Preview

Gung-Ho Means “Work Together”

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2137 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Gung-Ho Means “Work Together”
Gung-Ho means “Work together”

Introduction
Gung Ho demonstrates a cross-cultural relationship between the Americans and the Japanese people working together towards the goal. In this movie, a Japanese car manufacturer company takes over an American car manufacturing plant. The American workers were in conflict with the Japanese style of management.

Situation
Hunt Stevenson takes the leadership role and becomes the liaison between the Japanese executive team and the American workers. At first, the workers were working at their usual pace and did not meet the productivity numbers as expected.
Before the arrival of the Japanese executives, the organization structure of the plant was “Work Specialization”.
• Every worker was assigned to do a specific task.
• Each worker performs a repetitive task.
• Each worker is specialized in his own part of work.
After the arrival of the Japanese team, the manager set out new rules and restructures the work as “Job Redesign”. The manger wanted the workers to learn new skills and able to do more than one specific task.
However, the workers were not respecting the Japanese executives and they felt that the new work structure was more impose rather than implementing. They were not happy with this and felt very dissatisfy with their jobs.
Job Redesign usually takes some time to see the results, but in the case as shown in movie, the executives were not allowing time for the change of improvement. After a while, the productivity was still not increasing and the Japanese felt that they need to take action. By doing so, they were to layff workers or closing down the plant.
Hunt learned that the Japanese have plans to close down the plant and realized that hundreds of workers would be left without jobs. He decided to offer a proposal so that the Japanese would not close down the plant so soon.

However, the workers were not used to this new way leading them to feel dissatisfy with their jobs.
The Japanese

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Cultural Differences

    • 434 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Mark Jones, a Production Manager, has been transferred from the manufacturing plant in his hometown of Chicago to his company's overseas manufacturing plant in Osaka, Japan and I am writing to let you know the differences that Mark will experience in managing front-line plant workers in Japan in contrast to in the United States and also address how cultural differences may play a role in individual differences Mark will experience.…

    • 434 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Unfortunately, labor unions became controlled by the Communist Party, causing shortages of goods. Strikes began nationwide. United States and Japan made economic and social stability their top priority. United Stated and Japan withdrew their support for labor unions. This conservative social policy set the pattern for Japanese capitalism in the decades to come. The U.S. occupation authorities installed in Japan a type of democratic, free enterprise system that promoted political and economic practices closely resembling those in Japan in the 1920”s (Brower, 2006).…

    • 462 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    Cross Culture

    • 3915 Words
    • 16 Pages

    Third, despite there is still some different opinion between Japanese managers and American managers, as the reason of the conflict of their different culture of the hierarchy, JASI has already decided to hire a project administrator. the more time JASI spend on this management issue the less time they can use to solve other issues, and this leads to the reduction in company’s efficiency.…

    • 3915 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    The already frustrated employees started to feel dejected as the management turned a deaf ear towards them. They lacked the spark which they used to have earlier and thus they were de-motivated to work and the production lines went in for a toss as the employee morale descended to an all-time low.…

    • 989 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    There had been the history in the Ajax of terrible run changes. Pessimism stirs inside the working group alongside there had not been backing from any side to anyone. Situation deteriorated thereafter, that even while Management has chosen of doing anything of that, laborers used getting suspicious of Management 's choices alongside they may start suspecting that associations had been going to influence them most exceedingly bad either with respect to pay or as to alternate…

    • 2158 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Possibly the purpose of the change was not communicated and clarified well because people are still baffled by the revamp of existing way of working. There is a misconception that the change was outcomes of top level’s initiative that was not necessary at all.…

    • 2371 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    At that moment, Jim felt as if a knife had been stuck in his side, just below the rib cage. As president of the Wisconsin Specialty Products Division of Lamprey Inc. He knew quite well the challenge of dealing with high-cost labour in a third-generation, unionised US manufacturing plant. And although he had done the analysis that led to his boss’s knee-jerk response, the call still stunned him. There were 520 people who made a living at Lamprey’s facility, and if it closed, most of them wouldn’t have a journeyman’s prayer of finding another job in the town of 9000 people.…

    • 644 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Group Behavior in Gung Ho

