Differences between East and West Management Seen from Z Theory

theory z is a new management theory put forward by Japanese-American scholar W. ouchi in 198s. This theory is put forward in view of the fact that American enterprises are facing serious challenges from Japanese enterprises. Ouchi chose some typical enterprises in Japan and the United States (these enterprises have subsidiaries or factories in their own countries and the other countries) for research, and found that the productivity of Japanese enterprises is generally higher than that of American enterprises, while the efficiency of American enterprises set up in Japan is poor if they are managed in the American way. According to this phenomenon, Ouchi proposed that American enterprises should learn from Japanese enterprises' management methods in combination with their own characteristics and form their own management methods. He attributed this management style to Z-type management style.

In the research, ouchi mainly compares and analyzes the management of the United States and Japan from seven dimensions.

1. Employment system 2. Decision-making system 3. Responsibility system 4. Control mechanism 5. Evaluation and promotion system 6. Career development of employees 7. Care for employees

The unique view of Z theory: (1) Lifelong employment system. Long-term employment of workers, even if the business is not good, generally do not dismiss workers, we should take other methods to tide over the difficulties, and the career guarantee for employees will make people more actively care about the interests of enterprises. (2) slow evaluation and promotion. It takes a long time to test the employees before making a comprehensive evaluation. (3) Decentralized and centralized decision-making. The major decisions of an enterprise should be made by the front-line workers in production or sales, and then reported by the middle-level managers after centralized adjustment and unification. Finally, the leaders at the next higher level make more correct decisions after investigation and study, and they should be responsible for the division of labor when implementing the decisions. (4) Implicit control, but the detection means are clear and formal. On the one hand, grass-roots managers should sensitively grasp the essence of the problem and solve it on the spot, on the other hand, they should work out a solution to the problem with the relevant departments before reporting the situation. (5) Harmonious relationship between managers and employees. Fully care about workers' lives, combine the requirements of production tasks and work design with the quality of workers' working life, so that workers can be satisfied and feel comfortable at work. (6) Let employees get various exercises. Don't confine employees to a narrow scope, pay attention to not only cultivating their professional knowledge and ability, but also making them gain various work experiences, and conduct a long-term comprehensive examination of production technology and social activity ability.

Different from inherent vice's X theory and Y theory, Z theory is "to strive for efficiency and minimize the opposition between the authorities and employees, and try to achieve unity in action".

At present, the management has also put forward the H theory, which is Haier. Haier has created the "H theory" with China characteristics: actively change the internal organizational structure to adapt to the talents and abilities of employees, and finally realize the common development of people and enterprises.

On the concept of talents: In order to meet the needs of survival and development, both eastern and western enterprises are trying their best to attract and retain talents through various means. But the core idea is different:

Western enterprises often attract talents with the bright future of enterprises and individuals, respect for individuals and improvement of people's lives. For example, the corporate values of American GE Company are: "We BringGood Things To Life", and the concept of talent management is: "Create opportunities for outstanding talents from all over the world to cultivate and realize their dreams"; Motorola, on the other hand, emphasizes the constant respect for people and puts forward that "Motorola is a company that provides employees with equal development opportunities".

in the east, the Confucian thought of joining the WTO and the tradition of "every man is responsible for the rise and fall of the country" have a far-reaching impact on the culture and concept of enterprises. Many enterprises have a strong sense of responsibility for the country and the nation to motivate employees and attract talents. For example, the corporate philosophy of Shenzhen Huawei Company is: "Take the corporate culture as the link, integrate the ego with the ego, and * * * cast the glory of the national communication industry"; The basic idea of South Korea's Samsung Company is: "Talent first, service to the country and reasonable management".

2. In terms of selecting candidates, every enterprise must constantly acquire the talents it needs in order to achieve its own goals. However, in terms of talent selection criteria, the East and the West are obviously different:

Western enterprises usually take finding the best talents as the highest standard in selecting talents. For example, Intel has put forward the slogan of attracting smart people with smart people, while Microsoft is looking for better talents than us (Microsoft's existing employees). In terms of specific recruitment skills: Intel Company has a rigorous recruitment procedure, through interviews, psychological tests, simulation tests (final tests) to obtain the needed talents, while Microsoft is not interested in psychological tests. It pays more attention to judging a person's creativity and plasticity through performance in interviews, and emphasizes that senior managers personally participate in recruitment. The interview questions used by Microsoft to test individual creativity can be said to be widely praised.

in selecting candidates, although Oriental enterprises also hope to get excellent talents and pay attention to personal quality, talents and development potential, they often do not blindly pursue the best talents, but emphasize suitability, hoping to get talents suitable for enterprises and able to meet the needs of work. For example, Matsushita Electric of Japan pursues the recruitment principle of finding 7-point talents. As Kōnosuke Matsushita, the founder of Panasonic, said, "The word" appropriate "is very important. The right company, the right store and the right talent are recruited. People with 7 points are sometimes better. " He believes that excellent talents often demand too much from enterprises, while those with 7 points are more likely to be satisfied and more likely to work for the company wholeheartedly.

