Psychology of management

The fifth principle: Partnership and cooperation
in production relations. Japanese 
managers consider workers their active partners in striving for economic success, high quality 
achievement and productivity increase. They are sure that everyone is loyal to the company and 
its goals. The necessity of partnership between workers and management is explained by the fact 
that production, especially directed at export, brings success not only for a company, but also for 
the nation in general. Americans call the partnership relations in the Japanese society economic 
nationalism. Economic success is viewed by Japanese as the only chance of its society and 
culture in modern world. 
Directedness at cooperation is denoted by Japanese with the term of “uchiva”. This term 
supposes that people strive for cooperative actions and group success to a greater extent than for 

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individual actions and personal success. As Japanese think, first of all it is the nation that must 
prosper, only then can individual people become prosperous. Cooperation is viewed as a 
traditional value of Japanese people and a necessary precondition for the nation’s prosperity. The 
Japanese culture having formed under the impact of Buddhism and Confucianism gives priority 
to cooperation over competitiveness. People must unite in groups and cooperate with each other. 
Groups, in their turn, also must unite. In the Japanese language there is no word corresponding to 
the western term “competitiveness” or ‘emulation”. For the Japanese it is more natural to 
compromise, to cooperate rather than to compete with each other.