Gung Ho is a comedy film in 1986 directed by Ran Howard and starred by starring Michael Keaton (as Hunt Stevenson) and Gedde Watanabe (as Takahara Kazuhiro). The story portrayed the takeover of an American car plant by a Japanese corporation. The local auto plant in Hadleyville, Pennsylvania, which supplied most of the town's jobs, has been closed for nine months. Therefore, Former foreman, Stevenson, goes to Tokyo to try to convince the Assan Motors Corporation to reopen the plant. The Japanese company agrees and, upon their arrival in the U.S., they take advantage of the desperate work force to institute many changes. The workers are not permitted a union, are paid lower wages, are moved around within the factory so that each worker learns every job, and are held to seemingly impossible standards of efficiency and quality. Adding to the strain in the relationship, the Americans find humor in the demand that they do calisthenics as a group each morning and that the Japanese executives eat their lunches with chopsticks and bathe together in the river near the factory. The workers also display a poor work ethic and sluggish attitude toward quality control. Problems become more serious when one worker had an accident when trying to fix the machine fast without thinking the safety. Furthermore, all workers were disappointed when they know that Hunt lied about the deal of raise if they can make 13,000 cars in 1 month. Hunt, who was hoping to save the town and atone for his deception, and Kazuhiro, who desperate to show his worth to his superiors, went back into the factory and begin to build cars by themselves. Looking that, the workers return and continue to work toward their goal and pursue it with the level of diligence the Japanese managers had encouraged. The strict CEO, Satoshi Yamamura, is nonetheless impressed by the workers' performance and declares the goal met, calling them a "Good team”. In the end, both management (Japanese people) and workers (American people) have compromised, to partially ease up on their requirements, pay the employees better, and agree to be more cooperative, such as participating in the morning calisthenics or exercises as workers in Japan do usually.
Gung Ho Film Trailer (1986) | source: www.youtube.com
After watching the film, I did analysis on how different culture in an organization can affect the workplace condition in terms of employees' satisfaction.
In the movie, we can see that there are 2 extremely different culture in workplace, such as Japanese culture and American culture. As Kazuhiro said, Japanese people are very loyal to the company, so they put themselves below the company and are very proud when company does well or shamed when it does poorly. In Japan, when production lags, workers stay longer in factory because they do not do it for pay, but for company. However, American people do otherwise. In the other words, Japanese workplace culture is loyalty-oriented, while American is personal-oriented.
At first, Assan Motors Corporation had bad communication climate since it did not meet some criteria of communication satisfaction:
1. Satisfaction with work
[Scene 48:21-51:15] Both party were not satisfied with the working system. Kazuhiro and his superiors (Japanese people) were not satisfied with the performance of American workers who always arrived 5 minutes late, left 2 minutes early, stayed home when they were sick, listened to music while working, and postponed the job when they want to which caused poor quality of the product. On the other hand, Stevenson and the other American factory thought that that was the American factory, which means they could not go for it and that is why nobody cannot change the American attitude. American workers prioritize their life instead of the company, so they did what they thought are right without working pressures.
2. Satisfaction with the accuracy of information
[Scene 55:10-58:42, Scene 1:10:05-1:13:28, and Scene 1:21:04-1:24:57] Stevenson lied about the agreement between him and Japanese management. He told that they workers will get partial raise if they can make 13,000 cars in one month, while actually they will get nothing if they could not produce 15,000 cars in one month. Then, the workers found out the real agreement, but they think the Japanese management was the one who broke the deal, then Stevenson continued to lie. Eventually, the truth was revealed when Stevenson admitted his mistake. Here, there was inaccurate information spread between the management and workers, hence caused dissatisfaction to the workers.
3. Satisfaction with the ability to give suggestions for improvement
[Scene 1:25:05-1:27:18] Kazuhiro stated his mind that he had American idea to the CEO, “We work too damn hard. This is not our lives. This is a factory. Our friends, our families should be our lives. We are killing ourselves. We are millies.” However, when he asked similar mind to the others, they ignored to give their opinion and suggestion to Yamamura because they were afraid. Then, Kazuhiro was so depressed with the situation and left the factory.
In addition, The Top 5 job satisfaction factors for Employees according to the survey of The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) in are job security, benefits, compensation or pay, opportunities to use skills and abilities, and feeling safe in the work environment. In this movie, American workers felt less job security in their workplace since they sometimes asked for the line to be speeded up, saves time any way they can, and even neglected security and got hurt because they did not want to lose time. Benefits, compensation, and pay were also the problems. Workers were paid lower wages and moved around within the factory so that each worker learns every job, but no overtime pay. They also felt unsafe in the work environment since they did like Japanese did, such as stayed after hours, worked late, showed up early, cut down lunch hour and break, sacrificed gathering with family. Those made them uncomfortable day by day.
Assan Motors Corporation had to face socio-cultural forces since Japanese people and American people hold substantially different values and norms they emphasize. It was hard to understand how each culture works because it had existed for a long time. Therefore, the role of Kazuhiro, the corporate managing director, and Stevenson, the employee liaison, was important to make major alteration by redesign the structure, for example. Both of them have to adjust their behaviors accordingly so both Japanese managers/superiors and American would get equal job satisfaction. As the leaders, they should provide guidance, use new methods in the field of their factory to make more effective, give proper reward and punishment. In the scene 1:31:20, when Kazuhiro and Stevenson realized that they had similar mind and thought that they could perform better, they decided to still go to work although the factory had been shut down. They inspired the American workers to finish all 15.000 cars in the next morning. In the end of the movie, all workers were acknowledge as a good team (Scene: 1:47:00) and trusted to fix the problems in the factory by Yamamura. Then, they create organizational culture where both Japanese culture and American culture adapted each other, such as doing morning calisthenics, listening to music in working hours, and having balance portion between work and family.
So people, do not let the cultural differences in your organization becomes a barrier for you to optimize the productivity of your organization.