Japanese Style of Management
Time clocks are banned from the premises. Managers and workers converse on a first-name basis and eat lunch together in the company cafeteria. Employees are briefed once a month by a top executive on sales and production goals and are encouraged to air their complaints. Four times a year, workers attend company-paid parties. Says Betty Price, 54, an assembly-line person:' Working for Sony is like working for your family. '
Her expression, echoed by dozens of other American Sony workers in San Diego, is a measure of success achieved at the sprawling two-story plant, where both the Stars and Stripes and the Rising Sun fly in front of the factory’s glistening white exterior. In 1981 the San Diego plant turned over 700,000 color television sets, one-third of Sony’s total world production. More significantly, company officials now proudly say that the plant's productivity approaches that of its Japanese facilities.
Plant manager Shiro Yamada, 58, insists that there are few differences between workers in the United States and Japan. Says he： 'Americans are as quality conscious as the Japanese. But the question has been how to motivate them. ' Yamada’s way is to bathe his U.S. employees in personal attention. Workers with perfect attendance records are treated to dinner once a year at a posh restaurant downtown. When one employee complained that a refrigerator for storing lunches was too small, it was replaced a few days later with a larger one. Vice- president Masayoshi Morimoto, known as Mike around the plant, has mastered Spanish so he can talk with his many Hispanic workers. The company has installed telephone hot lines on which workers can anonymously register suggestions or complaints.
The firm strives to build strong ties with its employees in the belief that the workers will then show loyalty to the company in return. It carefully promotes from within, and most of the assembly-line supervisors are high school graduates who rose through the ranks because of their hard work and dedication to the company. During the 1973-1975 recession, when TV sales dropped and production slowed drastically, no one was fired. Instead, workers were kept busy with plant maintenance and other chores. In fact, Sony has not laid off a single employee since 1972, when the plant was opened. The Japanese managers were stunned when the first employee actually quit within one year. Says Richard Crossman, the plant's human relations expert: “They came to me and wanted to know what they had done wrong. I had to explain that quitting is just the WAY IT IS SOMETIMES in Southern California. '
This personnel policy has clearly been a success. Several attempts to unionize the work force have been defeated by margins as high as 3 to 1. Says Jan Timmerman, 22, a parts dispatcher and for member of Retail the Retail Clerks Union: “Union pay was better, and the benefits were probably better.Butbasically I’m more satisfied here. ”
Sony has not forced Japanese customs on American workers. Though the company provides lemon-colored smocks for assembly-lineworkers, most prefer to wear jeans and running shoes. The firm doesn’t demand that anyone put on uniforms. A brief attempt to establish a general exercise period for San Diego workers, similar to the kind Sony's Japanese employees perform, was dropped when saw it was not wanted.
Inevitably, there have been minor misunderstandings because of the differences in languages and customs.One worker sandblasted the numbers 1 2 6 4 on a series of parts shewas testing before she realized that her Japanese supervisor meant that she was to label them '1 to 64.' Mark Dempsey. The plant's youngestsupervisor admits that there is a vast culturalgap between the Japanese and Americans. Says he:'They don’t realize that some of us live for the weekend, while lots of them live for the week-just so they can begin to work again. '
Some workers grumble about the delays caused by
A.very formal B.very detached C.harmonious D.depressing正确答案C
