AP/JP3751 3.0 Japanese Business Culture and Communication

Long course description:

This course examines characteristics of traditional Japanese corporate culture and aspects of management styles as well as patterns of Japanese communication styles,
drawing on concepts from linguistics, communication, and cultural studies first.
After students become familiar with the well-documented characteristics, focus will be on two cases of joint ventures, CAMI (GM-SUZUKI) in Canada and NUMMI
 (GM-TOYOTA) in the US, based on Ota’s experience of working as a cross-cultural consultant in the former.
In the second part of the semester, recent changes in business culture of Japan including new global strategies, such as hiring a foreign CEO, taking over businesses
abroad, diversification and positive and negative results. Large corporations for discussion include Panasonic,
Sony, Hitachi, Toshiba, Sharp, Toyota, Honda, Nissan. Students are expected to examine new corporate culture in their own countries and compare it with the one of
Japanese. Lively discussion and exchange of ideas are strongly encouraged. The final grade is based on attendance/participation, oral presentation of research and a
short research term paper.