日本の企業体質は世界の非常識 [オリンパス]
Tribal Japan
Japan’s cherished loyalty system is part of the problem
★損失隠し問題で大揺れのオリンパス、そして損失隠しの不正を指摘して社長を解任されたイギリス人のマイケル・ウッドフォード氏。
日本の大企業による損失隠しの問題は、アメリカのFBI、イギリスのSFO(Serious Fraud Office「重大不正監視局」)、そして日本の捜査当局などがこの事件の調査に乗り出して、世界的に影響を与える大きな問題となってきた。
そして、海外から日本企業の体質・問題点を問う声が多く出てきて、企業統治を改善するためのよい機会だとの指摘もある。
マイケル・ウッドフォード氏の社長解任劇で改めて明らかになってきた日本企業の統治の実態、問題点について、イギリスの経済誌エコノミストが鋭く迫ります。
The company insists that he was fired for failing to understand its management style, and Japanese culture, not for being awkward whistleblower.
「日本の経営スタイルや日本の文化を理解できなかったために解任したー厄介な内部告発をしたからではないーと会社側は主張している。」
If every foreigner who didn’t understand Japanese culture were fired there would hardly be a gaijin businessman left in the country.The corporate ethos of every culture is in some sense unique. Japan’s is especially perplexing,
「もし日本の文化を理解できないために外国人がみんな解雇されたら、日本には外国人ビジネスマンはほとんどいなくなるだろう。どんな文化でも企業体質にはある意味、それぞれ独特のものがあるが、日本の企業体質は特に複雑だ。」
その1. 企業内部は頑固なまでに排他的(原発産業界は特にそうである)
上司や所属部署に対する忠誠心の方が、会社に対する忠誠心よりも勝っている
その2. 社外の意見に対しては一般的に言って懐疑的な態度を取る
取締役委員のほとんどは内輪の人間で占められている
その3. こうした日本の企業統治の体質(派閥主義)は政治やマスコミ界にまで及んでいる
Members of Japan’s two biggest political parties acknowledge quite candidly that their first loyalty is to their faction’s boss, not to any policy. Hence the ruling Democratic Party of Japan often appears to be more at war with itself than with the opposition.
「日本の２大政党の国会議員たちは、自分たちが忠誠を尽くすのは政策にではなくて、派閥のボスにであるとはっきり認めている。民主党は野党とよりは身内同士の戦いに明け暮れているようだ。」
As for the media, senior reporters are assigned to cover factional power struggles within the parties, whereas complex policy questions are often covered by junior hacks. The mainstream media has a system, known as the Kisha Club, that tends to encourage complicity with official sources and conspires to keep trouble-making riff-raff out of press conferences.
「マスコミに関しては、ベテランの記者たちが政党内の派閥争いを取材し、複雑な政策問題については、新人記者たちが担当するすることがほとんどだ。大手マスコミには「記者クラブ」というシステムがあり、当局側から発表される情報に異論を唱えずに素直に受け入れるように、そして面倒を引き起こすような下っ端の人間を記者会見から排除するように仕向けている。」
※日本の「記者クラブ」は上記の説明にあるように、情報を与える側とそれを受け取る側との間にはなれ合いがあると海外メディアはかなり厳しい目で見ているようです。
Financial journalists quietly acknowledge that one reason they buried Mr Woodford’s claims on the inside pages early in the Olympus scandal is that the story was broken by an obscure monthly magazine. Worse, Mr Woodford first spoke to the Financial Times, not the Nikkei Shimbun.
「金融ジャーナリス達は、オリンパス・スキャンダルでウッドフォード氏の訴えを自社の記事に大きく載せなかった理由の一つには、その話をあまり世に知られていない無名の月刊雑誌がいち早く掲載したからなのだと内心は認めている。さらに悪いことに、ウッドフォード氏が最初に情報を提供したマスメディアは、日経新聞ではなくてFinancial Timesだったのである。」
この記事の最後では、先の大阪市長選に当選した橋下徹氏のことについて触れている。
His appeal suggests one stark aspect of governance in Japan—the patience of voters with hopeless mainstream politics—may at last be weakening. But in the tradition-bound, loyalty-bound business world, there is as yet little such clamour for change, from employees or shareholders, however much Mr Woodford has rattled their cages.
