Can African Countries adopt Japanese Systems of management of the 1980s?
World class management has driven growth and opportunity in the West and Far East and in the process created First World economies in those regions.
Shortly after World War 2, the Western World and Japan were keen on recreating the pre war economic pre-eminence that was characterized by great pride in building huge factories that processed steel, coal and large scale manufacturing. The so called heavy industry.
There was a romantic obsession with industrialization and heavy engineering. Many nations knew that only massive industrialization could lift them up from the devastating effect of such a huge war.
If Africa and India had had the capacity in the 1940s, they could easily have outdone the European powers that were starved of raw materials and capital economically.
The Pacific Renaissance
In the 1980s Japanese firms shook the world with a unique system of management that saw Japanese firms capture the auto and semiconductor business in the world. Japanese were becoming world leaders in engineering led by firms such as Toyota,Sony,Matsuhita at a time when Western firms were facing a recession and stagnation in sales.Many Western business leaders and scholars trooped to Japan to learn their business and management philosophy.
Many were quite fascinated by the spirit,loyalty,familialism and worh ethic that they found. Some proposed that the Japanese system be entirely transplanted to the West while others advocated only for the best attributes of Japanese management due to the huge cultural difference .Some Western scholars went as far as studying as the Japanese system of education that produced such great business leaders. Some were even more radical and went as far as deepy studying the Analects of Confucius and even attended yoga lessons. The fascination of western leaders with Japanese was almost irrational .Everything Japanese was treated with great respect an was suspected to have contributed to their wonderful business success and pre-eminence. Even Japanese women’s pride in husbands who are always away from home was considered a plus in this new realm of business management.
Conspiracy Theory
Search intense fascination left plenty of room for the conspiracy theorist>Some Western leaders alleged that the Japanese government and industry had joined to conquer the world like they did in the 30s and 40s with creation of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Some alleged that the Japanese pre-war industrial conglomerates were emerging once more to build a militaristic-capitalistic nation to once more dominate Asia and the world.
The Burst of the Bubble
In the late 80s the bubble economy burst and the Japanese economic miracle came to an end yet it left lasting effects for the future management of business. Many businesses in the world came to adopt the Japanese systems of :
Kaizen : continuous endless improvement of quality
Group think
Total quality control
Total quality management
Employee stock ownership plan
Enterprise unions
Kaizen in Africa
African businesses currently practice traditional Western management of the 1970s or a derivative of it. Although change is trickling in new IT based businesses, management is still characterized by routine processes, lack of innovation, poor staff morale, pyramid type of management that puts great emphasis on the bosses, the CEOs and MDs in their ivory towers.
The employees at the bottom, who are always on the frontline in the day to day operations, are rarely listened to. Rarely will you find high performance teams in a firm or a vibrant R & D department. This is partly due to the fact Africa imports almost all the technology and processes that it uses for production. The employee is always reduced to the executor of routines>
Africa like Asia inherited a colonial business culture that put great premium on profits rather than the workers and the production floor.
Asia (the Far East) managed to do away with this system and in its place created a highly competitive management that respected workers more than profits; that placed great focus on capturing markets rather than making quick short term profits to please shareholders; that reinvested profits rather pay dividends.
As a result, managers in Asia have more flexibility and choice in making investment choices. It also saves companies from excessive borrowing.
There reality is that African firms with their backward technology, poor and sometimes corrupt management are falling behind their Asian and Western counterparts further and further.
Yet African firms could do more at little cost to at least bridge the gap in management an technology.
Embracing urgent change in African firms
Arian businesses must adopt a futuristic outlook that focuses on long term planning to see their companies consolidate local markets while at the same time going continental and eventually global. Africa must introduce the management of Urgency that involves rapid fire implementation of change including management reforms, retraining of employees for the modern, globalised highly competitive work environment.
A world class modern African firm must embrace the following long term systems:
-Ability to constantly generate value
-Thinking globally (A keen eye on global opportunities and trends)
-Embracing rapid change (radical change)
-Tap the power of high performance teams
-Create and define a vision (ambition)
-Customer driven quality
-Create a pool of expertise
I addition firms must adopt the following short term goals:
-Creation of direct links between suppliers and customers
-Flexible product lines
-Shorter product cycles
-flatter management systems rather the pyramidal structure
-Re-training of employees in newer, more relevant skills
-Intense focus on efforts to improve quality and productivity at all stages, infinitely.
-Cleanliness and modernization of the workplace
-Building of intellectual capital within organizations.
Africa must try and embrace the good of the Japanese style management,particularly its long term goals.
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