1st Post
Hi D==
My English ability is not sufficient enough to comprehend the whole article written in your sophisticated English. Since you told me that you would like to meet me some time in the future, I would like to talk about the issue then hopefully in Japanese.
All I can say so far are two points below.
1 As I wrote above, I do not clearly understand the point you depicted. But the overall difference in management style in your article very much reminds me of my favorite Mintzberg’s explanation to Japanese management.
2 I have never heard of the word “Un-ei” used as a managerial term (except for the management of non-profit organizations).
2nd Post
Hi D==
Sorry for my late response. I was kind of running around from one client to others through the fiscal year end season.
I do not remember clearly if Mintzberg referred to the difference between the roles of the Japanese managers and those of the other countries. However, he has often expressed his dynamic model regarding the roles of managers as well as the process of strategy building. I see it even in The Nature of Managerial Work, one of his early works. He even points out as follows.
Chester Barnard claims that “Executive work is not that of the organization, but the specialized work of maintaining the organization in operation.” And David Braybrooke takes one further step and suggests that managers are needed only because of imperfections in the organizational system.
In Strategy Safari, his rather new work, he asserts that managers role are not to plan and control the organizational activities but to materialize the internal environment where the new strategies emerge from the strategic learning process among the organization. (His opinion above might be mistranslated as I read it in Japanese.)
Then in that book, he refers to the famous case study of Honda’s business expansion into the U.S. market. The Honda’s case, to us the Japanese, appears so natural as to find anyone who would do the same. But if it is not the case, as Mintzberg points out, I might have to look for the rational explanation for it.
This is basically what I recall when I read you blog post.
Some so-called Chishiki-Jin people started to present the new concept of business management that could be summarized as “business management as a set of technique to die (Shisu-beki Gijutsu toshiteno Keiei).” I read several books about the concept and I do agree with it now. I believe that Mintzberg’s view to depict the end of the well-organized POSDCORB type management model could be explained in the same story.
I reconsidered the concept and put it into five stories in my semimonthly mail-magazines. The series titled “Makeshifts (Oukyu-Shochi)” started at February 25th. The mail-magazine is released on 10th and 25th of every month. The contents of the mail-magazines are stored in my blog named MSI-Tales. If you are interested in it, you can read the first two episodes of the five to go.
http://tales.msi-group.org/?p=576 on Feb 25 and
http://tales.msi-group.org/?p=582 on Mar 10.
I am a mere tactical schemer for the Japanese SMEs and I am not a business analyst or an academic researcher of business management. I do not comprehend the management theories very well. I just read and learn whatever I could utilize to solve the clients’ business problems. (I even make clients’ shop staff watch a movie to learn a method of systematic rendering of hospitality. Mintzberg’s works and Ueno Juri’s popular movie value the same to me, in a sense.)
These blog posts and mail-magazines are simply byproducts of my daily activities with the SME owners. I would appreciate if you could enjoy them.
As for the word “Un-ei,” I could tell you that I do not use the term in the SME management. That’s all I can say. I do facilitate holding so-called Benkyo-kai (employees’ internal learning sessions) at the clients. The Benkyo-kai is indeed expressed as “Un-ei sareteiru.” I think it is because the clients’ people regard Benkyo-kai as something outside of their daily operation to make profits.
You can say Tempo Un-ei (Keeping Stores Running) or Kojo Un-ei (Keeping Factories Running). You can say so, because these facilities are regarded as only the subsets of the whole management process.