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diversity

Home / Posts Tagged "diversity"

Tag: diversity

Nissan bases global hiring on “Japanese spirit, diverse techniques”

Nissan Ambassador Max Whitlock receives his gold all-electric Nissan LEAF to celebrate his double gold medal success at the Rio 2016 Games.

“Japanese spirit, diverse techniques” or “wakon tasai” is a deliberate pun on the slogan used during the Meiji Restoration in the 19th century and by nationalists during the militarization of Japan of “wakon yousai“ which meant “Japanese spirit, Western techniques”.

I’m guessing that Yusuke Shinagawa of Nissan’s HR department used it somewhat provocatively in a recent interview with Nikkei Business, as Nissan – with its alliance with Renault, and famous Brazilian-Lebanese-French President Carlos Ghosn – is viewed as somewhat less Japanese in spirit than say, Toyota.

“Our headquarters in Yokohama is very global”, says Shinagawa, “so we want to hire wakon tasai people who are highly specialised and show leadership”, he says.  “If you don’t have proper professional expertise, you cannot convincingly explain your point of view to people from other countries.”  I think he might be on to something here, as it is true that the traditional Japanese generalist track for graduate hires does provoke confusion amongst Europeans who cannot understand why they should respect a boss who is, say, the Chief Financial Officer, and yet is not a CPA or equivalent.

Specialist knowledge can overcome linguistic barriers

Also, it’s true that a specialist knowledge, and its attendant specialist vocabulary, can overcome linguistic barriers.  I once saw a strong friendship form between a German automotive engineer who spoke no Japanese and a Japanese automotive engineer who spoke no German (and neither were that good at English either), simply on the basis that they were both passionate about the same area of research in their field.

“What I mean by “wakon” is that a strength of Japan is that we will proactively pursue something to the end, and keep close relationships with the rest of the team.”  “Working overseas in a diverse environment means that you have to act on data and reality.  This is kind logical approach is what we call “Diverse techniques/tasai“.

“Whereas in the 1970s our overseas sales were around half of our business, now they are around 90%”. Our customers are the Nissan group itself and our overseas operations.  The demand on us is to set a strategy in a complex organisation and environment.  This is our big difference with Toyota or Honda, is the level of globalization and diversity.”

“Our big difference with Toyota is the level of globalization and diversity”

“Of course to some extent you cannot be a specialist except through real life experience.  So we ask people in interviews what attitude they took to learning, and whether they can explain what they learned.  We interviewed someone who had studied architecture, which may seem unrelated to the automotive industry, but he told us that there were similarities, because it was about setting up the structure efficiently in order to get the maximum functionality.  We like people who have this wide perspective and flexible thinking”.

“We expect people to have over 730 in their TOEIC score for English.  If there is someone with a strong science background, we can accept over 600.  But English is a must for working at Nissan.  If you have the basics when you enter, you can develop further as you work.”

“However it is wrong to imagine that you will be sent to work overseas immediately after you join.  We have plenty of good people locally.  It’s not language ability but whether you have the appropriate competency that determines whether you are sent abroad.”

 

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CSR rankings for Top 30 Japanese companies in Europe

More than half of the Top 30 largest Japanese companies in Europe are also in the Top 50 Japanese listed companies for CSR according to the Toyo Keizai. Which is reassuring, although there are some notable no-shows and laggers.

Fujifilm (#29 of our Top 30 in Europe) leads the CSR rankings and Canon, Ricoh, Denso and Bridgestone are all in the top 10.

Toyo Keizai has published the 10th edition of its annual CSR research into 1325 listed Japanese companies and previewed the top 700 of these in its online magazine, from which we have extracted the rankings for the Top 30 Japanese companies in Europe and in the UK.

Rankings are based on evaluations made in 4 categories of:

  1. Human resources – Family friendly policies, diversity (gender, age, LGBT, disability etc), health and safety, graduate retention rates – and whether there are any non-Japanese executives
  2. Environment
  3. Corporate governance  – whether there is a CSR executive, any evidence of corruption or cartels, values and vision, risk management, crisis management policies
  4. Sociality – volunteering (including overseas) , NPO/NGO alliances, ISO standards

Top 30 companies in Europe that are not in the CSR top 700 include some surprises – Nippon Sheet Glass (Pilkington), Fast Retailing and Yazaki (which is privately owned anyway).

