1) The first crucial problem that the HSBC, also known as Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, task force has to confront within Japan are the language barriers that are present. As a general policy of the corperation, it states that the official medium within the HSBC, is that communication takes place in the English language, which is also a language that is not very familiar with the community of Japan. In order to achieve the goal that involves recruiting bilingual personnel whose tongues remain fluent in both the English and Japanese language, the HSBC bank has to create payment of salaries that are 20 – 40 percent above the said market rate. This will cause a drastic increase within the operation costs within the Japanese branches of HSBC. As it can be quite challenging in the recruiting of bilingual personnel, whose tongues will remain fluent in both the English and Japanese language, who are suitable, whereas, dismissing their services may be even more of a greater challenge to the HSBC. Japan possesses a long history of “lifetime employment”, and this will create much difficulty when situations arise about dismissing personnel due to their incompetence. Time periods will differ with negotiations that may involve asking unwanted personnel to leave HSBC.
Another complication that is arising of the members of the HSBC is the process of slow decision making. The HSBC task force requires accelerating decision making to produce an increasingly impressive amount of profit as soon as possible. Japanese personel spend lengthy hours in the listening, discussing and eliminate on the various problematic issues and debating opinions until they are fully satisfied with the outcome. Their attempts to reach an accurate agreement, instead of setteling the dispute between managers and personel. The events that are occuring within the HSBC, cause the process of designing and implementing aggressive marketing ideas that help expanding of the business extremely time-consuming. What makes things worse is the fact that technical incompatibility in ATM and Internet banking systems renders HSBC's global standardization plan unworkable in Japan. HSBC has its own standard ATM system used in all of its branches all over the world but due to technical restrictions, HSBC is to forced to use the local ATM system, which is found in more than 30,000 convenience stores and post offices in Japan. The same happens for Internet banking services, HSBC is not allowed to use its own Internet business model because it does not fully comply with the protocol and the technical standard used by Japanese telecommunication vendors.
2) HSBC is adopting a polycentric attitude because they are following the requirements and doing whats needed to be done in order to be successful in Japan. They are changing their ways and adapting more of the Japanese way so that they can survive and be successful. They know Japan's restrictions and rules, and they are adapting to that and modifying their work accordingly in order to lead to success.
3) HSBC task force are bringing in a foreign language that is not familiar with Japan, HSBC task foce have a different way of doing things than the Japanese employees. HSBC task force are used to taking fast decisions and get a result whereas, Japanese are used to taking long hours in thinking and coming up with a solution that has very low chance of failing. Its a different way of decision making. Technical differences, HSBC seems to be more advanced than Japan when it comes to ATMs and Internet banking because HSBC had to lower their own standars so that they could meet Japans technical restrictions. HSBC task force and the Japanese employees have completely different cultures but HSBC task force are doing what they can so that they can meet the requirments of Japan and have a successful business.
4) I think HSBC can become a local bank in Japan because they have achieved so much and are very successful that they are called "world's local bank". If they can be the world's local bank, then they can most definetly become a local bank in Japan. They are facing major problems but they can solve these problems, it might take some time but they will manage to pull through. They have been through many many major and critical problems and obviously they have solved them without much failur since they are called "world's local bank" . HSBC will be able to become a local bank in Japan, if not this year then it is next year. They will struggle of course, but they are the "world's local bank", they will handle all the problems and solve them with ease.
5) HSBC should have done many researches to check what are the challenges of Japan, how things are done there, what people like, what are the work restrictions, technical restrictions, the language barrier.
HSBC should have concidered looking into all these aspects before taking a full-scale penetration into Japan's retail banking market. Had they done that, they would have faced small and easy to solve problems rather than major critical problems like they have encountered.