Bert hamminga  Yue Wang on Chinese versus Japanese       version date 991212
Go to:  Cultural diversity table  Different Capitalist Cultures

Employer loyalty under conflicting interests

All the answers are from my personal point of view.

Why Japanese are more loyal to the company than the Singapore’s?

• When considering social behaviour I consistently refer to the family structure, because I think that the way we (the Chinese) organize the society reflects the way we organize the family. After all that is the most basic and important cell in the social settings. It is said that our presidents have the power the most powerful family member used to have in the traditional Chinese family. The relations among the family members are very close and that enables very close relations among friends too. All the relations come about naturally, without strict obligations we have to fulfill, that is to say we put more emphasis on what we can give to the others rather than what we can receive in the future, we will not pay for the expenses of the whole family because of obligation, we pay it because we want to pay. The Japanese are more obliged to certain social rules, the male take the responsibility to pay for the family, the female have to stay in house. So in the company they have their role as an employee, the rule about the employee is to serve the interests of the company the best he can and not to release the information.

• We are more flexible in the way of thinking, the Chinese would think it makes no difference to the company if I tell my friends what is going to happen. I do no harm, I only saved my friends, so why not do it? For us the world is black, white and the color in between. The philosophy of to take the middle way is part of the Chinese culture and the natural of the Chinese people. On the other hand the Japanese are more strict, they take that very seriously. For them the world is black and white. Perhaps that is why the Japanese have very high quality product, they want it to be exactly the way they want, and try to improve it all the time. But the Chinese are used to say "OK" all the time. You will only seldom us take a very hard position (that is what happened in the UN, we seldom vote for reject or prove, most of the time we choose not to vote at all).

• The social behaviour in China may be seen as the reflection of the family structure. The governor has the power of a  family leader, the family cell is in harmony with the society. The Japanese is more a nationalist than the Chinese, they are afraid of losing their identity, so they tend to think that if there is some conflict among different social cells they have to choose one of them, in that case they choose to be loyal to the company. But for Chinese we can not see the conflict at all, we do not benefit the friends at the expense of the company, it is a very good opportunity to show our friendship at no cost.

It is very difficult to describe the differences between the Chinese and the Japanese, also because the different meaning of the same word in Chinese and in English.

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