Gung Ho

Introduction

The movie is about a Japanese automobile company called the “Assan Motors” starting to do business in the United States where cultural conflict emerges between the American employees and the Japanese managers.

In the beginning, Hunt Stevenson goes to Japan and asks the firm owners to re-open the auto plant. After some discussion, the Japanese owners agree to run the business in the United States, but emphasize that the company will be directed by the Japanese executives.

As the firm continues to operate, both Mr. Stevenson and the American employees realize that Japanese managers have far more strict work ethic and expect a high level of loyalty from the workers. Working seven days a week plus mandatory free overtime doesn’t suit to the American employees. As a result, a clash between the Japanese managers and the American workers exists. Moreover, Mr. Stevenson then tells the employees that their wages will increase if they can compose 13,000 cars per month. The American employees get really motivated and start to work very hard. However, when one of the top executives learns this, he says employees won’t be paid more. Let alone that salary bonus issue, all other problems in the firm prove us a communication problem since nobody talks to each other in the company about their problems.

In conclusion, miscommunication and cultural difference lead to a lot of problems inside the Assan Motors Company.

Two problems

In my opinion, two problems which are the most eye-catching for Assan Company are related to culture and communication.

To start with the culture, we can observe two extreme cultural differences – Individualism and Collectivism. The Collectivist approach belongs to the Japanese while the Individualist approach belongs to the Americans. According to the Collectivist approach, the company operates as a team with the contribution of everyone in the firm – starting from the top manager (CEO) to the lowest ranked employee. On the other hand, the Individualist approach is much more self-motivated. In other words, “in collectivist cultures, organizations are used to give members meaning and purpose while in individualistic cultures, organizations are used to serve individual owners, employees and customers”. (http://www.kli.re.kr/iira2004/pro/papers/RaymundSisenandoRMercado.pdf) As an example, the Japanese managers told Mr. Stevenson that the American employees were not loyal as much as the Japanese employees. Additionally, it was stated that the American employees were only working for money, starting the job late and leaving early, avoiding job when they are sick, while their Japanese colleagues were only working for the company, spending less time with their families, running faster, thinking the future of the business as it was everything for them. So, from my point of view, the opposition of the Individualist and the Collectivist approaches was the main reason of cultural contradiction.

Of course, it’s much better to give some detailed information about the cultural confrontation in Assan Company to show why it’s really a problem. For instance, when the American employees arrived the firm for the first time in the morning, their Japanese managers told them to do some early-morning sports. That really surprised the American employees because they had nothing like that in their country. Thus, the first perception of American employees about the Assan Company was negative, causing them to think that their managers and the business itself were not serious. Next, the American workers were used to listen to music and smoke while doing their job, but their Japanese supervisor told them not to repeat that action again. So, the American employees were now emotionally more apart from the business. Following that, according to the Japanese managers, Assan Motors had to reach the

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