However, after 6 months of working in Taiwan and living here for more than 1.5 years, I have come to realize that there is a non-insignificant number of Asian companies that do not reward ability and actually discourage their employees from thinking. These things combined over a long enough period time create an unintentional dictatorship where the employees with ability are told not to use it, not question management and just accept worsening working conditions.
Ideal/Traditional Asian Working Cultural Values
If you want to understand Asian working culture, you first need to understand Asian cultural values. As I mentioned in my previous article on Asian cultural values (link), these values might be great in moderate amount, but once these values get taken to the extreme, you get essentially a lack of using your brain/critical thinking. In a similar way, Asian companies who most follow these workplace cultural values will actively discourage the use of thinking in their workers.
The first thing to understand about Asian working culture (and Asian culture in general) is that it is primarily relationship-based. Basically if I know you, I will treat you very well, but if I don't, I won't even look at you. One example was when I was interning in Shanghai and looking for a badminton coach. I had to go through about 5 people (starting with a badminton coach in Canada), meeting them and having them introduce me to someone else (either by e-mail, WeChat or in person) to find a coach that was in my area.
There is also a cultural value of respecting your elders ("Respecting Authority"). This manifests itself in the company where the "elders" at the company are those that have been at the company the longest. The longer the person is at the company for, the more "loyal" they are and the more likely they are to get promoted. In fact a lot of managers get their jobs because they are the "last survivor"; they just happen to be the person who has been on the team the longest when that team's manager position opened up.
"聽話" or "Don't Think, Just Do" Workers
Another major cultural value is that workers should 聽話 which means that they should listen to authority (ie: managers) and not talk back. This goes back to "Respecting Authority" which I mentioned in an earlier post (link) and is basically ingrained into Taiwanese children starting at a young age. It is immediately obvious when I see how people communicate in Taiwan. I've seen parents basically lecturing or yelling at their child and the child just nodding. I've also noticed this in meetings where it sometimes seems like I am the only one interrupting and asking questions or clarifications.
Stability
The last cultural value that is really important in an Asian's life is stability. When it comes to working, staying at one company and doing the same thing for 30+ years is seen as a good thing. Conversely, if you move around or decide to work on a startup or change companies to find a more suitable job, you will be seen as someone who isn't "reliable". In fact, I've heard from the older Taiwanese generation that the "best" job is to become a government worker （公務員）because they are the safest, most stable jobs that you can work until you retire without worrying about being fired.
The Unintended Consequences: A Spiral Down Towards Incompetency
Rewarding Relationships（關係）and Time（前輩）Over Ability
If relationships or time at a company is weighted much more than ability, eventually the employees will stop trying so hard (since they won't be rewarded). Instead they will try to survive or have a good relationship with the boss (which don't have as much value to the company as producing work). Over time, high-ranking positions might not be held by competent people, leading to a lot of mismanagement. This can eventually lead to incompetency all around.
"聽話" or "Don't Think, Just Do" Workers
By having a culture of 聽話 employees, the boss essentially has an army of employees to follow his orders. If everything is known and the boss is competent, he can give his "orders" to his workers and they can be successful. However, if an unexpected problem occurs, then it takes significantly more time to adjust since it has to go from the employee to the boss and then back to the employees. If the boss is incompetent, there might be a lot of miscommunications which none of the employees stop to think or clarify. As well, since no one talks back to the boss, he doesn't get any constructive feedback to improve (and can just blame his employees even though he is incompetent).
By valuing stability extremely highly, that Asian company is extremely slow to react to changes. In these companies, people don't try to do things that are risky or outside their comfort zone meaning problems could last for many years or grow worse and worse. It also means that people don't want to argue with their boss to change the behavior (習慣就好了). Finally, even if the working conditions are poor, these workers will not leave the company because they value the stability of the job over the (immense) pain of working that job and will not look for another job. This is why so many Asians tolerate poor or toxic working conditions.
Final Thoughts
As I mentioned before, these Asian workplace values may have good intentions and successful in the past. However, as time goes on, employees become more obedient and less willing to give feedback, then they stop thinking. They will then end up just settling and doing things in the same way. The once competent people at the top will be replaced with people of less and less ability and the company will begin to decline. If there is a significant change in the outside world (ie: rise of technology), these companies cannot react quickly or in an intelligent way. If they don't drastically change, they will go into a death spiral where they eventually use up all their resources and the company is forced to close, sell, or just become irrelevant.
With all that being said, I think that not all Asian companies are like this (or to this extreme). Even for those that are still like this, I believe there is still time to change their company culture (a post for another time). As I mentioned before, I believe it is (mostly) unintentional and there just hasn't been a successful demonstration of a different way of doing things. However, with a willing company and employees, I think it is possible to change these unintentional dictatorships into intentional meritocracies.
As I mentioned before, these Asian workplace values may have good intentions and successful in the past. However, as time goes on, employees become more obedient and less willing to give feedback, then they stop thinking. They will then end up just settling and doing things in the same way. The once competent people at the top will be replaced with people of less and less ability and the company will begin to decline. If there is a significant change in the outside world (ie: rise of technology), these companies cannot react quickly or in an intelligent way. If they don't drastically change, they will go into a death spiral where they eventually use up all their resources and the company is forced to close, sell, or just become irrelevant.
With all that being said, I think that not all Asian companies are like this (or to this extreme). Even for those that are still like this, I believe there is still time to change their company culture (a post for another time). As I mentioned before, I believe it is (mostly) unintentional and there just hasn't been a successful demonstration of a different way of doing things. However, with a willing company and employees, I think it is possible to change these unintentional dictatorships into intentional meritocracies.
