JAPANESE MANAGERIAL PSYCHOLOGY: AN ANALYSIS OF CULTURAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL FEATURES OF “TOTAL QUALITY CONTROL”

Abstract

Advances the argument that Western management must increasingly decode the organizational and cultural features of Japanese‐style management – if managerial conflict is to be reduced in joint ventures, subsidiaries, mergers, and relocations – and if Western management is to consider alternatives to its current approaches to quality production. Analyses total quality control (TQC) management as representative of the successful approach to Japanese management. TQC, built around culturally indigenous views of amal (interdependency), muri (excess), muda (waste), and mura (unevenness), contrasts with partial quality measures utilized in Western organizations. Key Japanese features are elimination and/or restructuring of quality control departments and specialists, designation of quality control to the production line, reduction of lot size, utilization of “U‐shaped lines” and a “just‐in‐time” modus operandi.

Citation

Goldman, A. (1992), "JAPANESE MANAGERIAL PSYCHOLOGY: AN ANALYSIS OF CULTURAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL FEATURES OF “TOTAL QUALITY CONTROL”", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 17-20. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683949210013002