「橋下氏の当選は、絶望的な今の政治に有権者が我慢するという、日本の硬直した統治の側面がついに弱体化してきているのかもしれないことを表している。しかし、伝統と忠誠心に縛られたビジネス界では、ウッド・フォード氏が会社をどれだけガタガタ揺すったとしても、従業員や株主からはそうした変革を求める声はまだ出てこないのである。」
★日本の企業統治の悪しき体質(派閥主義)が、企業のみならず、政界、そしてマスコミ界にまで及んでいるとエコノミストは鋭く指摘している。
こうした海外からの指摘に対して当事者たちはどのように感じているのだろうか。日本の問題だから、口出しはしないでもらいたいという気持ちなのかもしれない。
しかし外圧に対しては弱い日本、こうした声が海外からどんどん出てくれば、少しずつではあるが、変わっていくのではないだろうか。
海外から経営者を招き、会社を経営してもらうグローバルの時代の波に日本は乗り遅れてはいけない。
マイケル・ウッドフォード氏の今後の動向が注目される。
Tribal Japan
Japan’s cherished loyalty system is part of the problem
ON NOVEMBER 25th the venerable Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan experienced a volley of camera flashes, jostling television crews and shouts of “heads down at the front!”—the sort of attention it has rarely enjoyed since the country began its gentle slide down the world’s news agenda. The occasion was the return to Japan of Michael Woodford, the former boss of Olympus, a Tokyo-based lens-maker, who had been fired in October after he started asking awkward questions about $1.3 billion in suspicious transactions. His subject, in a nutshell, was corporate governance—not something that, in the abstract, usually sets reporters’ hearts aflutter. But as the club pointed out, not even the Dalai Lama had drawn such a crowd.
Mr Woodford, who is adroit in the spotlight, says the whole saga has been like walking into a John Grisham novel. Having been sacked by the board and stripped of his office, home and company car on October 14th, the 30-year Olympus veteran—one of just four gaijin to run a leading Japanese company—was told to catch a bus to the airport. The American Federal Bureau of Investigation, Britain’s Serious Fraud Squad and the Japanese authorities are all now on the case.
But in retrospect, he says, one of the most chilling moments came when he was still chief executive and had unsuccessfully challenged his chairman, Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, to explain the missing money. He found another director, Hisashi Mori, also seemed to be stonewalling him. “Mr Mori, who do you work for?” he recalls asking, expecting the answer to be Olympus. “Michael, I work for Mr Kikukawa. I’m loyal to Mr Kikukawa,” Mr Mori is said to have replied.
Mr Kikukawa, Mr Mori and the company’s statutory auditor have since resigned from the board of Olympus, accused of a huge cover-up of securities losses dating back to the 1990s. But other board members who supported them and who dumped Mr Woodford still have their jobs. The company insists that he was fired for failing to understand its management style, and Japanese culture, not for being an awkward whistleblower.
If every foreigner who didn’t understand Japanese culture were fired there would hardly be a gaijin businessman left in the country. The corporate ethos of every culture is in some sense unique. Japan’s is especially perplexing, not just because of its well-known emphasis on loyalty to the group, seniority-based pay and long-term job security. Firms are also doggedly clannish on the inside. As Mr Mori implied, loyalty to a manager or department can trump loyalty to the firm—even if that works against everyone’s long-term interests.
The other difficulty, which extends far beyond business, is a general suspicion in Japan of outsiders’ points of view. Take Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), operator of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear-power plant, wrecked by the March 11th earthquake and tsunami. A recent report by Bloomberg, citing minutes of a 2009 meeting, revealed that TEPCO and its regulator, the Economy and Trade Ministry, dismissed scientific findings about the risks of such natural disasters that could have helped prevent the meltdowns of three of the plant’s reactors. The nuclear industry is deeply incestuous. Not only do bureaucrats parachute from their ministries into the utilities, but their sons and daughters occasionally marry each other too. Nicholas Benes, who founded the Board Director Training Institute of Japan, a non-profit organisation, says that having more outsiders on TEPCO’s board, whether independent nuclear specialists, foreigners or women, might have helped ring alarm bells. As it was, 18 of the 20 voting members on TEPCO’s board came from the company itself.
