Is saving face worth it? Why old cultural practices hinder engagement in Japanese boardrooms

Academic research supports these perceptions of Japan's unique culture. Professor Erin Meyer, of France's INSEAD, wrote The Culture Map, in which she uses eight scales (communicating, evaluating, persuading, leading, deciding, trusting, disagreeing, and scheduling) for expressing the cultural conventions of each country. Examining the two scales of leading and deciding, it is clear Japan represents a major outlier versus the more typical relationship where hierarchical styles tend to correlate with top-down styles. A combination of consensual decision-making and a hierarchical leaders...