8 ms·

Japanese companies structure apologies very differently from US ones, because the legal consequences are very different. In the US, an apology is considered an

Japanese companies structure apologies very differently from US ones, because the legal consequences are very different. In the US, an apology is considered an admission of responsibility and is often the starting point of legal action against the culprit, while in Japan, a sufficiently sincere* apology may well defuse the situation entirely. * 真 makoto, a word often glossed as "sincere" but not identical in meaning: it's about the amount of effort you're willing to take on, not how "honestly" you feel something Also, the culprit here is not HP proper but their consulting/SI wing HP Enterprise, which has a, uhh, less than stellar reputation for competence.

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cafard 5y ago
I was deeply impressed some--30?--years ago when there was a minor scandal in sumo wrestling: some kid, who had been advanced too quickly did a few stupid things, as I recall the sort of thing you can find in American sports pages every week. The heads of the sumo wrestling association acknowledged that they had contributed to the situation, and docked their own pay. Do you think Roger Goodell is going to do that?
p_l 5y ago
HP and HPE are now two separate companies, split from post-Fiorina HP. HP does consumer grade stuff only, while HPE does the enterprise side (not just consulting, in fact non trivial portion of HPE consulting arm was spun off and merged into DXC)
- exikyut 5y ago
  I think "sell the HP-35 for 3.14 × cost of materials" cool-HP became Agilent, right? If I wanted to follow the trail of awesomeness what forest should I be sticking my nose to the ground in? :)
  - dbuder 5y ago
    now Keysight, Agilent is medical equip.
  - ted_dunning 5y ago
    That depends on which trail of awesomeness you are after. The trail that maintains the legacy of DEC and Silicon Graphics and Cray is in HPE (where I work). The Cray legend is still very much alive, but you can still detect the whiff of the the spirit that made HP and DEC minicomputers extraordinary.
    - p_l 5y ago
      Well, I suspect the SGI legacy is now in better hands than when it was controlled by Rackable with branding filed off. The only good parts they sold us were the Ultraviolets, and those were probably the most nonsensical purchase (protip: do not buy supercomputer modules just to run 8 VMs on it, it's waste of money even if the hw is awesome)
- hk1337 5y ago
  More specifically, it spun off and merged with CSC to create DXC.
- KevinEldon 5y ago
  I agree with your point, and want to add that HP does commercial grade end-user compute and printing along with the related enterprise services. They have a whole set of offerings for the medical industry [1], industrial printing [2], and enterprise PC fleet management services [3]. [1] https://www.hp.com/us-en/printers/3d-printers/industries/healthcare.html https://www.hp.com/us-en/printers/3d-printers/industries/hea... [2] https://www.hp.com/us-en/industrial-digital-presses.html https://www.hp.com/us-en/industrial-digital-presses.html [3] https://www.hp.com/us-en/services/manageability.html https://www.hp.com/us-en/services/manageability.html
numpad0 5y ago
> 弊社100%の責任により Voluntarily stating 100% responsibility is consequential and not typical, smells politics.
- dustintrex 5y ago
  I presume there were extensive discussions between the two parties about the wording before this statement was published.
imiric 5y ago
Apologies, both personal and corporate, are taken very seriously in Japanese culture[1]. They're a way of preserving honor that dates back to the samurai era. You can see this in the custom of bowing, where the length and extension of a bow reflects the gravity of the situation. The act of seppuku can be considered an extreme version of this. I'm not a Japanophile, but find their culture fascinating. [1]: https://theculturetrip.com/asia/japan/articles/sumimasen-behind-japans-apology-culture/ https://theculturetrip.com/asia/japan/articles/sumimasen-beh...
- xvilka 5y ago
  On the other hand, the failure is generally frowned upon and avoided at all costs.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  Because Japanese culture accepts failure. Admission and acceptance preserves honour. Western culture, particularly in north America, punishes the admission of failure. Everyone is supposed to fight things out to the last, to never give an inch. Even when companies settle cases they rarely admit wrongdoing publicly. Notice that this Japanese company talks about re-educating/training personnel. An American company would be expected to sack all involved and sue the consulting firm.
  - pezezin 5y ago
    Maybe it depends on the region/prefecture, but after 3 years working in Japan, my experience is quite different. The project suffers massive delays because nobody wants to make any decision and take any responsibility. My former boss (Japanese, but had worked for many years in the US), told me that Japanese managers don't want to take risks, because if something fails they need to apologize in public, and that is pretty much social suicide there.
  - halpert 5y ago
    Weren’t Japanese soldiers in WWII instructed to kill themselves instead of being captured to “preserve honor?” That doesn’t sound like the acceptance of failure to me.
zengargoyle 5y ago
I flip table rage quit my 15 year job at a university over a new C-suite from who knows where throwing HPE equipment/software/consultants at me for a big sort of project and finding them all so utter crap that I would be a part of that stupidity. I have my standards.
