Lecture
The Japanese management system is recognized as the most effective worldwide, and the main reason for its success is the ability to use the human factor.
After the war, having experienced a protracted and long-term recovery, Japan in the 50-60s showed a rapid growth, at its pace by 2-3 times faster development of such countries as the USA, Germany, England, France and Italy. Significant factors in the rapid pace of development were: low levels of military spending, cheap labor; The role of organizational and managerial factors is significant.
Japan at all times (and especially after the war) paid great attention to management issues, back in the 60s, Japanese experts argued that modern society shifted from competition in the financial and technical fields to the stage of competition in the ability to govern. The history of the Japanese economy indicates a constant evolution in the structures, methods and procedures of management, a critical revision of the established traditions, active borrowing of foreign experience and the development of its own highly effective, original management solutions.
Management in Japan, like any other country, reflects its historical features, culture and social psychology. It is directly related to the socio-economic structure of the country. Japanese management methods are fundamentally different from European and American. The basic principles of Japanese and European management lie in different planes, having very few intersection points.
Japanese management based on collectivism used all the moral and psychological levers of influence on the individual. First of all, this sense of duty to the collective, that in the Japanese mentality is almost identical with a sense of shame. Considering that the tax system works to averaging incomes and the material state of the population with its pointedly progressive-fiscal mechanism, social welfare stratification is minimal in society, and this makes it possible to use the feeling of collectivism as efficiently as possible.
What is the difference between the Japanese method of control and the methods used in most countries of Europe and America? First of all, its focus: the main subject of management in Japan is labor resources. The goal set by the Japanese manager is to increase the efficiency of the enterprise, mainly by increasing the productivity of workers. Meanwhile, in European and American management, the main goal is to maximize profits, that is, to obtain the greatest profit with the least effort.
According to Japanese management specialist Hideki Yosihara, there are six characteristic signs of Japanese management.
Employment security and the creation of an environment of trust. Such guarantees lead to the stability of labor resources and reduce staff turnover. Stability serves as an incentive for workers and employees, it strengthens the sense of corporate community, harmonizes the relations of ordinary employees with management. Freed from the oppressive threat of dismissal and having a real opportunity to move vertically, workers are motivated to foster a sense of community with the company. Stability also contributes to the improvement of the relationship between employees at the managerial level and ordinary workers, which, according to the Japanese, is absolutely necessary to improve the company's operations. Stability gives the possibility of a quantitative increase in management resources, on the one hand, and a conscious direction of the vector of their activity on goals more significant than the maintenance of discipline. Employment security in Japan is provided by a lifetime employment system - a unique phenomenon and in many ways incomprehensible for the European way of thinking.
Publicity and corporate values. When all levels of management and workers begin to use a common base of information about the company's policies and activities, an atmosphere of participation and shared responsibility develops, which improves communication and increases productivity. In this regard, meetings and meetings in which engineers and administration workers take part give significant results. The Japanese management system is also trying to create a common base for all company employees to understand corporate values, such as the priority of quality service, customer services, workers' cooperation with the administration, and departmental cooperation and interaction. Management * seeks to continually instill and maintain corporate values at all levels.
Management based on information. Data collection and their systematic use to improve the economic efficiency of production and the quality characteristics of products is emphasized. In many firms that collect televisions, they use a system for collecting information, in which you can identify when the TV went on sale, who was responsible for the health of a particular site. Thus, not only those responsible for the malfunction are identified, but mainly the causes of the malfunction and measures are taken to prevent this in the future. Managers check monthly income items, production, quality, and gross revenues to see if the numbers are reaching specified indicators and to see the upcoming difficulties in the early stages of their occurrence.
Quality management. Presidents of firms and management companies in Japanese enterprises most often talk about the need for quality control. When managing the production process, their main concern is obtaining accurate data on quality. The personal pride of the manager is to consolidate the efforts to control the quality and, as a result, to work the assigned production site with the highest quality.
Permanent presence of management in production. In order to quickly cope with difficulties and help solve problems as they arise, the Japanese often place management personnel * directly in production facilities. As each problem is resolved, small innovations are introduced, which leads to the accumulation of additional innovations. In Japan, a system of innovative proposals and a quality circle are widely used to promote additional innovations.
Maintain cleanliness and order. One of the essential factors of high quality Japanese products are clean and tidy in production. The leaders of Japanese enterprises are trying to establish such an order, which can serve as a guarantee of product quality and is capable of increasing productivity through cleanliness and order.
