Japanese Case

collectivist culture, group harmony and consensus among group members is favored, rather than individual achievement. The Japanese are sensitive to their position in the society rather than acting differently or independently. Losing face is often their worst fear. Japanese go out of their way to be polite and accommodating, to maintain dignity in different situations and avoid conflicts in their pursuit to avoid losing face.

In the Japanese culture, face represents the respect in a community and is a central foundation of society. Loss of that respect can harm the relationships of individuals with almost everyone and is difficult to retrieve once lost, hence must be avoided at any costs. In this particular situation, since I did not want to endorse the book, Mr. Honda would consequently not only lose face with education board but also with Nishi High. Therefore, Mr. Honda had to pressurize me to endorse the book.

One of the obstacles to achieving a good collaboration was that each party was mainly motivated to only achieve their own goals. Here, my goal was not to endorse book, while for Mr. Honda, it was his goal to have me endorse the book. To try to achieve a good collaboration, we should share the motivation and commitment working together. I and Mr. Honda should have tried to pursue both our needs. We should have focused more on the fact that we both could gain more if we worked jointly. In this instance, if we had settled to an agreement, Mr. Honda could have saved his face and I could have accepted Mr. Honda's offer of endorsing my own book later on. We would have both won, if we used this type of collaboration.

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