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LAWRENCE - A history of Japan's modern management style written by William M. Tsutsui, associate professor of history at the University of Kansas, has received the 2000 John Whitney Hall Prize of the Association of Asian Studies. The award is given for the best scholarly book written on Japan or Korea in 1998.
Association officers praised Tsutsui's book, "Manufacturing Ideology: Scientific Management in Twentieth-Century Japan," as destined to become a classic study of interest to scholars of Japanese studies, business historians and social scientists.
Although modern Japan is noted for its efficient and humane management, Tsutsui says its origins are not particularly Japanese. "Most scholars have assumed that Japan's celebrated management practices such as quality circles and just-in-time production, evolved from Japanese cultural traditions of harmony and community."
Tsutsui, however, traces the roots of 20th-century Japanese management to American industrial engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor, whose 1911 book "Principles of Scientific Management," focused on time-and-motion studies, incentive pay systems and rigorous efficiency.
"While embracing Taylor's theories, the Japanese adjusted and improved on them," Tsutsui says. "Japanese managers recognized that the welfare of workers and their commitment to corporate goals were essential to efficiency and productivity. Thus Japanese industry sought to humanize the grueling routines of scientific management and the American assembly line."
Tsutsui opens his book with an example of Japan's adaptation of management styles that evolved in the West. He describes the national library's circulation desk, where several librarians each perform a single, repetitive task, but every 30 minutes rotate from one job to another. The standard routines are typically Taylor, but the rotation of tasks is uniquely Japanese.
The multifunctional concept allows workers, or librarians in this case, to be capable of more than just tightening one screw in an assembly line, and, in addition to reducing boredom, it increases efficiency and productivity, Tsutsui says.
"The genius of the Japanese system," Tsutsui says, "is that it combined high efficiency and high quality with a concern for the personal well-being of workers."
With Japan's rapid economic growth after World War II, U.S. business experts turned their attention to Japanese management styles. Japanese methods were popularized in the West by management experts like the late W. Edwards Deming and were adopted by many struggling American manufacturers.
"Ironically, many of the Japanese management practices that helped revive the U.S. automobile industry in the 1980s were originally based on the teachings of Frederick Winslow Taylor," Tsutsui says.
"The United States and Japan share more than they differ," Tsutsui says of the management styles that have evolved in each country. "Despite cultural differences, the development of industrial management systems in the 20th century was a truly global process."