In general, Japanese management is distinguished by an emphasis on improving human relations: coherence, group orientation, moral qualities of employees, employment stability and harmonization of relations between workers and managers.
The study of Japanese governance was not a big, but a growing branch of Western economies. The increased interest in Japanese methods of labor resource management is due to the fact that Japanese workers and employees, receiving approximately the same wage * , work with much greater intensity, creative impact and duration than in other developed countries.
The desire of the Japanese to work with maximum efficiency lies not in some mystical features of their national character, but in the use of a thoroughly thought out, well-organized and at the same time flexible and adaptive system of labor resources management, which acts as one of the key elements of the Japanese management system production in general.
What are the main components of Japanese organizational and management capacity?
There are three main elements that together form the Japanese human resources management system:
The first guarantees every hired employee permanent employment during the entire period of work activity; in response, he must respond with high loyalty to the company and high productivity of work.
The second provides for the distribution of wages, bonuses and payments, change of official position depending not so much on specific quantitative indicators of labor, as on the length of service in this company.
Third, within the framework of this trade union, an attempt is made to forcibly unite all the employees of a company, regardless of their status, professional affiliation, etc. An illusion of coincidence of goals and interests of employees and campaign management is created.
Lifelong hiring. In the most general terms, the mechanism of functioning of this system usually operates as follows. Every year, a company or a government agency hires a certain number of graduates of higher and secondary educational institutions, who are solemnly admitted to the number of employees of the company for a trial period. During the year they take a full course of preparation for a particular position in a particular division of the company under the guidance of a dedicated employee.
At the end of the year, employees who have proven themselves to be positive are included in the company's permanent staff, and after five or more years (and with sufficiently high performance) they can be appointed to various executive positions at the middle level on the hierarchy in the company management system. Upon reaching retirement age, all employees, except for managers of the highest level, must retire. For production workers there is also a trial period during which they must prove their qualifications, as well as tight deadlines for retirement.
When hiring, most Japanese firms use a fairly rigid system of selection of candidates for a permanent contingent of workers, which includes:
Personnel policy and training . The main goal of the personnel policy of Japan is to improve the skills of various categories of workers, including managers. For this purpose, various courses and training programs are widely used, targeting the most diverse categories of workers. At present, almost every worker in the Japanese industry has a completed secondary education.
A qualified Japanese worker spends six times more time on vocational training than a worker in an American company. Almost every employee of a Japanese company, regardless of the level of education and position, participates in the activities of various advanced training courses.
In addition to high professional skills, each employee has recently inculcated, educated or developed the ability of each employee to adapt (adapt) to the constantly changing and complicating conditions of production activity as soon as possible.
The amount of work experience for a Japanese worker is greater than that of an American worker, since, having come to work in the workshop, before taking a certain workplace * , he becomes familiar with almost all types of work in the workshop. In the United States, the practice that a worker acquires when he enters the shop for work is limited in most cases to one workplace. The Japanese worker makes a career in more than one permanent job, his mobility in the company is quite high, he can work almost anywhere in the workshop, and in other workshops, especially close to the technological profile.
Special attention is paid to the training and professional development of managerial personnel. Training is carried out with maximum intensity and with the involvement of theorists and practitioners of the most famous in Japan and abroad
One of the most popular slogans that can be found in Japanese firms are such as "Personnel - the main wealth of the company", "Personnel decide everything!" etc. The constant emphasis on the fact that the company's success depends primarily on people fully corresponds to one of the basic tenets of the Japanese school of management, namely, the need to maximize the use of the human factor in management.
Considering their employees as a part of capital, on which the effectiveness of the organization’s work depends not only in the present, but also in the future, companies invest large sums in professional training and systematic training of their employees.
For purely economic reasons, Japanese companies invest in the development of human (labor) resources. And in order to maximize the return on these investments, companies retain trained workers for a long time. For the same reason, workers who perform functions that do not require special training are not covered for life.
According to research, the system of life-long employment covers 30-35% of all workers and employees. Thus, the majority is not insured against layoffs.
In the end, this gives a very high economic effect. Typically, every employee of a large Japanese company after enrolling him in the "elite" of permanent staff is covered by the so-called career development program designed for the long term.
These programs include, as a rule, not only various forms of training, but also periodic evaluation of their qualifications, work efficiency, etc.
It should be noted that the existing wide range of stimulating factors is so strong that, having once stepped onto a moving career ladder, one or another manager * can no longer stop and has to work with the greatest possible intensity. Otherwise, he risks losing everything he has achieved over the long years of hard work.
