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The Journal of Product Innovation Management, Volume 13, number 4, July 1996

Creative R&D Leadership: Insights from Japan

by James L. Bess. Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1995. 359 + xix pages, $75.00

reviewed by John D. Trudel, CMC

This book's main strength is its exhaustive -- one wants to say exhausting -- breadth and depth of sociometry. The author took a multi-year pilgrimage to Japan, and used almost every conceivable empirical tool and methodology known to Western social scientists in his obsession to map the characteristics of "scientific research and development laboratory leadership in Japan." His efforts were dogged and the resulting work is tedious and pedantic. Japan leads the world in knowledge based business, and this book is a serious attempt to understand why via quantifiable, best-practice, Western social science methodology.

This is not a book for neophytes or those short of patience. It is best read by those familiar with Japanese practice, and certainly after having read other works on Japan. Its main audience would be motivated academics, practitioners, and policy makers who seek to beat Japan at technology business. The typical short term, "What do I do Monday morning?" Western manager will hate this book. Those seeking deeper understanding of alternatives to Western management schema may find it helpful, though possibly not in the ways the author expected.

First, I should expose some of my own biases and credentials. My professional expertise is knowledge based business. I have both teamed with and competed against the Japanese, and I have spent time in Japan studying their new product development practices. I share the author's respect for Japanese accomplishments, though not his obsequiousness. I see the Japanese as a more advanced, but not necessarily a more likable, society.

Still, some may accuse me of Japan bashing, especially since it recently fell on my shoulders to expose Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown's sell-out of the U.S. patent system to Japan.1 If so, these people are mistaken. I do not hate the Japanese for wanting to gain cheap access to U.S. technology. I just happen to see weakening U.S. patent protection as not in our national interests. I even founded my consulting practice based on Akia Morita's "business innovation" precepts.

I agree with the author that Japanese practices are (much) better adapted to Information Age business than our own. I do not, however, share his core precept that Japanese success infers strength in R&D management. As Kodama and others have written, the Japanese genius and de facto policy is technology application, not technology creation.

I found it inevitable, but amusing, that the author would take so much trouble to measure Western leadership style in a culture whose language has no word for leadership. From the outset he ran into trouble, and soon narrowed his scope to small group "face-to-face" (ore no kao ni menjite) leadership. He focused on R&D laboratory sections of 15 to 40 workers -- what we would call small teams -- and he barraged them with questionnaire research.

The author used every methodology I have ever heard of, and more. He used, among others, Myers-Briggs Type Indicators, Kilmann typology, Maslow's need hierarchy, and something called the Hackman & Oldman job characteristics model. He laboriously mapped standard surveys into Japanese, and then back, to check accuracy. For the most part all his methods bounced off the problem.

Good leaders were assertive, or not. They were competent, or not. They were sensitive (intuitive-feeling, he terms it), or not. Mostly they were not decisive, but sometimes they were. I can just see the author scratching his head as his questionnaires scattered results randomly across every dimension he tried to study.

He could not even find conformation that the "four fundamental leader traits" of Myers-Briggs existed, since the leaders he studied tended to use different approaches in different situations. (As indeed they should, in my opinion.) He finally concludes there are "more and stronger substitutes for leadership -- organizational characteristics other than interpersonal interactions that constrain workers to behave in ways that are organizationally desirable." Indeed.

This is the real value of the book. Not the research, which, I think, failed, but the anecdotes and subtle understanding, which are accurate and informative. If Western business organizations are (still) based on Taylor reductionism -- procedure, bureaucracy, and functional specialization -- the Japanese model is more that of the family.

The business relationship (oyabun-kobun) is reciprocal, where the parent protects and looks out for the children, while the children are obligated to serve the parent with obedience and loyalty. The social after hours activity (tsukiai) plays a greater role in conflict resolution than formal corporate process and lines of authority.

Senior workers "adopt" juniors and form sempai-koohai dyads. The sempai is the strict judge of performance and the stern task master. The closest we come in Western culture (not close) is fraternity pledges and their sponsoring brothers.

Responsibility is not in the hands of the leader, but is diffused throughout the group as a whole, which becomes, in effect, one functional body. All individuals, including the manager, are amalgamated into a single entity. The role of the section head (kachoo), is somewhat analogous to the father. In the same sense the sub-section head (kararichoo) fills the required role of wife.

In contrast to haphazard Western parenting, the Japanese are methodical. The father figure (in companies, the buchoo or oyabun hada) is almost always a nurturing rather than a prejudicial form. The second in command or wife role (nyobu yaku), along with the peer group, fulfills the prejudicial form. Japanese leaders are admired for behaviors that are outwardly meek and tractable (sunao), as they nurture to gain the collective wisdom of the group (shuchi). Top-down directives or interventionist leadership is deemed inappropriate.

So in the end, we learn the Japanese system is inscrutable, and, well, different. It is literally in a different dimension than that of Western business. This is a good lesson, especially since it is demonstrably true that Japan's system is producing better results than our creaky old Taylor era Machine Age templates, which were, in turn, based on 19th Century Prussian military models. There is useful learning here if one wishes to devote the considerable energy that it takes to dig out the nuggets.

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1. John D. Trudel, "The Great Patent Sell-Out," Upside, November 1995.

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