handed over to Nakanishi after a year. He sees the role of Presidency as an agent – if there is proper diversity, then the company and the management will be “smart” and “aggressive” and the President does not even need to be charismatic.

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The man who turned round Hitachi #4 – globalization and the UK train business

Overseas business accounts for less than 50% of Hitachi’s Y9665 trillion revenues. Domestically Hitachi is seen as a “winner” but globalization is an urgent issue. Takashi Kawamura, current chairman and former President, points out that compared to GE or IBM or Siemens, Hitachi’s market capitalization is still very low. When he became president in 2009 he emphasized that Hitachi needed to look more like a truly global company. “There was a tendency just to compare ourselves to ourselves, so it seemed as if our performance was better, compared to the past, but this was just inward looking.”

Kawamura had experienced the strength of GE and Siemens as competitors when he was in charge of the power systems business, as did his successor as President, Hiroaki Nakanishi, when he was running the hard disk drive business in the USA, competing with the global top 1 or 2 companies. “The people working in Japan for Hitachi don’t feel this pressure, but the Japanese domestic market is shrinking, and if Hitachi does not compete in the rest of the world, it will become a loser.” This is a problem faced by many Japanese domestic giants – most of their employees are focused on the company and its DNA surviving, and globalization does not seem imperative for this, if business is going well domestically, in fact globalization might even risk the long term survival of the company.

Kawamura gives a couple of what he calls “model cases” of globalization at Hitachi – the UK rail business and the data storage business in the USA.

Hitachi competed against Siemens, Alstom and Bombardier in July 2012 to win the bid for the UK’s Intercity Express Programme – the construction and leasing of trains from 2017 for 27 years. Together with a further order this July, this represents 866 carriages, for which Hitachi has invested Y9.6bn in a factory in County Durham.

Hitachi was only known for TVs and domestic appliances in the UK, and had no history of train business in the UK at all. Kawamura says it was not enough just to keep saying that Hitachi’s technology was superb – so at their own cost, they set up their own control equipment in an old carriage and gathered data by running the train at night.

Then with the 2010 election, the new coalition government launched a spending review, and froze the awarding of the contract, so Hitachi Rail Europe made its own proposals on how to cut expenditure and this led to Hitachi regaining preferred bidder status. Kawamura believes their success was due to appointing a strong local leader, the CEO of HRE, Alistair Dormer, formerly of BAE and Alstom, who had been at Hitachi since 2003. A British sales team was put together and given a large degree of freedom too, so that they knew the local market well and were able to address any needs.

Kawamura says that Hitachi changed tack with their 2012 Mid Term Plan, to focus not just on developing countries but also matured markets like the UK, because it was felt that developed markets also had big infrastructure challenges, and this was how Hitachi could build up its strength in solution businesses.

(continued – the man who turned Hitachi around – globalization of people)

UK may drive away Japanese firms if it tries to “be like Norway”

It is likely there will be a referendum in 2016 on whether the UK retains its membership of the European Union or leaves. Charles Grant, of the Centre for European Reform, when he spoke to the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the UK this year, predicted that the referendum would result in a vote for the UK to break away.

The British pro-European campaign is not as well funded as the anti-European campaign, and there are plenty of Euro-sceptic politicians of all political persuasions. The British media is also mainly prejudiced against Europe in its coverage.

The arguments for the UK staying in the EU are mostly technical, to do with foreign direct investment and the economic impact, whereas the anti-European campaign can make an emotional appeal, by invoking threats to national sovereignty.

British business people may be generally in favour of continuing as members but I agree with Charles Grant that there is a lack of enthusiasm, and a certain complacency about what will happen if the UK does leave. British businesses think the UK can be like Norway – prosperous, part of some kind of free trade area, but independent. In actual fact, Norway is not as immune as it may seem from EU policies, and yet has no influence over setting those policies.

From my Japanese business perspective, “being like Norway” would be disastrous for the UK. I have seen a slow trend towards consolidation across Europe over the past ten years amongst my seventy or so Japanese clients, with the UK playing an important role as the coordinating European headquarters, drawing on a pool of talented Europeans who can easily move to and from the UK thanks to the open borders within the European Union, either working for the headquarters itself or for professional support services such as lawyers, accountants and consultants.