In Japanese firms, the practice of internship of managers abroad is widespread - short-term for one or two months (20-25 managers of various ranks), or long-term - individual internship in foreign countries.
The staff rotation is a regular change (once in several years) by rank and file and executives of their place of work within the company. Not only the position changes, but also the division. The staff rotation is paid a lot of attention, because, according to Japanese specialists, a long-term employee’s stay in the same position causes a loss of interest in work, a decrease in the level of responsibility and executive discipline. Every two years, managers must submit in writing progress reports and suggestions about their proposed career in the future. Taking into account the views of the relevant managers, these considerations are used by the personnel department during the planning of the rotation.
Training courses for managers include, in addition to special disciplines, a large amount of training in psychology, human relations, the development of the ability to deal with subordinates, organize group activities, etc.
Organizational management structures in Japanese companies . For Japanese firms (companies), an elastic structure is characteristic, which allows it to relatively easily and safely adapt to new conditions thanks to the system of intra-company mobility and employee transfers. The elastic and noncompetitive form of redistribution of labor of a Japanese company is largely dictated by the fact that wages are not strictly related to the grid of tariff rates * that determine the rate by type of executive work.
Organizational management structures in Japanese corporations are built, as a rule, on a linear-functional principle.
At the same time, in Japanese management structures, the role of bodies providing horizontal communication at different levels of management — various kinds of permanent meetings of leaders of various ranks — is very large .
In a number of firms, an organizational form is used, such as headquarters services that exist at the highest level of management and do not carry a direct linear and functional load.
For Japanese corporations, the active use of group responsibility mechanisms and program-oriented management methods used to solve such problems as research and development * is characteristic .
The most important organizational aspect of all governance structures is the group. The Japanese management system is characterized by group incentives and group responsibility.
Система принятия решений "рингисэи" (в 94% фирм), обеспечивающая углубленную проработку и согласование решений. Классическая процедура "рингисэи" предусматривает многократное согласование подготавливаемого решения на нескольких уровнях управления, начиная с рядовых сотрудников и кончая высшим руководством, утверждающим решение, прошедшее все стадии согласования.
К концу циркуляции документ-проект оказывается завизированным личными печатями десятков начальников различных рангов.
В послевоенные годы японские предприниматели усиленно осваивают американские методы управления кадрами, особенно вопросы улаживания трудовых конфликтов * . На вооружение были взяты такие разработки, как система "человеческих отношений", "беседы с персоналом", система "участия в управлении" и т. д. Эти управленческие новшества накладывались на уже известные японские методы, как "пожизненный найм" система "оплаты по старшинству".
Если американские предприниматели в своей деятельности учитывают прежде всего прибыль и стоимость акций, т. е. исходят из интересов сегодняшнего дня, то японские управляют промышленной деятельностью своих фирм, исходя из долговременной стратегии * .
Второе различие заключается в самой организации управления. На американских предприятиях жестко разграничены служебные и производственные обязанности, а контроль за их использованием осуществляет вышестоящее лицо, поэтому в поле зрения рабочих и служащих попадает ограниченный круг вопросов, выполнение которых им поручено. На японских предприятиях ответственность за многие важные вопросы производственной деятельности несет персонал, который постоянно повышает свою квалификацию. Таким образом, управление в США "иерархическое", а в Японии - "всеобщее".
В краткосрочном плане японская система управления проигрывает американской из-за большой сложности принятия решений и большого количества времени и средств, затрачиваемых на обучение персонала на всех уровнях. Но в долгосрочной перспективе она повышает эффективность производства, поскольку стимулирует соучастие рабочих в управлении и усиливает их ответственность и заинтересованность в делах фирмы.
Япония обеспечила себе лидирующее положение в мире благодаря целевой ориентации всей экономики на повышение качества производимых товаров.
Высокое качество японских товаров во многом обеспечивается японской "культурой стыда", т. е. тем, что производство недоброкачественной, неисправной продукции считается позорным. Уровень брака * и частота поломок японских автомобилей, телевизоров, интегральных схем и других товаров в десять с лишним раз ниже, чем у западных изделий. Сравнение этих двух концепций свидетельствует о "близорукости" американских установок" (табл. 1. 3). Например, реконструкция производственной системы или производственной единицы с целью повышения качества приводит к краткосрочному росту производственных затрат, но в долгосрочном плане, напротив, сокращает их.
