Week 1 Case Analysis

Summary
Cultures as different and amazing as they are, change with time. The big change in Japanese culture occurred during the 1990’s, which mostly given credit to the change in thinking from the generation born after 1964. This change was obvious in 1999 when Panasonic opened up 3 options for its new employees, option one would give the new employees a fantastic retirement bonus, housing, and services also grand company events. The second package would give the employees the same perks except instead of a retirement bonus, they would get a hefty starting salary. The third package gave the employees an even larger still starting salary however none of the other benefits. 41% of the new employees chose the second package. This choice proved that there was a higher interest in wealth and individualism.
1) What were the triggers of cultural change in Japan during the 1990s? How is cultural change starting to affect traditional values in Japan?
The cultural changes in the japan after 1990 occurred because the generation then was a new one and they were the riches generation. People of this generation ken a little about the tradition and were not even as close to knowledge of their parents and ancestors. Japans economy enters a prolonged period of slump, which forced many Japanese companies to abandon their traditional ways of doing business like lifetime employment. This caused younger people just entering the workforce to question whether the loyalty that workers had traditional given companies, and that had been traditionally reciprocated, made sense. The cultural values of the Japanese were now in dangers as with the new generation and after was economy japan was now transformed into western culture where the traditional systems were taken over by the new western processes of business in most of the organizations except for Panasonic. Many younger people concluded that it no longer made sense to be tied to a single company, that instead it could be beneficial to take advantage of new opportunities when and where they arose.
2) How might Japan’s changing culture influence the way Japanese businesses operate in the future? What are the potential implications of such changes for the Japanese economy?
Many will probably agree that the loyalty that had been a mainstay of post-World War II corporate Japan is a thing of the past. Companies can no longer count on employees to blindly work for the greater good of the company. Most may also note that the group identification that was associated with that loyalty is also a thing of a bygone era, and that employees today are more likely to look out for themselves first, and the company second. For companies, this means shifting to incentive programs designed to promote individual performance rather than group performance. Some may suggest that the company housing and other benefits that were part of the traditional post-World War II Japanese company will probably change to reflect these differences.
The Japanese cultural changes triggered the most westernized culture adaptation. While japan moved to the new world of business there were the old techniques f businesses that were considered to be the most effective employing tactics. Now the jobs were not fixed and most of the people weren’t paid the salaries like they did in the prewar japan. Recession made it all even worse where people were thrown away and therefore making the company takes serious measures of throwing out people who underperformed. The potential implications of such changes are the instability in the jobs that has been caused in Japanese people.
3) How did traditional Japanese culture benefit Panasonic during the 1950s–1980s? Did traditional values become more of a liability during the 1990s and early 2000s? How so?
During the year 1950-1980 Panasonic was at the peak and people took the company as the priority key many other companies at that time, the reason to this was that the