The Japan Investor has some nice commentary on JAL and how the CEO is being kicked out after not even a year for poor results.
I hope and pray that Japanese management will get better, but there are very few good managers in Japan who don't come from the "consensus" school of management.
What is clear from the experience is that Japan is beginning to recognize and react to the fact that consensus choices for management are not always the best choices. In JAL's case, the movement against Shinmachi began with a major shareholder, but then spread to other senior managers within the group. In baseball terms, its as if one of the team's owners expressed displeasure with the head coach, and the opinion was backed by other coaches that supposedly were there to support the head coach, and even the players. Yet corporate governance by shareholders, senior managers and employees within the company is still rare in Japan, it has been a fact of life for baseball teams in Japan for years. In other words, if a head coach were unable to produce a championship team within a couple of years, he was replaced by another coach.
TJI [The Japan Investor] believes this will increasingly occur in Japan's corporate world, i.e., if a CEO is unable to deliver the goods in the terms of major shareholders and other stakeholders, he has a real risk of being replaced. While detractors claim that this will lead to more short-term management strategies, TJI suspects it will produce an increasing number of managers with a "hot hand" that can produce a few years of good results, only to be eventually overtaken by other, more dynamic competitors. This is a classic symptom of a mature market. In other words, as the "pie" is no longer growing, Japanese companies increasingly have to be able and willing to take share from their competitors to produce growth.
The companies to watch are the ones that, like JAL, are under enormous pressure to turn around because they employ many thousands of people or they have a long history. Sanyo. Daiei. Sony. etc.
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