ACTIVATING SYMBOLS WHEN CREATING CULTURE – THE DEVELOPMENT AND DISSEMINATION OF “ASUKA PRIDE” AND NYK CRUISES CO., LTD. IN JAPAN

Cristian Vlad, Fumiaki Tajiri, Ana Damaschin and Kurtz Law
Additional contact information
Cristian Vlad: Babes Bolyai University
Fumiaki Tajiri: Babes Bolyai University
Ana Damaschin: Babes Bolyai University
Kurtz Law: Bucharest University of Economic Studies

Romanian Economic Business Review, 2019, vol. 14, issue 3, 19-28

Abstract: The Cruise industry is a growing market which represents, 24.7 million global passengers in 2016, 25.8 million in 2017, and an estimated 27 million in 2018 (FCAA 2018, CLIA (Dec) 2018). In addition, this industry is providing over 1.1 million full time jobs, with $45.6 billion accumulated wages and salaries (CLIA (Nov) 2018). Lieberman explains that Cruise companies encourage early booking, and target 95% occupancy rates. Customers are skewed towards the more affluent. For example, the world cruise fare on Crystal Cruises departing January 6 2020, ranges from $30,447 to $202,099 per person (Garay et al. 2019). A wholly owned subsidiary of Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha (NYK), NYK Cruises offer cruises to the Japanese market aboard Asuka II, the company’s luxury cruise ship. NYK Cruises’ guest population is predominantly Japanese. This is with the exception of non-Japanese guests residing in Japan, Japanese speaking foreign visitors or foreign visitors travelling with Japanese friends or family. In 2017, the NYK Group CEO (NYK 2017) stated that 30 years ago, the greater majority of their employees had been Japanese. Presently however, non-Japanese represent 85% of office workers and seafarers worldwide. According to Radic (2017) English is the first language aboard ships and aboard NYK’s Asuka II, crew staff consisted of 86% non-Japanese employees, 38% of whom could not speak the language and did not interact with guests directly. Of the NYK Cruises’ land talent, Japanese employees mainly communicated and delivered services to Japanese guests in their native language. This situation led to a cultural split caused mainly by the different use of language (Cohen et al. 2017), and also by the nature of business operations. In other words, the crew on board Asuka II could not see what happened on land, while the land communicators, organizational engineers, talent operators and corporate executives did have a direct appreciation of what happened at sea. This paper uncovers how IBM Japan helped a group of corporate communicators, organizational engineers and talent operators at NYK to utilize modern technology. In addition, along with their social engineering practices, to enhance internal communications, stimulate internal collaboration, strengthen engagement and modernize talent practices to transform the cruise operator’s corporate culture.

Keywords: Symbol; Talent; Communications; Cognitive; Organization; Japan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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