Japanese companies now employ 437,000 people across Europe, according to JETRO, and the UK is by far the biggest beneficiary, with over 140,000 employees of Japanese companies, compared to Germany with 59,000. Germany still has a strong attraction for Japanese multinationals, however, particularly those which are more engineering oriented. If the UK shut its borders and stopped being an influence in the EU, it’s not hard to imagine Japanese companies shifting their European headquarter functions over to Munich or Düsseldorf – or Amsterdam.

All the Japanese business people resident in the UK with whom I have spoken want Britain to stay in the European Union. However, they are afraid to speak out, for fear that this would seem like foreigners trying to interfere in domestic politics. It is going to be up to British businesspeople like me, whose companies are active across the European Union, to make the case. It cannot just be about jobs for the UK, but also Britain’s image globally, and how it will be damaged by “Little Englander” isolationism. If we do not seem to want to play our part in globalisation, to be influential and proactive, the global players will take their ball elsewhere.

This article was originally published in September 2013 in the Nikkei Weekly. It also appears in Pernille Rudlin’s latest book “Shinrai: Japanese Corporate Integrity in a Disintegrating Europe” available as a paperback and Kindle ebook on Amazon.

Japanese companies should try treating foreign acquisitions not as lodgers but adopted sons

There has been a 33% drop in the number of overseas acquisitions by Japanese companies in the first quarter of this year compared to the last year. I view this as a temporary blip because of the weakening yen. However, recently announced corporate reshuffles show that senior executives are being asked to step down early if they are perceived to have been responsible for the failure of major overseas acquisitions. So there may be an element of “once bitten, twice shy”.

The most recent quarterly survey of 148 leading Japanese companies by The Nikkei indicates there is still an appetite for acquisition. Of the executives polled, 42.6% said they wanted to acquire companies both domestically and abroad, with North America and Europe being the favoured overseas destinations.

One way these executives could do a better job of acquiring overseas companies is to be conscious of the fact that Japanese companies behave like traditional Japanese families – and adapt their acquisition and integration processes accordingly. For example, Japanese families, even to this day, adopt son-in-laws, who take on the family name and become the heir, especially if there is a family business at stake.

Japanese companies seem reluctant to use the “adopted son-in-law” model for their overseas acquisitions. Sometimes the acquisition is more like a marriage – a long courtship of holding an equity stake in a large foreign company and then a final consummation some years later. And like a marriage, this approach requires effort and commitment on both sides, through thick and thin, to build a new family, with a new set of values and customs.

A more prevalent model seems to be treating the acquired overseas company like a lodger in the house, rather than a member of the family. So long as the lodger behaves, with no loud music late at night, and pays the rent on time, they are left to their own devices.

Initially North American and European companies may welcome this approach. They are allowed to continue as before, with plenty of autonomy and not much interference. However, like a lodger, they start to feel isolated from the family activities, and wonder whether they should be looking to move out to better lodgings. Or they may hit financial difficulties and stop paying the rent, at which point the Japanese landlord cracks down hard.

When North American and European companies acquire other companies, some attention is at least nominally paid to the cultural aspects, but the main focus is on integration or imposition of systems, structures, policies and targets. The acquired company is usually left in no doubt as to how they are going to have to adapt to the new parent, well before the ink is dry on the purchase agreement.

If Japanese companies do not feel comfortable with this clinical approach, then a lot more thought needs to go into how exactly their new overseas subsidiary can be a true adopted son and heir – or spouse.

This article by Pernille Rudlin first appeared in the April 22nd 2013 edition of The Nikkei Weekly and also appears in Pernille Rudlin’s new book “Shinrai: Japanese Corporate Integrity in a Disintegrating Europe” which is available as a paperback and Kindle ebook on Amazon.

Europe’s loss of confidence in the food supply chain – can Japan step up?

I used to be able to horrify my British friends by telling them that I have eaten bazashi (horse sashimi) in Japan – they could not believe that I would happily eat horse, and eat it raw. British reactions, however, to the discovery that many readymade burgers and lasagne bought in supermarkets contain horsemeat rather than 100% beef was more about the fear of not knowing what is in our food, rather than disgust at the idea of having inadvertently eaten horse.

Although we don’t eat horsemeat in the UK, we are aware that many of our European neighbours do, and are not as repulsed by the idea as we used to be. What we find really troubling this time is that the supply chains for the food we buy have become so complex that we cannot be sure exactly what the ingredients are and where they have come from.

The British middle classes have become far more interested in good quality, locally sourced food this past decade. Our TV schedules are full of cookery programmes – not quite as many as Japan perhaps – and our restaurants have improved tremendously. Italians and French are famously obsessed by the seasonality and quality of food – but they too have been affected by the horsemeat contamination scandal. In fact the supply chains involved in the scandal seem to go through almost every country in the EU, from the Netherlands to Romania.

