TORONTO - April 05, 2006 - Three times a week, staffers at the Canadian unit of Japanese videogame maker Koei Co. begin the day by standing next to their desks and facing their boss, Hidenori Taniguchi. "Good morning, everyone," says Mr. Taniguchi. "Good morning," chant Koei Canada's 30-odd employees.

That greeting ushers in a peculiar corporate ritual Koei has imported from Japan -- morning meetings where employees deliver short speeches. The subjects can be anything from management talking about corporate principles to employees discussing 3D game engines. In Japan, such meetings, which are a common practice, are called "chorei." Some of Koei Canada's programmers, however, feel the sessions are like show-and-tell.

"It's kind of like school," says Samson Chan, Koei Canada's lead creator, who recently gave a presentation on family-oriented videogames. Mr. Chan says he thinks chorei can help improve communication -- as long as staffers don't view them as a joke.

That is the kind of dissonance Koei and other multinational companies must confront as they struggle to blend their home cultures with local work forces. Trying to figure out how, or whether, to export corporate culture is an increasingly common issue as firms derive more revenue or production from abroad.

Many companies struggle to get it right. International Business Machines Corp., for example, won a strong following in Japan in the 1980s by tailoring sales practices and products to the Japanese market. Among other steps, IBM designed computers that could process the Chinese characters used in written Japanese. But the computer giant sparked controversy in France in 2002 when labor groups objected to an employee-assessment system being introduced world-wide. IBM says the groups misunderstood the system, and opposition eventually fizzled out.

Understanding the local market is key. Consulting firm Bain & Co. says only one-third of 60 U.S. retailers who expanded overseas between 1989 and 2004 turned a profit from their new ventures. Those that were successful at making money tended to stick to proven business models, do their homework on new markets, and state clearly which decisions would be made by local managers and which by the home office, says Russ Hagey, a Bain partner in Los Angeles.

Companies should "involve the local staff at every level," to be successful outside their home country, says T. Glen Sebera, a partner at the Renaissance Consulting Group, which advises companies on navigating cross-cultural issues.

Cultural differences not only affect internal management practices, they are also an issue in developing products, like videogames, that need to appeal to different consumer markets.

Japanese game-maker Sega Sammy Holdings Inc. recently outsourced much of its videogame development for Western markets, hiring smaller U.S. studios to make such products. It also gave its U.S. and European units more autonomy, after years of trying to exert control from Tokyo. Rival Konami Corp. last year abandoned an experiment where it moved its development command center to Los Angeles from Tokyo.

U.S. game and console makers -- including Electronic Arts Inc., Activision Inc. and Microsoft Corp. -- have had an equally tough time figuring out Japanese consumer tastes and marketing methods. Japanese gamers tend to like fantasy and role-playing games and don't like the first-person shooters popular in the West.

Koei, a relatively small player with annual revenue of $240 million, is famous in Japan for games like "Nobunaga's Ambition," which features intricate battle simulations with Asian warriors. But as the company sought more revenue in the U.S. and Europe, it realized there would be limited appeal for its samurai games, and that it wasn't good at making the gritty, realistic fare that Westerners favor.

So last year, Koei converted its Toronto unit, until then a handful of animators who worked on Japanese games, into a studio developing its own games. The company hired roughly two dozen Canadians, many right out of school, to create games with a Western flavor.

Koei Canada staffers say Japan has been good about ceding creative control. Koei Canada's first product -- a futuristic racing game called "Fatal Inertia" -- was conceived entirely in Toronto. Unlike typical Koei offerings, which feature multitudes of characters, the stars of "Fatal Inertia" are the race's hovercraft. The Canadians persuaded top executives to include realistic smoke and sparks when vehicles crash, rather than the lights and fireballs used in most Koei games.

Koei's plan is to give its Canadian staff full artistic rein. On the managerial side, however, executives want to mimic the Japanese corporate environment as much as possible, from the office layout to its tradition of lifetime employment.

Many of the workplace practices are alien to Koei's Canada employees. Programmers must log in to a digital time clock and sit together in an open room without cubicles -- both practices uncommon in Western software firms. They are expected to share tasks most Western companies relegate to office help, such as answering the office phone during lunch and tracking magazines and DVDs. Mr. Taniguchi suggested Koei Canada hire part-timers for some of these jobs; headquarters refused. Salaries are Japanese-style too -- lower than similar entry-level software jobs in Canada, although the company says it gives rapid performance-based raises.

At the end of last year, the unit had a watered-down version of Japan's "o soji": an annual or biannual office cleaning where employees, from secretaries to senior managers, get out buckets and mops and scrub everything from the desks to the toilets. At Koei Canada, the cleaning was limited to frequently used equipment.

"It's very, very Japanese," says Mr. Chan, who had previously worked for EA. "The morning meetings, the punctuality."

Still, Koei co-founder and chief adviser Yoichi Erikawa says he is taking hints from IBM Japan, and won't push all of Koei's practices on the Canadian unit. Koei Canada's staffers won't be pressured to match the long hours of Japanese programmers, says Mr. Erikawa, who visits Toronto every other month. Nor do the gym-loving Canadians need the daily exercise routines imposed on employees in Japan.

Results so far are mixed. Canadians have quibbled over things from the time clock to Koei's penchant to ask women to serve tea to top executives' guests, and headquarters has often been slow to respond.

Mr. Taniguchi, the veteran Koei manager who runs the Canadian operations, says it took him six months to convince his bosses to let Koei Canada track employees on a clock with one-minute intervals, rather than 15-minute intervals used in Japan. Japan's personnel department initially rejected the request, and only backed down after Mr. Taniguchi reported that no other Canadian firm had a similar system.

"It's still tricky to decide how much we should align ourselves with local standards and how much we should push Koei rules," says Mr. Taniguchi.

Personnel matters are even stickier. Koei Japan hasn't been able to recruit enough senior creators to train younger workers, from either Japan or elsewhere in North America. As Koei Canada's young creators become more experienced themselves, they may be wooed by other firms offering better pay or conditions.

Mr. Taniguchi says Koei Canada is reviewing its wage levels. Mr. Erikawa says he hopes that Koei can make the job and culture attractive enough that many of its Canadian staff will choose to stay.

"We're resigned" to some turnover, says Mr. Erikawa. "But we're going to give this our best shot."

Source: http://imdiversity.com/Villages/Careers/workplace_diversity/careerjournal_multinationals_culture_0406.asp