Japanese Management

Earthquake Tsunami

Assignment

Please Explain how Japan reacted to Tsunami and Earthquake better than other countries, with
the help of Ishikawa’s flow chart.

Step 1 (Stating the problem)

The head of the fish represents the problem, in our case, it would be to ‘Explain how Japan
reacted to Tsunami and Earthquake better than other countries, with the help of Ishikawa’s flow
chart.

Step 2 (Defining our categories)

Under this step, we begin by elaborating on the broad categories as to how Japan reacted to
Tsunami and earthquakes better than other countries?

● Spirit of Oneness (Social Service)

● Resilience
● Respect of culture
● The efficiency of the Managerial tactics implemented

Step 3 (Brainstorming each category)

Moving on, we begin by brainstorming the fashion in which Japan reacted to Tsunami and
Earthquake better than other countries?
● Spirit of Oneness

1. The Japanese Self Defence Force which was largely seen as an organization
without much strength in defending ordinary lives poured into stricken areas
including the equivalent of the military worked to secure water supplies
supporting the disaster victims and the livelihood of ordinary people.
2. Volunteers from across the country had used to provide assistance and many
employees from as far as Osaka took overnight busses every weekend for
months to help clear debris in destroyed cities, returning to their jobs from the
overnight bus authorities reported that over 800,000 volunteers, working with
various NPOs assisted during the six months after the disaster and the Japanese
felt a renewed sense of Kizuma (meaning relationship/bond) as strangers
working together with the common purpose of helping one another.
3. The donations pouring in from within Japan and overseas and a recent survey
depicting three out of four Japanese donated to the restoration of the Tohoku
region in some way and donations came from over 160 countries, all this indicate
how lovable Japan as a country has been and the strong ties and relationships
which it has maintained with countries worldwide.
4. The US military stationed in Japan even went on to undertake a humanitarian
mission and responded to victims in the Tohoku region in what came to be known
as Operation Tomodachi.
5. Several companies also stood out in responding quickly to the crisis situation and
in organising their relief efforts in the Tohoku region.
6. Distributing to survivors in need: While the local UNIQLO store managers helped
bring normalcy to their communities, Fast Retailing took more direct action to
assist the people who had been affected by the calamity the hardest and the Fast
Retailing’s clothing could make a difference to these people and the company
had the distribution network in place to get the products where they were needed
the most and the leaders of Fast Retailing’s Corporate Social Responsibility team
went all into work.
7. Distributing clothing in communities with UNIQLO stores.

● Resilience
1. The Earthquake/Tsunami brought to light the amazing resilience displayed by the
Tohoku people and their dogged determination to grow and prosper by working
hard in rebuilding their cities and attracting new industries. The traits of calmness
and patience of the Japanese people conjure a little order out of the chaos and it
was surprisingly observed once that after the earthquake hit Japanese were seen
queuing up patiently in line to buy bicycles and to buy food at a convenience
store and cars not violating traffic lights and staying in line despite the horrific
congestion. This kind of resilient attitude is quite surprising especially when such
a panicky situation is created and in other countries maintaining this level of
resilience I believe is next to impossible.
● Respect of Culture

1. Keeping the lights on such as in the case of UNIQLO wherein store managers in
an effort to conserve energy, retail stores across the country had decided to turn
off lighted signs at night and reduced store hours as there was also confusion
among UNIQLO local store managers as they tried to balance competing
demands from customers, local governments and societal pressures. Tho Yanai
was against this move switching off the lights was a mistake he thought it was
important to maintain the store manager’s autonomy and respect their individual
positions which I believe is extremely important and shows another aspect of the
Japanese management which is unique to its culture and this move by the CEO
of the company was greatly appreciated and looked upon by various leaders
across the globe.

2. Assessing Ongoing needs: As time passed, both Fast Retailing and JEN began
to wind down the distribution programs and the principal concern was a
dependency and if the program continued too long, giving ree clothing to the
survivors would do more harm than good and a JEN team leader noted a sense
of complacency developing among the survivors on his trips into the refugee
communities and he noticed that over time people would get into the “Ok, fine,
another donation” mindset. He made sure that a lot of effort and goodwill went
into the clothing they received from UNIQLO. All of this represents the Japanese
respect towards culture as they assessed the ongoing needs

● The efficiency of the Managerial aspects (To make effective business decisions)

1. Leveraging Existing Relationships: In the UNIQLO case, Nitta and Sherb’s first
action was to leverage their existing partnerships with the Japanese Emergency
NGO (JEN), an NGO which deployed necessities to crisis areas abroad and the
relationship started when Fast Retailing had donated 12,000 jackets to
Afghanistan refugees through JEN in 2001 and since then the organization had
partnered regularly to send UNIQLO clothing to disaster areas such as Pakistan
and Haiti and furthermore, for the first time JEN focussed it’s relief efforts
domestically and their earlier partnership proved valuable to both Fast Retailing
and JEN and that UNIQLO with a trusted partner and JEN had a company they
knew how to work with set the Japanese apart from the rest of the countries
worldwide. Their tendency to maintain friendly relationships with other
organizations in times of need proved to be beneficial for not only UNIQLO but
the entire Japanese community in such a crisis. This is another unique
managerial practice that the world needs to acquire from the Japanese. The
 mutual understanding developed over time that UNIQLO would take back
products she didn’t ask for.
2. Managing the distribution process: While JEN had chosen to concentrate its
efforts on a few hard-hit areas, Fast Retailing still had a lot of critical logistics to
work through and once the distribution centres were selected Fast Retailing had
to determine the most efficient fashion to actually give the survivors the clothing
and while they had plenty of volunteers from headquarters it was their first time
managing the distribution process and Fast Retailing would treat these survivors
as customers as the company culture always went on to put the customer first.
They went on my manage the flow of survivors at the distribution site. This will to
find solutions to problems was another interesting feature to

((Dear Sir, please note that the above diagram has been self-made by me and has not been
copied from anywhere else or any external source)