Economic Models - Convex Optimization

Topic 2
Toward a Theory of Japanese Organizational
Culture and Corporate Performance
Victoria Miroshnik
University of Glasgow, UK
1. Introduction
Japanese national culture has a specific influence on the organizational
culture (OC) of the Japanese companies. In order to understand these aspects
of culture that are affecting corporate performance, a systematic analysis of
the national culture (NC) and OC is essential. The purpose of this chapter
is to provide a scheme to analyze this issue in a systematic way.
National culture can affect corporate OC (Aoki, 1990; Axel, 1995;
Hofstede, 1980) and corporate performance (CP) (Cameron and Quinn,
1999; Kotter and Heskett, 1992). Multinational corporations with its supposedly
common OC demonstrate different behaviors in different countries,
which can affect their performances (Barlett and Yoshihara, 1988; Calori
and Sarnin, 1991). National culture with its various manifestations can create
unique organizational values for a country, which in conjunction with
the human resources management (HRM) practice may create some unique
OC for a corporation. Organizational culture along with a leadership style,
which is the product of OC, NC, and HRM practices, creates a synergy,
which shapes the fortune of the company’s performances. Thus, NC, organizational
values, OCs, leadership styles, human resources practices, and
CPs are inter-related and each depend on the other. If a company maintains
this harmony it can perform well, otherwise it declines.
The structure of this chapter is as follows. In Section 2, relationship
between NCs, OC, and performances, as given in the existing literature, is
analyzed. In Section 3, the Japanese culture was analyzed along with the
controversies on this issue. In Section 4, the new approach of the nationorganization-performance
exchange model (NOPX) is explained in detail
and the theoretical propositions underlying this model are analyzed.
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