- hpcjoe 5y ago
  Before I left HPE post Cray acquisition, some of the folks in the consulting/"cloud" division insisted that to use their tooling, we had to insert a windows machine into clusterstor, that mounted lustre, so that they could run their powershell script to gather usage metrics. What I found working with these teams, was that the desire to flip tables was quite strong after meeting with them. I tried to address their concerns, one point at a time. They were bewildered that windows could not mount (modern) lustre. Really bewildered. I offered to help rewrite their scripts in another (portable) language, so we could avoid these problems. Still they were bewildered. They were not why I left. Merely a confirmation that my decision to leave was the right one.
  - shrdmem256 5y ago
    HPE is known for its acquisitions and, with that, there are diverse hardware teams who approach engineering differently. This can be a source of amazing innovation or power battles. The folks inside HPE need to learn how to engage in technical conflict better to prevent these catastrophic scenarios. And yes, your decision was the right one.
resoluteteeth 5y ago
> a sufficiently sincere* apology may well defuse the situation entirely. > * 真 makoto, a word often glossed as "sincere" but not identical in meaning: it's about the amount of effort you're willing to take on, not how "honestly" you feel something While it's true that makoto can be translated as sincere(ly) in constructions like "makotoni moushiwakearimasen" (I sincerely apologize) (although this is written 誠に rather than 真に), it is unlikely that the word makoto would be used in a phrase like "a sincere apology" or in discussing how sincere an apology was, so I don't really think introducing the word "makoto" in your comment sheds any additional light on japanese culture surrounding apologies. You could actually make the exact same comment about how "real" in English can also effectively mean sincere in "really sorry" and draw the same conclusions about American culture.
- eof 5y ago
  My take away (as westerner with zero direct Japanese culture exposure) from the comment you’re replying to was that in Japan, companies are incentivized to take on some measure of ownership and voluntary restitution, because there is some legal notion in Japan around “honest mistakes not being litigable if they are genuinely rectified.”
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    I think it’s more that legal measures would not be employed, rather than that they are legally unactionable. You could have an uphill battle against an unsympathetic judge in front of you if you sue anyway though.
  - gowld 5y ago
    In the US "genuinely rectified" is the standard for civil suit ("actual damages" for negligence, and "specific performance" or monetary equivalent for contracts). Punitive damages are added only for malicious intent. The reason many US companies don't apologize is because they don't want to make restitution, and can get away without paying.
Hello71 5y ago
> In the US, an apology is considered an admission of responsibility and is often the starting point of legal action against the culprit source? this is a popular theory among non-lawyers, but not, as far as I can tell, well-supported by the evidence. http://jaapl.org/content/early/2021/05/19/JAAPL.200107-20 http://jaapl.org/content/early/2021/05/19/JAAPL.200107-20 has extensive citations including for their claim that "In theory, telling a patient about an error may make patients more likely to pursue litigation. In practice, however, bad outcomes alone are typically not reason enough for patients or their families to file malpractice claims."
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  Medicine may not fit the pattern (personally I'd want to know where I stand, even if the news is bad), but I took the OP to be saying "American firms prefer not to go on record saying they screwed up, since that would naturally be brought up in subsequent legal proceedings".
tiahura 5y ago
“In the US, an apology is considered an admission of responsibility and is often the starting point of legal action against the culprit, while in Japan, a sufficiently sincere* apology may well defuse the situation entirely.” ——- “hospital staff and doctors willing to discuss, apologize for and resolve adverse medical events through a “collaborative communication resolution program” experienced a significant decrease in the filing of legal claims, defense costs, liability costs and time required to close cases.” https://www.natlawreview.com/article/you-had-me-i-m-sorry-impact-physicians-apologies-medical-malpractice-litigation?amp https://www.natlawreview.com/article/you-had-me-i-m-sorry-im...
gilmore606 5y ago
I once caused a blank box to appear on Rakuten's homepage for several hours. My boss had to fly to Japan to apologize in person to their CEO.
- zhte415 5y ago
  I don't know a huge amount about Rakuten. Don't they purposefully adopt a pretty flat communication structure, and the CEO travels around a lot, as well as English demanded in senior roles?
- hcknwscommenter 5y ago
  Or that is what he used to justify a free (likely business class) flight to JP.
  - dfcowell 5y ago
    No, I don’t work for Rakuten, but the in-person apology from an appropriately senior person is hugely important for large Japanese organizations. In my current company I have the opportunity to work with several large Japanese banks. Various members of our C-Suite and senior management travel occasionally for this purpose. A sufficiently sincere apology with the appropriate level of ceremony can be the difference between maintaining and losing a substantial contract.