Tribalism extends to politics and the media too, frustrating debate, good policy, and the ability to call politicians to account. Members of Japan’s two biggest political parties acknowledge quite candidly that their first loyalty is to their faction’s boss, not to any policy. Hence the ruling Democratic Party of Japan often appears to be more at war with itself than with the opposition.
As for the media, senior reporters are assigned to cover factional power struggles within the parties, whereas complex policy questions are often covered by junior hacks. The mainstream media has a system, known as the Kisha Club, that tends to encourage complicity with official sources and conspires to keep trouble-making riff-raff out of press conferences. Financial journalists quietly acknowledge that one reason they buried Mr Woodford’s claims on the inside pages early in the Olympus scandal is that the story was broken by an obscure monthly magazine. Worse, Mr Woodford first spoke to the Financial Times, not the Nikkei Shimbun.
Time for a shake-up
In politics, there are encouraging signs that some of this is starting to change. The prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, has made policy front-page news for the first time in years, with his decision to push Japan gingerly towards negotiating a free-trade treaty with America and at least eight other countries, under the framework of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Meanwhile, on November 27th, a publicity-seeking former governor, 42-year-old Toru Hashimoto, dealt a severe cuff to both mainstream political parties. Beating a candidate they jointly supported, he won election as mayor of Osaka on a single campaign pledge: to unite the city and prefecture of Osaka into one large metropolis that would strengthen its finances as well as its bargaining power with the political establishment in Tokyo.
His appeal suggests one stark aspect of governance in Japan—the patience of voters with hopeless mainstream politics—may at last be weakening. But in the tradition-bound, loyalty-bound business world, there is as yet little such clamour for change, from employees or shareholders, however much Mr Woodford has rattled their cages.
Japan’s cherished loyalty system is part of the problem
日本の企業統治のあり方が問われる時代だ
★損失隠し問題で大揺れのオリンパス、そして損失隠しの不正を指摘して社長を解任されたイギリス人のマイケル・ウッドフォード氏。
日本の大企業による損失隠しの問題は、アメリカのFBI、イギリスのSFO(Serious Fraud Office「重大不正監視局」)、そして日本の捜査当局などがこの事件の調査に乗り出して、世界的に影響を与える大きな問題となってきた。
そして、海外から日本企業の体質・問題点を問う声が多く出てきて、企業統治を改善するためのよい機会だとの指摘もある。
マイケル・ウッドフォード氏の社長解任劇で改めて明らかになってきた日本企業の統治の実態、問題点について、イギリスの経済誌エコノミストが鋭く迫ります。
★オリンパス側がマイケル・ウッドフォード氏を解任した理由とは?
The company insists that he was fired for failing to understand its management style, and Japanese culture, not for being awkward whistleblower.
「日本の経営スタイルや日本の文化を理解できなかったために解任したー厄介な内部告発をしたからではないーと会社側は主張している。」
★オリンパス側の主張に対するエコノミスト側の反論
If every foreigner who didn’t understand Japanese culture were fired there would hardly be a gaijin businessman left in the country.The corporate ethos of every culture is in some sense unique. Japan’s is especially perplexing,
「もし日本の文化を理解できないために外国人がみんな解雇されたら、日本には外国人ビジネスマンはほとんどいなくなるだろう。どんな文化でも企業体質にはある意味、それぞれ独特のものがあるが、日本の企業体質は特に複雑だ。」
★日本企業体質の問題点
その1. 企業内部は頑固なまでに排他的(原発産業界は特にそうである)
上司や所属部署に対する忠誠心の方が、会社に対する忠誠心よりも勝っている
その2. 社外の意見に対しては一般的に言って懐疑的な態度を取る
取締役委員のほとんどは内輪の人間で占められている
その3. こうした日本の企業統治の体質(派閥主義)は政治やマスコミ界にまで及んでいる
Members of Japan’s two biggest political parties acknowledge quite candidly that their first loyalty is to their faction’s boss, not to any policy. Hence the ruling Democratic Party of Japan often appears to be more at war with itself than with the opposition.