Hitachi has fallen from #39 to 147 and Olympus has improved to reach #175 from 263 in 2015 – which seems to imply its post-scandal clean up is working (although it seems Olympus is now suing Michael Woodford and one other UK director for repayment of some pension funds, so clearly the battle is not over yet).

Toshiba has fallen to #52 from #14, unsurprisingly given its recent governance problems.  Toyo Keizai notes that other slippages such as Denso from #3 to #6 and Toyota from #8 to #16 are largely to do with delays or non disclosure in progress with gender diversity, specifically, women in management positions.  Nissan slipped from #5 to #11 due to governance issues.

Companies which scored the best on Human Resources metrics that are also in the Top 30 European companies are Sony, Nissan, Fujifilm, Japan Tobacco and Toshiba.  Best scores on environment were Nissan, Daikin, Bridgestone, Ricoh, Canon, Honda, Denso, Toyota, Toshiba, Sony, Fujifilm, Konica Minolta and Suntory.  Best scores on governance were Ricoh, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Konica Minolta, Bridgestone, Sony, Asahi Glass and Honda.

Reports on the CSR rankings of the Top 30 largest Japanese companies in Europe, Middle East and Africa are available to subscribers to our premium, paid newsletter – subscriptions are available here.

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Sumo or Judo: how Japanese firms embrace or exclude diverse staff

I miss not being able to see the hatsu basho (January sumo tournament) that is now under way in Tokyo, as they don’t show sumo on the television here in the U.K. anymore. It would be great if Harumafuji, the new Mongolian second ranked ozeki, does well*, but it seems this year will be another challenging one for sumo’s credibility, particularly in the way it deals with the foreign rikishi wrestler.

When I was still working at my Japanese company in Japan, trying to develop and implement policies to improve the career opportunities for our “foreign rikishi,” in other words our non-Japanese employees, we had many discussions about what we nicknamed “sumo vs. judo” problem.

The sumo vs judo problem

In a “sumo” company such as ours, the traditional view was that in order to become a senior manager, you needed to join the company (the “sumo stable” or beya) at an early age and spend several years doing menial jobs, pouring the beer for everyone and living in a company dorm.

The sumo equivalent would be cleaning out the sumo beya stable, making chanko nabe stew and undergoing grueling training. So if any foreigner wanted to become a manager, that was fine, but they had to have undergone the same process as other Japanese employees.

Learning the “kata” – knowing the form

As for training, this was mostly on the job, learning from your seniors, as indeed in sumo, where the kata, or form of sumo, is learned by observing others rather than through any formal guidance or manuals. In fact, there weren’t many manuals or formal appraisal processes at all in our company. People just “knew” how to behave and what was expected of them.

For many Japanese companies, this changed in the 1990s. This was partly due to the restructuring needed to deal with the slowing down of Japanese economic growth, but also a recognition that the Japanese company had to become more diverse, not only in terms of nationalities, but in the gender and career background of its staff. It was not only the foreigners that objected to being treated like sumo, but other Japanese people, particularly in the younger generations. Also, the vagueness and lack of transparency often led to cover-ups, verging on what could be deemed corrupt practices.

No point in forcing conformity to the Japanese way on diversity

If you force diverse groups of people to conform to one mysterious way that can only be learned through many years’ apprenticeship, a way most easily learned by a group who share one particular cultural background, then those who deviate from this norm will find that, despite their best efforts, they are only a pale imitation of the mainstream group.

In other words, if you want all employees to behave like traditional Japanese salarymen, then hiring people from nontraditional groups is pointless, because they end up being unhappy, fake Japanese salarymen, or, more likely, quit.

My colleagues and I contrasted sumo with judo, which is also a Japanese origin sport, and has much of the same Japanese ethos regarding the importance of kata and diligence through practice, but is much more transparent in its rules and its teaching methods, a prerequisite, I assume, for it becoming an official Olympic sport for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. I have to say though: I find sumo more charming and fascinating than judo.

* Unfortunately he didn’t. He made a majority of wins 8 to7, and did better in the March tournament that has just ended – 10 wins to 5 losses.

This article by Pernille Rudlin originally appeared in the Nikkei Weekly. 

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Last updated by Pernille Rudlin at 2017-04-23.

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