Conflict Management and Negotiation, Case 8 Sick Leave
Kelly, Mark and Suzanne -- two Canadians and a British citizens, respectively -- are working as Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) within the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (JET) in Soto, Japan. In an effort to improve the English education standards used in Japanese schools, the national government designed the JET program to facilitate the exchange of English teachers from international locales. Government agencies and other educational experts believed that the process of exchanging teachers would serve to further the growing commitment to internalization on the municipal level, emphasizing the value of English-language competency for Japanese citizens and government workers. In order to properly address the instance of workplace issues or complaints from its ALTs, the JET program allowed for a process of resolution mediated by the Conference of Local Authorities for International Relations (CLAIR). Although the CLAIR program was intended to be proactive in nature, its standards were only applicable if the host institution remained unable to resolve the conflict through independent means. Case study 8 thus examines the occurrence of several conflicts between Japanese authorities and its contingent of foreign workers teaching English as ALTs.
Although the dilemma faced by Kelly and her fellow ALTs would appear to be a fairly standard case of supervisor overreach in Western culture -- with a third-party mediator becoming involved to delineate the exact boundaries of a superior's authority over his or her subordinates -- the cross-cultural implications of this case warrant...
In
Canada, America or England, workers ascribe tremendous value to their sick or
personal days, viewing this system as an
exercise in their fundamental sense of independence, but in Japanese culture the situation is reversed. Rather than search for ways to take time off of work, the typical Japanese worker willingly sacrifices sick days and Saturdays as an extension of the culture's prioritization of loyalty and obedience. This cultural divide is
informative in explaining Mr. Higashi's unwillingness to believe the story put forth by his three subordinates, which consists of all three workers falling ill with the flu simultaneously, because his Japanese upbringing and heritage simply do not reconcile with what he perceives to be disloyal actions to defraud the JET program in the form of
compensation for unwarranted sick days. Furthermore, the patriarchal attitude which is still dominant in Japanese society leaves Mr. Higashi to fully expect that his mandates will be followed, and when the ALTs under his supervision (two of which are women) fail to show up for work on the same day, his suspicion and subsequent assessment of punitive action is based as much on their gender as on their status as foreigners. Finally, Kelly must consider the concept of face (honor) as it exists in Japanese culture, because although bypassing a superior to lodge a complaint is accepted practice in Western workplaces, seeking redress with CLAIR in this
scenario would represent a breach of etiquette, humiliating Mr. Higashi on…