    • 3859 Words
    • 16 Pages

    Kazihiro, the Japanese executive in charge of the Hadleyville plant, gives Stevenson a large pay increase on the condition that he work as their liaison to convince the American workers to conform to the new management style. More concerned with keeping his promotion than with the long-term welfare of his fellow workers, Stevenson does everything he can to trick the American workers into compliance, but the culture clash becomes too great and he begins to lose control of the men.…

    • 3859 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Organized Labor Movement

    • 630 Words
    • 3 Pages

    during this period replenished the supply of unskilled workers, making it hard for a person to…

    • 630 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Mincer, Jacob. Higuchi, Yoshio. Journal of Japanese and International Economies: Wage Structures and Labor Turnover in the United States and Japan. (1988). Vol. 2, Iss.2, pp.97-133…

    • 3070 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Best Essays

    In the post-war period, Japanese manufacturing companies significantly increased their share of the global market of automobiles (Automotive News-Market Data Book, quoted in Womack, Jones, and Roos 1991, 69) as well as achieving more than 50 percent of the world markets in cameras, video recorders, watches, calculators, microwave ovens, motorcycles, and colour televisions (Oliver and Wilkinson 1992, 5). Much of this success was attributed to the forms of human-resource Management found in Japanese companies (Abegglen and Stalk 1987; Clark…

    • 3854 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Gung Ho

    • 292 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Another cultural difference portrayed is high power distance and low power distance. The Americans illustrated a low power distance and a strong belief in their ability to influence outcomes. One event was when the town sent one person to the foreign country believing that he could get theJapanese on opening the plant. The workforce believed they could change the terms of employment and believed that he could change the workers attitude to over achieve and meet the 15,000 car target. A last element that is portrayed is Masculinity vs. femininity. The Americans are much more aggressive and assertive then the Japanese. This aggression is shown at the ball game and the fight scene in the grocery store. Not only that, but the Americans are also very focused on reaching the 15,000 target. By the end of the film everyone these cultural differences are put aside and everyone is able to come together and work together. The workers will cooperate more and the managers will ease up on…

    • 292 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gung Ho

    • 928 Words
    • 4 Pages

    As the firm continues to operate, the American employees and Hunt Stevenson realize that Japanese managers have far more disciplined work ethic, and expect a high level of reliability from the workers. The Japanese managers were very strict and had a well-organized way of working. The American employees weren’t use to the Japanese way of working, which is to work every day of the week and to work overtime without any extra pay. As a result, a clash between the American workers and Japanese managers occurs. Furthermore, Mr. Stevenson then tells the American employees that their pay will increase and they will have a raise if they can compose 13,000 cars per month. The word of Mr. Stevenson influences the American employees to start to work very hard and get them really encouraged. However, when one of the upper executives hears about this, he says the American employees won’t be paid more and their pay won’t increase. Let alone that salary bonus conflict, all other problems in the firm prove us a communication problem since nobody talks to each other in the company about their problems. The main problem of all this was the cultural difference and the lack of communication.…

    • 928 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Because of the Japanese society of securing professional success, there were normal circumstances of vague obligation and responsibility allotment, which conflicts with trust and dependability standards. Ghosn discovered vital to account each and every representative for its own particular activities, exploration reports and proposals, which thusly made Nissan's workers more precise and worried about their execution. Since they are as a rule nearly checked, needing to react and confront the outcomes of their own behavior and not being "covered up" among a bigger gathering of associates where everybody is capable, yet at last nobody is…

    • 1583 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    john higgins

    • 2034 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Because of Higgins are too attached to Japanese cultures, Prescott has noticed his attitude and thinking causes a considerable ineffectiveness of administration. Higgins also applies many characteristic of typical Japanese executive during his work, spending time listening to subordinates who face personal problems. A typical Japanese employer always spending time listening to subordinates who face personal problems and become a third-party of employees who have dissatisfied with the new policy and fight for their rights which Higgins adopted in his management style and Prescott was unease. It cost more to the company in term of profit and loss account. He has also become a third-party of employees who have dissatisfied with the new policy, insisting their demands are defended.…

    • 2034 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays

Related Topics