Let me expand (expound?) after reading David Morris'
note.

We need to be careful to think about how people obtain culture. Surely job-related behavior is only partially influenced by schooling (in college, "bukatsu") and family. Don't we have a reasonably robust literature (e.g., Tom Rohlen's bank book, but even now examples of low-level convenience store clerks, on and on) illustrating how companies strive to inculcate norms into employees, preferably "green" to make that task easier? So we can talk about responses that are in part culture, but not necessarily "Japanese" culture (non-economists, thankfully, have already covered the ground on career and other incentives). And this culture has a lot in common with other bureaucratic organizations, militaries of all sorts, think boot camp. [My campus is abuts on that of Virginia Military Institute with its multi-month "rat line" system of imbuing newly matriculated students with the VMI culture.] Remember that the utilities are at an extreme of a closed entity with little interaction with "the"
market (whatever that is) in tightly regulated firms with regional monopolies that militate against regional job mobility. My hunch is that even utility engineering contractors, while national in scope, have "EPCO"-specific units and so likewise fail to serve as much of a check (and in any case are far removed from executives, who focus on the regulatory interface).

I can provide tales of how the "Detroit 3" of GM, Ford and Chrysler were also highly isolated -- far less true today -- with virtually no mid-career hiring from outside the industry, an overwhelmingly promote-from-within system and over time with fewer and fewer at the top having either hands-on sales or hands-on manufacturing experience. These firms each developed their own culture, IT and other specialized consultants (and parts suppliers) who worked with two or more could compare and contrast them, from how meetings were conducted and whether that was where decisions were made, to dress code, on and on. There was some commonality across firms, too, all the senior people were part of the Detroit Athletic Club and various charities. Now individuals in these firms were certainly "American" in some vague sense, but what mattered on the margin (pardon my economics jargon) was this internal culture, which reflected what it took inside the firm to get things done and what it took to get promoted (the two were not the same thing!).

I think I posted a query on NBR many months ago, but what are the "keireki" of the top people? -- none from the operational side, right? We can probably find other ways in which these firms are idiosyncratic. Ditto other firms -- every firm in every country! -- Honda with engineers at the top, other firms with a stronger representation "eigyo" (sales) types, others (Toyota until the coup that put Toyoda Akio at the top) where bureaucrats had come to dominate. KFC and McD's with their separate training systems.

So to reiterate: culture, yes, but not "Japanese"
culture.

mike smitka
washington and lee=