1. A 40 percent premium in addition to the regular retirement allowance.
2. One-year special leave granted for learning a new skill to get a new job, with 80 percent of base salary paid for the first six months and 60 percent for the next six months.
3. A tuition fee for acquiring a new skill, with up to ¥ 10,000 (approximately $450) paid monthly.
In each plant and installation of this company, management has set up a counseling office to provide consultation services to all volunteers considering a second career. The company's position is that if an employee is to make a change in his career, the earlier the better. Thus the voluntary age begins at 40.
As these developments suggest, the lifetime employment system is changing in Japan, and an adverse wind is blowing among Japanese workers. The retirement allowance system, originally set to penalize a worker for voluntary retirement, now exists to encourage early retirement. Japanese management is definitely in a transitional stage. It will have to review and revise its traditional policies and strategies—and it has the wisdom to do so.
5. THE SUCCESSFUL ORGANIZATION MAN
The Organization Man, by William H. Whyte, Jr., clearly showed how deeply the American working class is entrapped by the organization and how workers earn salaries and wages at the price of their individual identities. But his ironical description seems to apply even more to the Japanese working class, which is so preoccupied with the feudalistic way of thinking.
A man employed by an organization will have his tiny niche in the working society. This membership acquired on employment actually means the opening up of his life, and retirement from the organization usually indicates the shutting off of his career. The organization gives every new member an opportunity to rise to the top and motivates him by putting the fragrant smell of success right under his nose. He kneels down at the opportunity and dreams of all the rich satisfactions he may gain in the future. On every payday, he tastes a little bit of sweet victory, but soon he relaxes on his small, steady income and obscures his personal identity as he takes on the mannerisms of organizational life.
His first few months on the job make him intuitive enough to sense the internal current of the organization and the implication of the faces around him. The strong demand for conformity weighs heavily on him. Of course, he is not a human ant, and he tries to cultivate his own individuality. But the strict conformity and the group-oriented climate eventually doom him to become an object to be moved around in accordance with the will of his direct supervisor and other superiors. He will gradually master the skill to play the organizational role he has been assigned. While crouching under authority and depending on the paternalistic warmth of the organization, he tries to open a door for his own advancement, and to that end he grapples with all sorts of setbacks and hindrances. He feels the strange magic power of the organization, which forces him to be either an ugly buffoon to please everyone or a capable demon to manipulate others. When he achieves a small success, he tries to share the credit with his group and hides his pride under a mask in order to prevent possible jealousy. Even so, his happiness and pride course through his body and brew another ambition for tomorrow.
As a matter of fact, from the standpoint of management, his value will be increased not by augmentation of his human virtues but by the sharpening of his ability to yield profits for the organization. Therefore, when a young man enters an organization intent on attaining sweet victory, he is likely to be molded by the organization's magic power into an organization man. Since the Japanese organization is based on the traditional concepts of duty and dependence, a young organization man cannot develop beyond certain cultural limitations. Bound by the rules of giri and ninjo of the "cm-tract society," he grows up into the world the company wishes to establish. He works himself hard to be a successful kaisha-ningen (company man).
The Company Man
What qualities does a worker need to be a successful organization man in the modern samurai society? In the preceding chapters, we examined the important cultural traditions on which Japan forged its economic success. Here, we shall examine the basic rules required for a company man to forge his success in the organization.
Grasp the "Air"
In Japan, people are moved by air. They often say, "We couldn't mention it in that air, so we withdrew our point," or "The strained air filled the conference room and made everybody silent," or "Nobody could renew the traditional air of the company." Air in these expressions is the literal translation of kuki, and it refers to the climate or mood pervading a situation. Japanese people lie rather flat under an emotional mood and generally surrender themselves to a psychological climate.
A successful organization man, therefore, always tries to catch the "air" of the group at the beginning of any event. Whatever he attends or is engaged in, he first discerns the general tenor of the group and tries to discover the seeds of success for him to make use of. He senses the atmosphere of the place, analyzes the organizational climate, and then proceeds to deal with the subject or make his proposal. This is a ground rule for being a good organization man. For instance, in a conference, he first smells out whether others' opinions are going to bounce up for or against him. He never proceeds toward his destination until he has grasped the air correctly.
Mr. D got a job with K Trading Company when he graduated from Tokyo Fisheries College and was immediately assigned to the branch office in Las Palmas, Canary Islands. During his association with the very cheerful people there, he enjoyed a pleasant working life for three and a half years. He was not aware that the air of the Canary Islands had transformed him. When he returned to the head office in Tokyo, his personality completely changed by Las Palmas, he was not appreciated by other company members. He was frank but rough, open-hearted but outspoken, and he could not behave like a Japanese organization man. Whenever he attended a meeting, visited customers, or conducted a negotiation, he always jumped right into the subject without taking heed of the prevailing mood or the general outlook of the group. Because he no longer fit in, he had to leave the company. Now he is operating his own little shop in Las Palmas.
If you don't want to fail in the organization, like Mr. D, you must watch the climate at any business event you attend. You should express yourself carefully and adjust your words to the mood. Don't stand out from the group. However, if you want to create a different climate more favorable to your own proposal, you will need to engage in nemawashi (preparatory groundwork behind the scenes) and sway people to your side beforehand.
Nemawashi is an important tool for the company man. A worker's ability to engage in nemawashi determines how much teamwork he will get. In the Japanese organization you can't accomplish anything alone; the competition in the group-oriented climate is too fierce to achieve success on your own. Furthermore, your own resources are fairly limited, no matter how good you are. In order to survive and succeed, you must join the team under the prevailing climate and then lead the group through nemawashi to create a new climate. If you can create a favorable climate for your proposal and get it through, you are a successful organization man.