Japan suffered one of the worst economic hit in history when the economic bubble deflated steeply in the 1990s. Stock prices and real estate slumped enormously mostly due to domestic monetary policies. As a result, companies in Japan faced financial trouble which triggered the cultural change in Japan.
Before the Economic crisis, employee and the company have a particularly close relationship. The company is involved in the live of the employee. For example, a lot of companies require their employee’s manager to sign before they can rent an apartment. On the other hand employees are also very loyal and obliged to their company. With the company’s guaranteed lifetime employment policy, few employees will fancy changing jobs. Moreover they work hard in response to the generous benefit by the company.
The type of culture that facilitated Japan to hold onto its people and acquired knowledge and become consistently stronger each year was that of Confucian beliefs. Confucian values are essentially derived from three ingredients which are high moral conduct and loyalty to others, reciprocal obligations to show appreciation of network involvement, and honesty in dealing with others. Confucians are not interested in the supreme being or afterlife like that of Hindu or Buddhism, Confucius’s are more concerned with what is happening now and how they interact with others in the course of their life. Loyalty to a superior in Confucian society was long considered a sacred duty, a life long obligation. This loyalty is not blind, like the subordinates loyalty to the superior similarly the superior is required to reciprocate the showing of loyalty to the subordinate in some way of relevance to the subordinate. If the superior fails to reciprocate the favours then the superior will most definitely suffer lost of moral standing in the community and networks which they might be involved with.
However after the economic crisis, companies cannot afford to pay that many benefits to...