「日本の２大政党の国会議員たちは、自分たちが忠誠を尽くすのは政策にではなくて、派閥のボスにであるとはっきり認めている。民主党は野党とよりは身内同士の戦いに明け暮れているようだ。」
As for the media, senior reporters are assigned to cover factional power struggles within the parties, whereas complex policy questions are often covered by junior hacks. The mainstream media has a system, known as the Kisha Club, that tends to encourage complicity with official sources and conspires to keep trouble-making riff-raff out of press conferences.
「マスコミに関しては、ベテランの記者たちが政党内の派閥争いを取材し、複雑な政策問題については、新人記者たちが担当するすることがほとんどだ。大手マスコミには「記者クラブ」というシステムがあり、当局側から発表される情報に異論を唱えずに素直に受け入れるように、そして面倒を引き起こすような下っ端の人間を記者会見から排除するように仕向けている。」
※日本の「記者クラブ」は上記の説明にあるように、情報を与える側とそれを受け取る側との間にはなれ合いがあると海外メディアはかなり厳しい目で見ているようです。
Financial journalists quietly acknowledge that one reason they buried Mr Woodford’s claims on the inside pages early in the Olympus scandal is that the story was broken by an obscure monthly magazine. Worse, Mr Woodford first spoke to the Financial Times, not the Nikkei Shimbun.
「金融ジャーナリス達は、オリンパス・スキャンダルでウッドフォード氏の訴えを自社の記事に大きく載せなかった理由の一つには、その話をあまり世に知られていない無名の月刊雑誌がいち早く掲載したからなのだと内心は認めている。さらに悪いことに、ウッドフォード氏が最初に情報を提供したマスメディアは、日経新聞ではなくてFinancial Timesだったのである。」
★日本の企業体質、派閥主義を改革する時が来た
この記事の最後では、先の大阪市長選に当選した橋下徹氏のことについて触れている。
His appeal suggests one stark aspect of governance in Japan—the patience of voters with hopeless mainstream politics—may at last be weakening. But in the tradition-bound, loyalty-bound business world, there is as yet little such clamour for change, from employees or shareholders, however much Mr Woodford has rattled their cages.
「橋下氏の当選は、絶望的な今の政治に有権者が我慢するという、日本の硬直した統治の側面がついに弱体化してきているのかもしれないことを表している。しかし、伝統と忠誠心に縛られたビジネス界では、ウッド・フォード氏が会社をどれだけガタガタ揺すったとしても、従業員や株主からはそうした変革を求める声はまだ出てこないのである。」
★日本の企業統治の悪しき体質(派閥主義)が、企業のみならず、政界、そしてマスコミ界にまで及んでいるとエコノミストは鋭く指摘している。
こうした海外からの指摘に対して当事者たちはどのように感じているのだろうか。日本の問題だから、口出しはしないでもらいたいという気持ちなのかもしれない。
しかし外圧に対しては弱い日本、こうした声が海外からどんどん出てくれば、少しずつではあるが、変わっていくのではないだろうか。
海外から経営者を招き、会社を経営してもらうグローバルの時代の波に日本は乗り遅れてはいけない。
マイケル・ウッドフォード氏の今後の動向が注目される。
Tribal Japan
Japan’s cherished loyalty system is part of the problem
ON NOVEMBER 25th the venerable Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan experienced a volley of camera flashes, jostling television crews and shouts of “heads down at the front!”—the sort of attention it has rarely enjoyed since the country began its gentle slide down the world’s news agenda. The occasion was the return to Japan of Michael Woodford, the former boss of Olympus, a Tokyo-based lens-maker, who had been fired in October after he started asking awkward questions about $1.3 billion in suspicious transactions. His subject, in a nutshell, was corporate governance—not something that, in the abstract, usually sets reporters’ hearts aflutter. But as the club pointed out, not even the Dalai Lama had drawn such a crowd.
