Reference no: EM133459971

Case Study

Tokyo Disneyland (TDL) was opened in 1983 by Japanese owners who secured a license from the Walt Disney Company in exchange for a percentage of ticket and concession sales. Within a decade, TDL was not only the most successful theme park in Japan but, in terms of attendance, the most successful theme park in the world. About that time, Israeli researcher Aviad Raz conducted an organizational ethnography of TDL to learn about the mixing of Japanese and American organizational cultures and what this "hybridization" might reveal about globalization.

Raz decided to combine participant observation, through multiple visits to the theme park, and interviews with more than thirty park executives, regular employees, and part-time employees. Raz discovered two organizational cultures, one that centered on regular TDL employees and another on part timers. When it came to regular employees, TDL readily integrated aspects of the "Disney Way" that fit Japanese organizational culture (e.g., the metaphor of a corporate family, the regulation of behavior, the low status of unions) but tossed out others (e.g., the relentless use of Disney icons and décor, even in strictly office settings, to promote an emotional buy-in by employees). The organizational culture of part-timers, however, was another matter. At the time Raz conducted his ethnographic fieldwork, Japanese practices surrounding temporary labor and the service sector were far different from those in the United States. Part-timers were expected to know traditional "house rules" (bowings, greetings, apologies, standard phrases) that applied to customer relations generally in Japanese society; for any company-specific rules they learned apprentice style by observing their supervisors. TDL made waves in Japan by following the American practice of issuing manuals with company-approved behaviors to part-timers, rather than relying on traditional protocols for part-time help. Though TDL borrowed from the "manual (manyuaru) society" of the United States, the move was lauded by many Japanese management experts who saw the innovation as integral to TDL's rapid success. Traditional Japanese service culture is oriented toward one-on-one customer relationships and not the mass-consumption culture of Disney.

Raz concluded that Tokyo Disneyland is less an example of "Americanization," "Westernization," or cultural imperialism, and more a case of the "hybridization" of cultures-both societal and organizational-that accompanies globalization. He called the phenomenon "glocalization" as TDL selectively incorporated some aspects of the "Disney Way," rejected others, and combined various Japanese and American features while maintaining a boundary between them. In particular, the socialization of part-time TDL employees occurred through American methods, while the socialization of regular employees followed more typical Japanese norms.

1. How did the Tokyo Disneyland manual for part-time employees function as a culture-embedding mechanism?

2. Referring to Table 6.5, how did Raz's ethnographic fieldwork reflect an emic view of cultural research?

3. Referring to Hoffman and Ford's rhetorical situations, to what rhetorical situation did the TDL employee manual respond? What rhetorical strategy was employed?

4. Referring to Table 6.7 in what kinds of organizational performances did Japanese part-time and temporary workers traditionally engage?

5. Referring to Table 6.11, what type of organization is TDL?

6. How are the traditional "house rules" of part-time Japanese workers an example of high-context communication? How is the TDL employee manual an example of low-context communication?

7. Can Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck's typology of cultural-value orientations, and Hofstede's typology of cultural-value dimensions, help us better understand why TDL adopted some American methods and not others?

8. How does the "hybridized" organizational culture of TDL help us understand the process of globalization? Which of Appadurai's "cultural flows" (ethnoscapes, technoscapes, financescapes, mediascapes, ideoscapes) do you see at work?