За послевоенные годы в Японии произошла подлинная революция качества.
Успехам Японии в этой области способствовали целый комплекс специальных мер государственного регулирования и целенаправленная политика частного бизнеса.
Среди основных факторов можно назвать следующие:
The specific Japanese form of organization of work of personnel, called "quality control circles", attracts close attention.
What are Japanese quality control circles? At first glance, they look quite simple: they are small groups of workers who are always created on a voluntary basis in workshops and production sites, that is, directly at workplaces. Members of the circle themselves elect from their midst a leader. The main task is to search, study and solve practical problems, as well as continuous training of all members of the circle. Working in a circle, the workers, together with specialists and managers, take part in solving common problems, exercising participatory management in practice.
T a b e and c a 1.3
Comparative evaluation of two quality concepts
| 1. Higher quality is tantamount to higher costs. | 1. Higher quality is tantamount to lower costs. |
| 2. Higher quality is equivalent to lower productivity. | 2. Higher quality is equivalent to higher performance. |
| 3. Quality control is in the hands of a quality control inspector. | 3. Quality is the responsibility of the work team. |
| 4. Production of larger products is tantamount to low cost. | 4. Production of smaller products reduces costs. |
| 5. Labor productivity is growing due to the division of labor between those who think and produce | 5. All workers must think: a thinking worker is a productive worker. |
| 6. There are always losses in cost, quality and delivery. | 6. No loss in cost, quality and delivery |
| 7. Automation can reduce costs and eliminate manufacturing defects, but it will cause problems in relations with trade unions. | 7. Automation reduces labor costs and eliminates manufacturing defects. |
| 8. High quality guarantees consumer confidence for a long time. | |
| 9. Poor quality is tantamount to excess costs, and excess costs are evil. | |
According to Japanese experts, the causes of poor quality or productivity may not always be known to individual workers, engineers or managers, but a group approach to analyzing and eliminating these problems will always be more effective.
Деятельность кружков непрерывна, она не прекращается с решением какой-либо отдельной проблемы. Члены кружка совместно с инженерами и менеджерами постоянно изучают технологию производства и управления, стремясь найти новые пути улучшения качества и роста производительности. Кружок чаще всего состоит из 6-12 человек, которые собираются на совместные совещания по соглашению с администрацией, эти совещания частично проходят в рабочее время, а частично - в нерабочее.
Включение в состав кружка качества линейных управляющих нижнего звена (бригадиров и мастеров) и их совместное обучение является одним из наиболее важных нововведений, характеризующих японский подход к управлению качеством.
Сфера деятельности кружков очень широка, это: уменьшение брака; совершенствование технологических процессов; модификация инструмента и оборудования; рационализация; снижение издержек производства; повышение квалификации и обучение персонала; техника безопасности; организация труда; трудовая дисциплина и т. д. Можно сказать, что главная цель кружков контроля качества - оптимизация и повышение эффективности производственного процесса в широком смысле слова.
Этим они отличаются, например, от американских групп нулевых дефектов, имеющих весьма ограниченную цель - организацию самоконтроля на рабочем месте.
On average, circles gather twice a month, spending more than an hour on meetings. In the event that the meeting of circles takes place during off-hours, most companies provide workers with monetary compensation for this (competition for circles, training, etc., are also paid by the company).
The head of the circle encourages his comrades to express any opinions and suggestions, even those that at first glance may seem completely unrealistic or devoid of meaning. Even those proposals which their authors themselves cannot convincingly convincingly enough are accepted for collective discussion by all members of the circle.
According to Japanese experts and practitioners, product quality * is by no means determined by control and cannot be improved by strengthening control.
Improvement in quality can only be the case if everyone employed will contribute and apply all his strength to this end.
The average savings per year due to the implementation of one proposal of a quality circle is about 5 thousand dollars. For each member of the circle there are 50-60 proposals implemented. It should be noted that the remuneration for one offer, regardless of its effectiveness is small. The amount of remuneration is purely symbolic, even the most outstanding proposals that lead to a patent application rarely exceed $ 600.
Японская система управления качеством дает очень высокие результаты. Так, например, её применение на телевизионном заводе в Чикаго после покупки этого завода Японией у американской фирмы "Моторола" уровень брака через четыре года снизился в 50 раз. На дочернем предприятии другой японской компании, купленной в Америке, за два года количество дефектов было уменьшено в 10 раз и т. д.
К универсальным элементам, лежащим в основе концепции кружков качества, можно отнести следующие три:
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