Many commentators lay the blame on lower income consumers’ desire to buy food as cheaply as possible, particularly in the current economic climate. The fierce price competition between supermarkets has led to pressures being applied right through the supply chain, and corners being cut in terms of quality checks. Supermarkets have, rightly, refrained from defending themselves by saying they were only trying to provide what consumers want or by blaming suppliers. They realise even the poorest consumer is placing trust in their brand, and does not want to be tricked. So they are taking steps to cut out middlemen between them and the farmers, or to bring meat processing back in house.

Some commentators have pointed out that there are parallels with the US car industry in the 1980s. American car firms were competing on price, so forced their suppliers to cut prices, with a consequent drop in quality. This enabled Japanese car firms, who worked far more collaboratively with their suppliers, to produce high quality vehicles, at reasonable prices, to take market share.

When Japanese car companies entered Europe, they made sure their supply chain followed them in setting up in Europe, or that local suppliers worked as closely with them as their suppliers would in Japan. Japanese car companies have recognised the importance of the brand – it is not just promoting a logo, but whole ethos of responsibility to the customer.

Notably, when there are quality problems, Japanese car firms act as the public face to the customer, apologising and implementing product recalls. The root cause may be a supplier defect, but the supplier is not publicly named. The brand owner takes responsibility for the whole supply chain, and customers do not want to hear the blame being pushed onto someone else.

Japan has had its own food contamination scandals, but on balance, I believe Japanese companies manage their supply chains very well. The test will be how the next wave of Japanese companies in customer facing industries such as retail, airlines and food, who are trying to become global brands, and often buy up European brands in order to do so, will be able to replicate their trusted supply chains successfully in Europe. The beef contamination scandal has put European customers on the alert.

This article by Pernille Rudlin originally appeared in Japanese in the Teikoku Databank News, March 13th, 2013. It also appears in Pernille Rudlin’s new book “Shinrai: Japanese Corporate Integrity in a Disintegrating Europe”, available as a paperback and Kindle ebook on Amazon.

Why it matters if Japanese businesspeople are bad at English

The former President of Microsoft Japan, Makoto Naruke, wrote a best seller entitled “90% of Japanese don’t need to speak English” provocatively asserting that learning English was a waste of time and money, no graduate from an international school has succeeded in business, business English conversation is easy and if you’re an idiot, being able to speak English isn’t going to help.

There’s obvious truth in the last point, and Tejun Shin, formerly of Morgan Stanley, now running his own fund and a microfinance not-for-profit Living in Peace doesn’t deny that 90% of Japanese don’t need English in their jobs, but points out in the Nikkei Online(Japanese) that it’s still a big problem that the 10% of Japanese who do need English for their work are pretty awful at English too.

He demolishes various assumptions made that Japanese have nothing to worry about, showing that even amongst 19 Asian countries Japan comes second from bottom after Cambodia on English ability scores and that amongst 15 OECD countries where English is not the native language, Japan is bottom in English ability. Even something that I often assert, that Japanese are better at reading than speaking or writing English, turns out to be wrong.

He gives a couple of excellent reasons that I had not articulated myself for why poor English ability is an issue for Japanese employees.

Firstly, that it will lead to the Galapagosisation of the mind (Galapagos syndrome is often used to describe products which are developed purely for the Japanese market, so like a Galapagos turtle, cannot survive outside that particular environnment). Without input of “world knowledge” – from the internet or TED talks etc – which is inevitably in English, thoughts become entirely inward looking and idea creation incestuous.

Secondly, for leaders in particular, English ability is a must, not only so that they can form alliances with overseas companies to develop business, but also – and this was the real aha moment for me – so that English speaking talent feels comfortable working for them. This is so true – if you are a high flier, you wouldn’t want to work in a company where you have little chance of getting your views heard by the top executives.

Career paths in Japanese companies in Europe

I asked one of the two partners of a local firm of accountants whether he was getting lots of job applications from recently made redundant accountants from the big accounting firms. He said he was, but he had to be careful about hiring such people as his firm cannot offer the career path that the big firms can. “People who are used to big companies get frustrated and quit when they realise there is not much potential for meaningful promotion with us,” he said.

