Makaseru: carte blanche decision-making may be hazardous to your company

Makaseru is a term frequently heard in Japanese business, between supervisor and subordinate, or customer and supplier.  Literally translated into English, makaseru means “to delegate something.”  However, that English word fails to convey the completeness of the entrustment.  Something along the lines of “I leave it completely in your hands” or “I entrust everything to you” best conveys the nuance.  As a result of this makaseru attitude, sometimes in Japanese business people will take a hands-off attitude that is almost shocking to people from western countries.

Perhaps the use of the word makaseru that most clearly shows the difference of thinking from western countries, is omakase.  Used in restaurants, this term indicates that the patron is leaving the selection of food completely in the hands of the chef, and will be surprised by what comes out.  In the west, where people tend to want to have more control over what they are eating and exercise their ability to choose according to their tastes, there is virtually no equivalent of this custom.  However, in Japan opting for omakase is  the best way to ensure that you will receive a tasty meal, because you are giving the chef free reign to use his skills and the ingredients he deems best.

The makaseru attitude can be seen quite clearly in various situations in Japanese business.  One example is how Japanese multinationals manage their overseas subsidiaries.  My observations show, and recent academic research confirms, that Japanese multinationals are more likely than ones from western countries to take a hands-off attitude toward their foreign operations in administrative matters such as human resources,  allowing them wide latitude to handle things as they see fit, and not in coordination with a global plan.  In contrast, western multinationals tend to keep a tight rein on how their overseas subsidiaries do things, and dictate how things should be handled so that there is consistency across all the subsidiaries.

This lack of insistence on firm-wide consistency can also be seen in the domestic operations of Japanese companies.  The atmosphere and practices may be quite different from one department to the next, or from one location or subsidiary to the next.  As a result, it’s often difficult to make generalizations about Japanese companies.  People often ask me questions like “Which Japanese firm is the most progressive” or “Which Japanese firm is the best to work for” and I always reply that I can’t answer, because conditions vary so much from one part of the firm to another.

I believe that this situation is a result of the makaseru mentality.  The leader of each division, location, or subsidiary expects to be given the latitude to decide many things on his own.  Also different parts of the company tend to develop their own ways of doing things, and resist dictates from the center.

I observed a rather extreme example of this when I worked at a Japanese bank many years ago.  The head office had decided to change the color of its logo from blue to pink.  Normally such a central change would be followed uniformly in the company, but in this case there were quite a few branches that refused to adopt the new color, making our company image woefully inconsistent.  From an American perspective, i was shocked to see such blatant insubordination, but it’s not completely surprising when one takes into account the makaseru mentality. Another way to put this is to say that Japanese companies lack internal controls, and in fact this situation has also led to some scandals at Japanese firms where one person or a small group of people has been able to hide problems because things had been makaseru-ed to them.  However, the desire of Japanese firms to obtain global certifications such as ISO 9000 and the advent of the Japanese version of Sarbanes-Oxley (dubbed J-SOX) are forces that will lead to greater consistency and control in Japanese firms.