Mr Woodford, who is adroit in the spotlight, says the whole saga has been like walking into a John Grisham novel. Having been sacked by the board and stripped of his office, home and company car on October 14th, the 30-year Olympus veteran—one of just four gaijin to run a leading Japanese company—was told to catch a bus to the airport. The American Federal Bureau of Investigation, Britain’s Serious Fraud Squad and the Japanese authorities are all now on the case.
But in retrospect, he says, one of the most chilling moments came when he was still chief executive and had unsuccessfully challenged his chairman, Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, to explain the missing money. He found another director, Hisashi Mori, also seemed to be stonewalling him. “Mr Mori, who do you work for?” he recalls asking, expecting the answer to be Olympus. “Michael, I work for Mr Kikukawa. I’m loyal to Mr Kikukawa,” Mr Mori is said to have replied.
Mr Kikukawa, Mr Mori and the company’s statutory auditor have since resigned from the board of Olympus, accused of a huge cover-up of securities losses dating back to the 1990s. But other board members who supported them and who dumped Mr Woodford still have their jobs. The company insists that he was fired for failing to understand its management style, and Japanese culture, not for being an awkward whistleblower.
If every foreigner who didn’t understand Japanese culture were fired there would hardly be a gaijin businessman left in the country. The corporate ethos of every culture is in some sense unique. Japan’s is especially perplexing, not just because of its well-known emphasis on loyalty to the group, seniority-based pay and long-term job security. Firms are also doggedly clannish on the inside. As Mr Mori implied, loyalty to a manager or department can trump loyalty to the firm—even if that works against everyone’s long-term interests.
The other difficulty, which extends far beyond business, is a general suspicion in Japan of outsiders’ points of view. Take Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), operator of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear-power plant, wrecked by the March 11th earthquake and tsunami. A recent report by Bloomberg, citing minutes of a 2009 meeting, revealed that TEPCO and its regulator, the Economy and Trade Ministry, dismissed scientific findings about the risks of such natural disasters that could have helped prevent the meltdowns of three of the plant’s reactors. The nuclear industry is deeply incestuous. Not only do bureaucrats parachute from their ministries into the utilities, but their sons and daughters occasionally marry each other too. Nicholas Benes, who founded the Board Director Training Institute of Japan, a non-profit organisation, says that having more outsiders on TEPCO’s board, whether independent nuclear specialists, foreigners or women, might have helped ring alarm bells. As it was, 18 of the 20 voting members on TEPCO’s board came from the company itself.
Tribalism extends to politics and the media too, frustrating debate, good policy, and the ability to call politicians to account. Members of Japan’s two biggest political parties acknowledge quite candidly that their first loyalty is to their faction’s boss, not to any policy. Hence the ruling Democratic Party of Japan often appears to be more at war with itself than with the opposition.
As for the media, senior reporters are assigned to cover factional power struggles within the parties, whereas complex policy questions are often covered by junior hacks. The mainstream media has a system, known as the Kisha Club, that tends to encourage complicity with official sources and conspires to keep trouble-making riff-raff out of press conferences. Financial journalists quietly acknowledge that one reason they buried Mr Woodford’s claims on the inside pages early in the Olympus scandal is that the story was broken by an obscure monthly magazine. Worse, Mr Woodford first spoke to the Financial Times, not the Nikkei Shimbun.
Time for a shake-up
In politics, there are encouraging signs that some of this is starting to change. The prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, has made policy front-page news for the first time in years, with his decision to push Japan gingerly towards negotiating a free-trade treaty with America and at least eight other countries, under the framework of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Meanwhile, on November 27th, a publicity-seeking former governor, 42-year-old Toru Hashimoto, dealt a severe cuff to both mainstream political parties. Beating a candidate they jointly supported, he won election as mayor of Osaka on a single campaign pledge: to unite the city and prefecture of Osaka into one large metropolis that would strengthen its finances as well as its bargaining power with the political establishment in Tokyo.
His appeal suggests one stark aspect of governance in Japan—the patience of voters with hopeless mainstream politics—may at last be weakening. But in the tradition-bound, loyalty-bound business world, there is as yet little such clamour for change, from employees or shareholders, however much Mr Woodford has rattled their cages.
タグ：企業統治 オリンパス
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