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cafard 5y ago

I was deeply impressed some--30?--years ago when there was a minor scandal in sumo wrestling: some kid, who had been advanced too quickly did a few stupid things, as I recall the sort of thing you can find in American sports pages every week. The heads of the sumo wrestling association acknowledged that they had contributed to the situation, and docked their own pay. Do you think Roger Goodell is going to do that?

p_l 5y ago

HP and HPE are now two separate companies, split from post-Fiorina HP. HP does consumer grade stuff only, while HPE does the enterprise side (not just consulting, in fact non trivial portion of HPE consulting arm was spun off and merged into DXC)

exikyut 5y ago
I think "sell the HP-35 for 3.14 × cost of materials" cool-HP became Agilent, right? If I wanted to follow the trail of awesomeness what forest should I be sticking my nose to the ground in? :)
- dbuder 5y ago
  now Keysight, Agilent is medical equip.
- ted_dunning 5y ago
  That depends on which trail of awesomeness you are after. The trail that maintains the legacy of DEC and Silicon Graphics and Cray is in HPE (where I work). The Cray legend is still very much alive, but you can still detect the whiff of the the spirit that made HP and DEC minicomputers extraordinary.
  - p_l 5y ago
    Well, I suspect the SGI legacy is now in better hands than when it was controlled by Rackable with branding filed off. The only good parts they sold us were the Ultraviolets, and those were probably the most nonsensical purchase (protip: do not buy supercomputer modules just to run 8 VMs on it, it's waste of money even if the hw is awesome)
hk1337 5y ago
More specifically, it spun off and merged with CSC to create DXC.
KevinEldon 5y ago
I agree with your point, and want to add that HP does commercial grade end-user compute and printing along with the related enterprise services. They have a whole set of offerings for the medical industry [1], industrial printing [2], and enterprise PC fleet management services [3]. [1] https://www.hp.com/us-en/printers/3d-printers/industries/healthcare.html https://www.hp.com/us-en/printers/3d-printers/industries/hea... [2] https://www.hp.com/us-en/industrial-digital-presses.html https://www.hp.com/us-en/industrial-digital-presses.html [3] https://www.hp.com/us-en/services/manageability.html https://www.hp.com/us-en/services/manageability.html

numpad0 5y ago

> 弊社100%の責任により Voluntarily stating 100% responsibility is consequential and not typical, smells politics.

dustintrex 5y ago
I presume there were extensive discussions between the two parties about the wording before this statement was published.

imiric 5y ago

Apologies, both personal and corporate, are taken very seriously in Japanese culture[1]. They're a way of preserving honor that dates back to the samurai era. You can see this in the custom of bowing, where the length and extension of a bow reflects the gravity of the situation. The act of seppuku can be considered an extreme version of this. I'm not a Japanophile, but find their culture fascinating. [1]: https://theculturetrip.com/asia/japan/articles/sumimasen-behind-japans-apology-culture/ https://theculturetrip.com/asia/japan/articles/sumimasen-beh...

xvilka 5y ago
On the other hand, the failure is generally frowned upon and avoided at all costs.
sandworm101 5y ago
Because Japanese culture accepts failure. Admission and acceptance preserves honour. Western culture, particularly in north America, punishes the admission of failure. Everyone is supposed to fight things out to the last, to never give an inch. Even when companies settle cases they rarely admit wrongdoing publicly. Notice that this Japanese company talks about re-educating/training personnel. An American company would be expected to sack all involved and sue the consulting firm.
- pezezin 5y ago
  Maybe it depends on the region/prefecture, but after 3 years working in Japan, my experience is quite different. The project suffers massive delays because nobody wants to make any decision and take any responsibility. My former boss (Japanese, but had worked for many years in the US), told me that Japanese managers don't want to take risks, because if something fails they need to apologize in public, and that is pretty much social suicide there.
- halpert 5y ago
  Weren’t Japanese soldiers in WWII instructed to kill themselves instead of being captured to “preserve honor?” That doesn’t sound like the acceptance of failure to me.

zengargoyle 5y ago

I flip table rage quit my 15 year job at a university over a new C-suite from who knows where throwing HPE equipment/software/consultants at me for a big sort of project and finding them all so utter crap that I would be a part of that stupidity. I have my standards.

