The Culture of Japanese Work Organization in Hong Kong: A Case Study of Yaohan and ''Seicho-no-ie''

Japanese system of committing and cultivating their employees to the organization by organizational culture have been regarded as effective. As Ouchi and Wilkins (1985: 458) state: "Japanese firms were during the 1970s and early 1980s widely considered to have superior operating characteristics." Many scholars, stimulated by the example of Japan, have been recently rediscovering the significance of organizational culture (Schein 1984, Wilkins 1984, Lee and Lawrence 1985, Trice and Beyer 1993). Organizational culture is the embodiment of values, norms and beliefs shared by and affecting the attitudes and behaviour of members of the organization. Its contents and ingredients are influenced by the organization's past history and present experiences, its aims and objectives, the people, the workplace, the technology and the system of production constituting it (Lee and Lawerence 1985: 104). However, these elements are parts of the environment on which the organization has to depend and must cope with the uncertainties that arise from their dependence on the
environments. Therefore, the management of organizational culture is significant to a company because it symbolizes control over its environments that help to deal with environmentally induced uncertainties.

Many Japanese multinational companies (MNCs) operate their overseas subsidiaries in countries where the basic values and assumptions of the host culture are different from those of the Japanese. As organizational culture is regarded as one of their competitive advantages when operating in Japan, can these Japanese MNCs manage their organizational culture in their overseas subsidiaries the same way they do in Japan? Do they need to modify the organizational culture in their overseas subsidiaries since the wider societal and cultural environments of the host country are different?