It reminded me of the situation I often see in Japanese companies in Europe. Partly because of the fragmented nature of Europe, unlike the USA, many Japanese companies find the best structure is to have a small office in each country with one or two expatriate Japanese staff in each one. The locally hired staff often have interesting and varied jobs because the small office has to cover a variety of functions and businesses. However there is not much of a vertical structure in terms of people for them to “manage” if they are promoted to a management position.

How, then, should such Japanese companies retain and motivate good quality local staff? The accountancy firm partner said what he did was offer good salaries, excellent benefits and plenty of training. This may not be sufficient to satisfy ambitious people, however, so I have a couple of other suggestions specifically for Japanese companies in Europe.

One is to try to create a pan-European structure so that locally hired staff can have some status within that structure, not just their local one. It may not be possible to have actual job roles like “European Sales Director” but a human network could be created, through pan European meetings and training. Then people can keep in touch afterwards by using an intranet to put their profiles on and exchange information through blogs or wikis. Through getting to know each other and sharing expertise, the high flying staff will begin to gain unofficial status and recognition. People might also become less reluctant about the idea of moving to another location or to take on a “pan European” role, once they know more about other colleagues in other European operations and what they do.

The other way Japanese companies can motivate their ambitious staff is to give them opportunities to improve their status within their profession. This might not seem to the Japanese management as being much of an issue. Many Japanese employees feel they have enough status professionally because their company is so well known and respected in Japan. But often such companies are not at all famous outside of Japan. The kind of opportunities I have in mind are, for example, joining professional associations, gaining professional qualifications, speaking at conferences, writing articles for trade journals etc.

If Japanese companies can support their locally hired staff in gaining recognition and respect inside and outside their companies, they may have more success in retaining motivated, ambitious employees.

The original version of this article was published in Japanese in the Teikoku Databank News and can also be found in “Shinrai: Japanese Corporate Integrity in a Disintegrating Europe” available as a paperback and Kindle ebook on Amazon.

Teams and orchestras

Shinko Hanaoka, the Japanese cellist, spoke today to the Jiji Press Top Seminar. I’d just been talking to a Japanese ex-colleague about European and Japanese attitudes to teams, so her description of the differences between Japanese and British orchestras struck a chord. Apparently in Japan, when there is a vacancy in an orchestra, applications are invited and there is an initial selection based on the applications. Those selected are called for audition and the person who plays the best in the audition is selected. The UK system is similar, up to the point of the audition, but apparently several people are shortlisted after the audition and then called, randomly and without much warning, to play in concerts, as part of a trial period, which can go on for years. They are compensated the same way a contract musician is paid, but they are under scrutiny not just for their ability to play, but their sociability, flexibility etc. In other words whether they fit into the team.

I suppose in the Japanese orchestra case, there is an assumption that it goes without saying that the new member will make every effort to fit in the team. It’s the training every child receives from kindergarten onwards. However, Hanaoka herself admitted she found the Japanese orchestra “gyoukai” (industry, trade, profession) very oppressive and full of rules and expectations about how she should behave.

She wasn’t totally positive about the British method either – as clearly selection based on personal characteristics rather than musical ability is liable to prejudice and political considerations. She confessed she did sometimes use the excuse of being a foreigner to get out of some of the more “gyoukai” like aspects of the British musical scene. (The “freedom of a foreign life” as I have noted previously)

Even once she succeeded in the trial period, she found it impossible to get the Royal Philharmonic to do the necessary to get her a visa, so had to continue her studies in order to qualify for a student visa, and then finally permanent residency. She said it was unsurprising that she was one of very few foreigners in the orchestra, in contrast to continental European or American orchestras.

A further point she made, familiar to anyone with Japanese customers, is that Japanese audiences are way more fussy than British ones. “Maniacs” she said (meaning maniacal in the depth of their knowledge, rather than nuts), whereas British audiences mostly just wanted to enjoy themselves and were far more casual.

A fresh look at governance lessons from the Olympus case

The Olympus Corp. trial has started and Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, the former chairman, pleaded guilty to covering up financial losses. Sony Corp. has agreed to take a roughly 11% stake in Olympus, securing the company’s future. So, the worst outcome, which Kikukawa himself feared – that the company would be destroyed, and the livelihoods of many employees lost – has not transpired and it would seem justice is being served.

Reading former Olympus President Michael Woodford’s autobiographical account of the whole incident, I can’t help wondering if there might have been a less nerve wracking way of resolving the firm’s problems. A key moment in the book for me is where Kikukawa, Woodford’s sponsor, realizing that Woodford is in effect asking him to resign and accept responsibility for the cover up, asks “do you hate me Michael?”

