Labour Pains and the Gaijin Boss

[Mulboyne]

The Ledger: Land of the Rising Gaijin Chief Executive
THE choice of Sir Howard Stringer as the first foreign chief executive of Sony affirms what appears to be the new conventional wisdom in Japan: When a company really needs a shake-up, it calls in a gaijin, or foreigner...But a closer look at the track record of foreign corporate chiefs in Japan suggests that bringing in an outsider is no panacea. Mitsubishi Motors is in dire straits despite the efforts of Rolf Eckrodt, a German whom DaimlerChrysler installed as chief operating officer in 2001...The jury is still out on efforts by Wal-Mart to revive Seiyu, a Japanese supermarket chain, and by Vodafone, which owns the country's third-largest cellphone carrier. "There are plenty of examples of foreign executives who have failed," said Hiroyuki Itami, a professor at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo and an expert on Japanese corporate governance. "I don't believe the idea that foreign executives are better able to implement changes." Being an outsider is usually a disadvantage, he added, in that foreigners can often alienate colleagues inadvertently...more...