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Gung Ho

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Gung Ho (1986) stars Michael Keaton in the role of an American wheeler-dealer who hopes to save his small Pennsylvania town by getting a Japanese automobile manufacturer to buy the town’s biggest employer-a failing automobile assembly factory. He is sent to Japan to convince the Japanese that buying this factory is in mutual interest. The movie is about how the Japanese and American cultures try to work together to successfully run the factory. For the most part, the Japanese management and the American workers cannot manage to get along because of cultural differences.
The Japanese insisted on discipline, company fitness routines, and putting work before family. Keaton gets into a dispute with one Japanese middle manager over the man's unwillingness to stand up to his own uncle to ask for some time off to be with his newly born child. In the United States, people value individual rights whereas Japanese people have priority over the overall good of the group so that their individual. It is believed that Americans show more concern for interests of themselves and their families, rather than others. Therefore the early leave is acceptable within the American companies. However, being part of the group is essential in Japan; therefore, that request for early leave is against the overall good of the team, and slowing down the production. There were examples of differences as obvious as the eating in two separate break rooms. This was a very funny movie. I really enjoyed it, but I also learned a lot from it, too. It’s easy to laugh at the dramatized misunderstandings between the Japanese and the Americans, but these problems really do exist in real life! More and more companies are overseas, it is important for them to understand the culture of the people who will be working there. Not only that but with so many of the telephone customer service lines being overseas

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