The question is incomprehensible to Woodford, who does not see his accusations as personal, but part of his fiduciary duty as a director of the company to make transparent what has happened and ensure the guilty take responsibility.

To Kikukawa, I can imagine the cover up was a desperate attempt to save the company, with no personal gain involved. He is unable to disentangle his own fate and duty as a director with the company’s fate and his responsibility for its employees. An attack on his behavior seems like an attack on his person, by someone who does not seem to care whether the company lives or dies.

Woodford makes it very clear that he does indeed care whether Olympus lives or dies, but believes that the process of exposure, punishment and redemption will allow the company to be reborn. Many executives bred in the Anglo Saxon capitalist world are of a similar mindset – able to distance themselves from the company they manage, and to examine it objectively.

There is a less admirable side to this – a tendency to march into a company, believing that a bold reorganization, a sweep with a new broom, brushing out some of the people associated with the past, and putting in your own men (and it always does seem to be men) will get the results needed. So long as the numbers are good, the shareholders are happy. Casualties fall by the wayside, but can pick themselves up and start again elsewhere.

This is still not the case in Japan, and simply marking this down as a case of inadequate corporate governance ignores the fact that Japan does have corporate governance standards, which can and should be enforced. Furthermore, the Japanese corporate environment has become as tricky as that of the US or Europe. There are regulations governing overtime, diversity and “power harassment” that new foreign bosses ignores at their peril.

There have been too many cases of failure of foreign bosses in Japan for it to be wise for Japanese companies to continue to appoint foreign executives in the hope that this will somehow magically globalize the company. Foreign executives need intensive support and guidance, such as training in the workings of Japanese boards and coaching from those experienced in managing Japanese employees, if they are to make a difference without destruction.

This article originally appeared in the October 8th 2012 edition of the Nikkei Weekly

Diverse societies have equally diverse ideas about good service

In the previous articles discussing differing customer service standards in the UK and Japan I concluded that there was one fundamental cultural difference which may make it impossible for the UK to replicate Japanese customer service levels, namely that Japanese people are so acutely sensitive to how they are seen by other people around them.

Why are the Japanese more considerate of other people compared to the British or indeed many other nationalities? Many cultural commentators like to talk about Japan’s history as a cooperative, “mura” based, rice growing nation, contrasting with Western individualistic, opportunistic hunter gatherers. This not only ignores the fact that Europeans also farmed collaboratively to grow crops, but denies any possibility that cultures may change in the face of industrialisation and urbanization.

The more obvious explanation, less to do with ancient national history, is to what extent a community is diverse and fluctuating. Politeness and consideration is distinctly worse in London than in other communities in the UK in which I have lived. 40% of Londoners were not born in the UK, and the population is constantly changing as even the original British come and go, for work, education or family reasons. There is no incentive to be considerate to the people around you, as you will probably never meet them again. Also, with an ethnically diverse population, you will find equally diverse ideas about what constitutes politeness.

Although Japanese people originally had diverse ancestry, this dates back thousands of years ago and since then there has not been much in the way of immigration. There are still distinct regional differences in culture, behaviour and etiquette within Japan of course but across the nation a strong idea prevails, it seems to me, of what standard politeness and decent behaviour should be.

When you have diverse ideas about politeness coexisting, you get culture clashes, and people think the other person is being rude, even when the other person was trying to be polite. For example, in certain African cultures it is disrespectful to look a senior person in the eye when they are talking to you. This leads to British Afro-Caribbean youths getting into trouble with ethnically white British police who demand “look me in the eye when I am talking to you!”

When I was a student I took a summer job in a Kosher Chinese restaurant in London. I was pretty hopeless as a waitress. All the tricky stuff like cutting up and serving Peking Duck was left to the Chinese waitresses, but the Chinese idea of good service is to be efficient and expressionless, with no small talk. The Israeli owner of the restaurant hired me and an Iranian girl to provide the smiles and the chat and serve drinks. Our lack of skill did not matter so much as long as we were charming the customers. It was difficult to charm my way out of the time when I dropped a whole tray of iced Coca Cola in a male customer’s lap, however!

This article by Pernille Rudlin originally appeared in the Nikkei Weekly and in Japanese in the Eikoku News Digest. This and other articles are available as an e-book “Omoiyari: 6 Steps to Getting it Right with Japanese Customers”

Category: Globalization