Similarities and Differences
This comparative study of Japanese and indigenous companies in Thailand and Malaysia exposed similarities and differences. General trends relate to skills and the methods of forming them were identical. A dependence on OJT made the companies studied alike in providing working with experience over the long term. Similarities were also discernible in the early development of an integrated system. But major gaps exist between countries. Breadth of experience was narrower in Thailand and Malaysia than in Japan, and depth of experience shallower—only a few Thai and Malaysia blue-collar workers can deal with problems or change.
Differences arise naturally from the dissimilar histories of industrialization in Japan and in Thailand and Malaysia. The formation of intellectual skills especially demands a firm history of industrialized society. Intellectual skills require basic scholastic ability: the ability in particular to learn by oneself as a prerequisite for self-teaching in the workshop. Japan’s period of high growth suggests a minimum of nine years of schooling. Young people in Malaysia have just about surpassed it. Corporate history, too, is necessary. Skills are formed through customary practices, such as rotation within workshops. These practices, however, must first be established, over as long a period as 10 to 15 years. Provided companies have taken the time to cultivate these practices, the necessary conditions for skill formation will fall into place. Beyond that, these practices need only be promoted.
Documentation
Written in the Manula
Attention has to this point focused on skills. Documentation, too, must be considered. Japanese assert that in the West and elsewhere job methods are standardized and documented to the last detail. And that, as a result, no matter the country following an operating plan. By contrast, job at Japanese companies are neither standardize that reason, nor, for that reason, documented—Japanese can understand Japanese without documenting or saying anything. Overseas, this does not work. Another argument suggests that work methods are