3. In the aspect of employing people, both eastern and western enterprises emphasize the use of talents, and demand that the existing talents be fully developed to achieve the ideal state of giving full play to their talents. However, the East and the West also have their own characteristics:

When employing people, western enterprises emphasize the individual role and highlight the "star culture" in order to maximize individual talents. At the same time, it pays attention to respect for individuals, implements humanized management, requires full understanding of everyone, and strives to create suitable opportunities for everyone, and respects and fully considers personal development wishes when assigning work.

in the eastern enterprises, apart from paying attention to individual talents and demanding meritocracy, they also emphasize both ability and political integrity, especially for management and leaders, paying more attention to morality first. At the same time, it emphasizes the harmony between individuals and collectives, and between individuals and teams. Even in order to pursue harmony and team efficiency, the requirements for individual talents can be appropriately sacrificed. The most typical example is Seibu Group in Japan. As a Japanese department store giant, Seibu Group's philosophy of employing people is "no need for smart people". Its current president, Mr. Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, has gradually formed a unique philosophy of employing people on the basis of his father's teachings: not to use extremely clever people easily. He has three reasons:

First, the common mistake that smart people make is to look down on people around them. Yoshiaki Tsutsumi believes that letting arrogant people be top leaders will cause employees' anxiety, thus undermining employees' confidence and reducing overall efficiency, and finally forming a resistance that will affect the company's development.

second, the desire of smart people is stronger than that of ordinary people. Therefore, it often becomes a source of trouble in groups. Yoshiaki Tsutsumi thinks that smart people have a strong desire, while honor, status and interests often corrode a person's heart, which will cause contradictions in groups and undermine unity.

Third, Mr. Yoshiaki Tsutsumi believes that the desires and ambitions of smart people are ten times or even a hundred times that of ordinary people. Once in power, they are likely to overflow their conscience and start to find a way for their own power, not only suppressing others' work, but also abusing power for personal gain. Therefore, Yoshiaki Tsutsumi believes that those middle-level talents are easy to satisfy, they pay attention to the positions given to them by the company, they will work in a down-to-earth manner, and they are also easy to make achievements.

4. In educating people, educating people includes two aspects: one is the promotion of position, and the other is the cultivation of ability.

In terms of job promotion, Oriental enterprises emphasize employees' loyalty to the enterprise, pay more attention to cultivating and motivating existing employees through job promotion, and have a strong hierarchical concept, emphasizing step by step; Many western enterprises also regard job promotion as an important means to motivate employees, but in many cases, they will directly recruit senior managers from outside as needed; At the same time, the concept of hierarchy is not very strong, and there are many phenomena of boldly promoting young people and people with junior qualifications, which are easy to accept.

In terms of personal ability training, Oriental enterprises mostly rely on themselves to train their employees, and skills and on-the-job training are the most important; The training of European and American enterprises relies more on external forces, such as cooperating with famous universities, sending outstanding talents to various colleges and universities, etc. The training focuses on management courses such as MBA and attaches importance to cultivating management talents. 5. In terms of retaining people: retaining people includes two meanings, one is to retain outstanding talents, and the other is to eliminate unqualified people. In terms of retaining outstanding talents, both eastern and western enterprises attach great importance to these three means: emotional retention, career retention and treatment retention. If they are different, it is that western enterprises pay more attention to treatment and career development, while eastern enterprises emphasize the attribution of feelings. It is not difficult to see from the human resource management strategies of multinational companies such as Siemens, Motorola and Ericsson in China that they all emphasize the need to ensure that the salary has sufficient market competitiveness, and in order to motivate the management, many western companies do not hesitate to give each other equity options.

in eliminating the unqualified, most western enterprises implement a strict elimination system and establish a circular mechanism for the survival of the fittest. For example, Pepsi Cola and McKinsey & Company pursue the management principle of "Up or Out", and either get promoted because of their excellent performance or leave the company. In order to cultivate employees' loyalty to the enterprise and advocate "lifelong employment", Japanese enterprises generally do not dismiss or eliminate employees easily.

with the acceleration of economic globalization and the progress of science and technology, the eastern and western cultures are merging and communicating at an unprecedented speed on a larger scale and at a deeper level, and people's ideas are constantly changing. In the process of cultural collision and integration, Chinese and western enterprises learn from each other's advantages and constantly improve their human resource management concepts and strategies. For example, in the 198s, American enterprises were under great pressure from Japanese enterprises. On the basis of studying Japanese enterprises, william ouchi, Richard Pascale, Anthony Also and other scholars put forward the famous Z Theory and The Strategist's Mind-The Management Art of Japanese Enterprises, which introduced the unique management art of Japanese enterprises and the talent concept with "loyalty and harmony" as the fundamental feature for American companies and made positive contributions to the further development of American enterprises. Over the years, Oriental enterprises have been absorbing the essence of human resource management of western enterprises and established the fundamental concept of people-oriented, emphasizing respect for individuals, attaching importance to using treatment and development opportunities to attract and retain talents, and eliminating unqualified personnel through strict examination. It can be said that the exchange of eastern and western cultures has promoted the continuous innovation of enterprise human resource management concepts and methods.

The cultural differences between the East and the West have formed their own distinct characteristics in human resource management. As companies with excellent performance, their human resource management strategies may be quite different. Objectively speaking, there is no best human resource management in the world, only the best combination of the enterprise itself. No matter whether it is an oriental company or a western company, only on the basis of fully respecting their respective historical and cultural traditions, can we really do a good job in human resource management and realize the long-term development goals of enterprises by choosing human resource management strategies and methods that suit their own characteristics and meet the needs of enterprise development.