Transforming Shame to Collective Pride and Social Equity in Bicultural Organizations in Japan

Abstract

There are increasing intercultural misunderstandings between Japanese and American managers in their bicultural organizations in Japan. The intercultural misunderstandings are often caused by feelings of shame that are based upon perceived inadequacies in adjusting to a new workplace. These issues cause companies to lower productivity, managers to make bad decisions based on inaccurate information, employees to make stereotypic negative attributions, and everyone to display attitudes of disrespect and distrust. In order to solve these issues, we developed a bicultural organization development model based on our extensive experiences in working with several dozen U.S. subsidiaries in Japan. The purpose of this chapter is to present a practical intercultural developmental model that transforms shame through respect, empathy, trust, and social equity to a collective pride in bicultural organizations in Japan. We first describe the common issues related to shame in the bicultural workplace and then present the developmental model that we have found effective in building integrated corporate cultures in Japan. The model has four key elements: the program model design, intercultural facilitation skills, the transformative intercultural identity development stages, and the implementation of the model. Each element is described in detail. Successful interventions of the model require skillful intercultural communication facilitators, top management and employees’ cooperation, and shared commitments from all parties to work collaboratively through the issues that arise.