Broad Listening is Important in Japan, Where Air Rules

Japanese culture is unique, but first we need to understand “how unique” at a higher resolution.

Erin Meyer found that Japan is a hierarchical, consensus-oriented culture of extremes.

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  • To Lead Across Cultures, Focus on Hierarchy and Decision Making
• Hierarchical on the right, consensus-oriented on the bottom
  • Bottom right edge is Japan
  • Culture in which individuals on the team feel less likely to disagree with the team’s opinion once the team’s decision is made (hierarchical)
    • 
      • Figure taken from The Culture Map (and the following two)
  • However, when the boss or team leader makes decisions for the team alone, there is animosity. (non-top-down)
    • Team members feel frustrated when they are not involved in the decision-making process. Leaders are expected to gather members’ opinions and make decisions, rather than making decisions alone. (Consensus oriented)
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  • This is a minority culture where individual bosses cannot make decisions for their teams, yet they are hierarchical and do not go against the decisions of those above them.”
    • Only Japan, Germany, and Belgium in the scatterplot.
    • People from many cultures around the world would think, “I don’t understand, isn’t that a contradiction?” They would think, “I don’t know.
    • The reason why this situation occurs in Japan is because the “higher-ups” are not “individual bosses.
    • In Japan, “air rules.”
    • In Japan, “company,” “organization,” “team,” “air,” etc. are expressed as if they have personalities.
      • Go against the company’s wishes,” etc.
    • This is the upper echelon in Japan
      • air, a superior
      • So individual bosses don’t like top-down decision making because it’s “going against the higher-ups.”

In addition to this, a characteristic trait of Japanese culture is conflict avoidance.

• Never say “I disagree” to another person’s opinion.

• avoid a discussion

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• In communities where this culture is strong, a higher percentage of “speakers” are very angry, believe in strange ideas, or are mentally deranged. - speech threshold is so high that only those with the energy to cross it will speak up.

  • This culture is maintained and reinforced by the fact that the majority of people feel negatively about “speaking up” when they see this type of radical statement.
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• Strange Japanese who value consensus but are afraid to express opinions that differ from others.

  • In the two-dimensional scatterplot above, besides Japan, Germany and Belgium were in the lower right quadrant
    • Its Germany is at the opposite end of the axis regarding confrontation from Japan. They are willing to discuss it.
  • Japanese people want their opinions heard, even though they don’t speak up for themselves.
  • Personally, I think “that’s crazy.”
    • I think it would be preferable if Japanese culture would change towards expressing one’s opinion more.
  • However, culture is difficult to control, so at this point we need to consider this culture as a constraint and design a system suitable for it. - I don’t care what I can’t control.

• What is broad listening?

• In a commentary on Plurality by Audrey Tang, the following is written

• Advances in statistics can enhance democratic careful deliberation on a large scale, allowing “broad listening” where millions of people can hear the essence extracted from the distribution of opinions of their peers.

• In a culture of top-down decision making, it reinforces the ability of top management to understand everyone’s feelings.

• In a consensus-oriented culture, it reinforces that everyone understands everyone else’s feelings.

• This “everyone’s feeling” is “air” in Japan, and making it visible reduces misunderstandings and conflicting interpretations.

• Broad listening is the key to replacing the “Japanese organization governed by air” with a high-speed “digital democracy” through “air digitalization.

Broad listening methods that have been successful overseas will not work if brought directly to Japan.

• Because the constraints of culture are different.
• Broad listening is particularly suited to Japan’s consensus and hierarchical culture through its encouragement of the sharing of individual opinions and perspectives and their contribution to overall decision-making. However, Japan’s tendency toward “conflict avoidance” can make broad listening difficult to implement. Members are hesitant to express their views, preventing the open expression of all viewpoints and opinions that broad listening requires. Therefore, an environment must be created in which members feel comfortable expressing their opinions.
• If you bring the way of doing things in a culture where members don’t hesitate to express their opinions directly to Japan, you will end up with “people don’t express their opinions”.
• It needs to be modified for the Japanese situation.
• Polis opinion posting, I kind of left the default “you can’t post an opinion unless it’s named”, but maybe I’d rather have “all opinions will be anonymized”.
  • Related: Japan has high anonymity use of SNS: Twitter Anonymous Percentage.

    • More than 70% of Twitter users in Japan use Twitter anonymously, a situation that is significantly more prevalent than in other countries --- [Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications｜The 2014 White Paper on Information and Communications｜The Importance of Internet Literacy https://www.soumu.go.jp/johotsusintokei/ whitepaper/en/h26/html/nc143120.html]

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      • Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, “Research Study on the Impact of ICT Evolution on Society” (2014)

relevance

• DAO and culture
  • How did you start thinking about cultural differences?
  • Intercultural Comprehension
• Consensus
• Anonymous Polis

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