hpcjoe 5y ago
Before I left HPE post Cray acquisition, some of the folks in the consulting/"cloud" division insisted that to use their tooling, we had to insert a windows machine into clusterstor, that mounted lustre, so that they could run their powershell script to gather usage metrics. What I found working with these teams, was that the desire to flip tables was quite strong after meeting with them. I tried to address their concerns, one point at a time. They were bewildered that windows could not mount (modern) lustre. Really bewildered. I offered to help rewrite their scripts in another (portable) language, so we could avoid these problems. Still they were bewildered. They were not why I left. Merely a confirmation that my decision to leave was the right one.
- shrdmem256 5y ago
  HPE is known for its acquisitions and, with that, there are diverse hardware teams who approach engineering differently. This can be a source of amazing innovation or power battles. The folks inside HPE need to learn how to engage in technical conflict better to prevent these catastrophic scenarios. And yes, your decision was the right one.

resoluteteeth 5y ago

> a sufficiently sincere* apology may well defuse the situation entirely. > * 真 makoto, a word often glossed as "sincere" but not identical in meaning: it's about the amount of effort you're willing to take on, not how "honestly" you feel something While it's true that makoto can be translated as sincere(ly) in constructions like "makotoni moushiwakearimasen" (I sincerely apologize) (although this is written 誠に rather than 真に), it is unlikely that the word makoto would be used in a phrase like "a sincere apology" or in discussing how sincere an apology was, so I don't really think introducing the word "makoto" in your comment sheds any additional light on japanese culture surrounding apologies. You could actually make the exact same comment about how "real" in English can also effectively mean sincere in "really sorry" and draw the same conclusions about American culture.

eof 5y ago
My take away (as westerner with zero direct Japanese culture exposure) from the comment you’re replying to was that in Japan, companies are incentivized to take on some measure of ownership and voluntary restitution, because there is some legal notion in Japan around “honest mistakes not being litigable if they are genuinely rectified.”
- Aeolun 5y ago
  I think it’s more that legal measures would not be employed, rather than that they are legally unactionable. You could have an uphill battle against an unsympathetic judge in front of you if you sue anyway though.
- gowld 5y ago
  In the US "genuinely rectified" is the standard for civil suit ("actual damages" for negligence, and "specific performance" or monetary equivalent for contracts). Punitive damages are added only for malicious intent. The reason many US companies don't apologize is because they don't want to make restitution, and can get away without paying.

Hello71 5y ago

> In the US, an apology is considered an admission of responsibility and is often the starting point of legal action against the culprit source? this is a popular theory among non-lawyers, but not, as far as I can tell, well-supported by the evidence. http://jaapl.org/content/early/2021/05/19/JAAPL.200107-20 http://jaapl.org/content/early/2021/05/19/JAAPL.200107-20 has extensive citations including for their claim that "In theory, telling a patient about an error may make patients more likely to pursue litigation. In practice, however, bad outcomes alone are typically not reason enough for patients or their families to file malpractice claims."

blacksmith_tb 5y ago
Medicine may not fit the pattern (personally I'd want to know where I stand, even if the news is bad), but I took the OP to be saying "American firms prefer not to go on record saying they screwed up, since that would naturally be brought up in subsequent legal proceedings".

tiahura 5y ago

“In the US, an apology is considered an admission of responsibility and is often the starting point of legal action against the culprit, while in Japan, a sufficiently sincere* apology may well defuse the situation entirely.” ——- “hospital staff and doctors willing to discuss, apologize for and resolve adverse medical events through a “collaborative communication resolution program” experienced a significant decrease in the filing of legal claims, defense costs, liability costs and time required to close cases.” https://www.natlawreview.com/article/you-had-me-i-m-sorry-impact-physicians-apologies-medical-malpractice-litigation?amp https://www.natlawreview.com/article/you-had-me-i-m-sorry-im...

gilmore606 5y ago

I once caused a blank box to appear on Rakuten's homepage for several hours. My boss had to fly to Japan to apologize in person to their CEO.

zhte415 5y ago
I don't know a huge amount about Rakuten. Don't they purposefully adopt a pretty flat communication structure, and the CEO travels around a lot, as well as English demanded in senior roles?
hcknwscommenter 5y ago
Or that is what he used to justify a free (likely business class) flight to JP.
- dfcowell 5y ago
  No, I don’t work for Rakuten, but the in-person apology from an appropriately senior person is hugely important for large Japanese organizations. In my current company I have the opportunity to work with several large Japanese banks. Various members of our C-Suite and senior management travel occasionally for this purpose. A sufficiently sincere apology with the appropriate level of ceremony can be the difference between maintaining and losing a substantial contract.