Recently we were treated to a bout of speculation that Shigehisa Takada, the chief executive officer of Takata Corp., would resign after the companies' faulty and lethal air bags led to a wave of auto recalls. Takada kept his job for the time being. But the focus on the possible resignation exposes deep flaws in Japan's corporate and political culture — an overemphasis on punishment instead of prevention, and on individuals instead of organizations.
As an example, take the wave of accounting fraud scandals that have swept Japan in the past several years. After Toshiba was found to have overstated profits by about $1.2 billion, CEO Hisao Tanaka resigned, along with eight board members. The same saga unfolded at camera manufacturer Olympus: a $1.7 billion fraud scandal in 2011 led to the chairman's resignation. The story is always the same.
A similar phenomenon reigns in Japanese politics. Politicians' standard response to the all-too-frequent corruption scandals is to apologize in public and resign. Witness the recent case of Akira Amari, who left his post as economy minister after it was revealed that he had accepted cash from a construction company allegedly in exchange for favors.