Alicia Ogawa, a former head of research at Nikko Salomon Smith Barney Ltd, a joint venture between Nikko Securities Co and U.S. investment bank Salomon Smith Barney. She says it is always difficult getting foreign and Japanese staff on the same page when there is a merger because of the egalitarian salary structure, the low level of expertise and the weak profit orientation of Japanese companies. (Jiji)

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7 Comments

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  tmarie at 09:03 AM JST - 30th September

  Usually gaijin start at a higher salary but get passed over for promotions and whatnot. At the end of the day the Japanese end up with the power titles and more money even if they are crap at their job. Anyone living in Japan knows that.

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  drink_more_milk at 10:27 AM JST - 30th September

  Strange comment given that's she's been out of the market for over 10 years....

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  neverknow2 at 12:06 PM JST - 30th September

  Anyone living in Japan knows that.

  I agree 100%. They senior staff also do not listen to the ideas of the foreigners but will praise Japanese staff for presenting an identical idea. I don't believe they do it on purpose, but I do believe they are trained for many years to be like this.

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  Manny3 at 04:01 PM JST - 30th September

  Somehow, I'm not surprised. I've had that experience about other things. Unfortunately, I feel the Japanese (especially the older generation) have an old-style mindset, similar to that of the early to mid 1900's. Just think about "Fraggle Rock." The foreigners are the Fraggles and the Japanese are the "doozers." They just do their thing and don't complain.

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  stirfry at 06:17 PM JST - 30th September

  ..because there aren't any...nor will there ever be

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  kisekicaroline at 11:06 PM JST - 30th September

  well japanese companies should have japanese people at the top. i don't understand what the deal is here. it's pretty obvious. egalitarian? you can't expect any equality in the hierarchical structure of economic systems.

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  Akaminekoji at 10:03 AM JST - 1st October

  Let me tell you how i been treated in United States, I am Japanese, living in United States most of American companies are prejudice towards the foreigners here in United States they treat them low,I know and I seen this is going on in United States too. So, don't be surprise that this is going on, in the world. I have worked for Japanese company in Oregon state. Called EPSON the American managers run this area i was hired there, i was the only Japanese employee working there i was running a machine operator level 2, making this Ink for copy machine. Just imagine me, only one Japanese, there most of the managers hired white people only on the top level who is running here? But the c.e.o. is Japanese there all in Japan working there. In United States there all whites. Speaking of prejudice there is one here. In this company in EPSON in Hillsboro, OREGON. Later, I was let go becuase of my background part of my race related, I tell you I was treated bad. I did nothing wrong either. I was the fasted working hard person there. Becuase of it some of my co-worker got jealous of me becuase i was fast hard working person and that's when everything went bad. Their are back stabbers. Meaning: they don't like foreigners.

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