 Beyond Japan: Cleaning, American-StyleShin Ohmori ()
Chapter Chapter 7 in Cleaning and Corporate Management, 2023, pp 87-93 from Springer Abstract: Abstract This chapter uses a comparison of Japanese and western companies’ approach to cleaning to reveal how cleaning is approached by contemporary Japanese companies that value the task. The approach of western companies could well be described as “goal-oriented cleaning.” This contrasts greatly with cleaning at Japanese companies, where new purposes for cleaning are added in response to changing times and conditions—approach I characterize as “means-oriented cleaning.” Both are just cleaning, but the cleaning reveals the contrast in the underlying approaches to management. The time has perhaps come to reconsider whether the prioritization of goals and efficiency—the dominant trend in American companies and management theory—is in fact truly rational and whether it is effective in the current environment facing modern companies in many countries, including Japan. I raise the question whether these times instead demand that we focus more on activities such as cleaning, which, though not often seen overseas, has a long tradition in Japan and which constitutes an intermediate zone between reason and instinct. Date: 2023 There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-99-0761-8_7 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from DOI: 10.1007/978-981-99-0761-8_7 Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Springer Books from Springer |
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