Understanding How Japanese Companies Develop Kaizen Culture

February 4, 2025 [No. 133 – 2024]

 

Prof. Kuriyama Naoki
Faculty of Business Administration
Dean of the Graduate School of Economics, Soka University

 

 

 

At the Japan Productivity Center, the most popular forms of technical collaboration are related to “5S” and “Kaizen.” There is strong demand for these from places such as Africa, South America, and the Middle East. When they are introduced as a formality or on a superficial basis, a sudden temporary increase in productivity may be seen. However, their effect tends to become weaker as time passes.

To develop them in a sustainable manner, 5S and Kaizen must be firmly entrenched in corporate culture. Corporate culture is not simply a way of thinking or a mindset. It must produce employee behavior. Behavior means not a single, one-time action but a series of consistent actions. Creating corporate culture is a key mission of human resources managers and labor-management relations in the workplace.

Many Japanese companies have succeeded in establishing Kaizen culture. They achieve results by producing behavior based on an enabling approach for employees and problem solving on the spot in the GENBA (working place). This approach forms the basis for promoting 5S activities and Kaizen. It forms a virtuous cycle that includes improving occupational safety and health in the workplace and workplace learning and teaching (known as OJT). This leads to improved productivity and enhanced competitiveness.

To establish this kind of Kaizen culture, what kind of measures do personnel departments need to implement? Here, I want to mention two typical factors. The first is strong commitment by workers in the workplace. This differs from motivation as a psychological factor. Instead, it means behavior which guarantees work of a certain level, even if workers are unmotivated. In the workplace, actual voluntary behavior from which results may be expected is more important than workers’ mental state. When it comes to the source of commitment, research in this field has shown that the most important factor is whether the psychological contract that is offered and exchanged between employers and workers is a good fit for both sides. Whether employers and workers have exchanged an attractive offer from the perspective of both sides impacts the strength of commitment.

The other typical factor is the cooperative attitude and behavior of workers. Small-group activities are carried out for 5S and Kaizen activities in many cases, which place emphasis on leveraging collective wisdom. This is known as organizational citizenship behavior. It means behavior in collaboration with others that goes beyond the scope of work specified in individual labor contracts. Research in this field has made it clear that the biggest variable in producing this behavior is the degree of perception of fairness by workers.

Human resources management and labor-management relations play a major role in making psychological contracts that increase commitment in the workplace and in forming a labor environment that ensures perception of fairness, which will induce collaboration and a spirit of cooperation with colleagues. Resultant working conditions will lead to establishing a corporate culture which induces process innovation in the PDCA management cycle. It is this foundation that makes Kaizen culture, which requires a voluntary bottom-up approach, sustainable.