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Essay on Gung-Ho Movie and Hofstede

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GUNG-HO Gung-Ho is a movie about the takeover of an American automobile factory in Hadleyville, Pennsylvania by a Japanese company. The term Gung Ho is a Chinese expression for “work together” which is what the movie is about. As the Americans and Japanese attempt to work together the viewers are able to see the cross-cultural conflicts and huge misunderstandings that happen throughout the movie because of the differences in culture, work attitude, management styles, and values between the two countries. The movie also goes on to show us exactly what the two countries think of each other. All of this is brought to you in a very funny and forgiving way where we see at the end of the movie the two sides come together and achieve a …show more content…

His American boss thinks that this is fine but the Japanese boss says no because “work will suffer”. This shows you how different countries see things. The Americans think of family concern over the concern of the company, whereas the Japanese think that being part of a group is a must and so not working because of your son going to the doctor is not something you should do, This brings us right to collectivism. Collectivism is doing something not just for yourself but for the good of everyone involved. It has nothing to do with the individual and everything to do with the overall group’s success. This is what the Japanese value highly. They always reinforce this throughout the movie about how they will do whatever it takes for the company to do good. One of many examples of this is when the Japanese show up to play the softball game. Before the game starts you see the Japanese team working together and participating in a team warm up. The Americans make fun of this and think of it as something that makes them weaker. When the game starts you are able to see exactly how this hurts the Americans. The Japanese play a “small ball” game and worry about getting runners on base and relying on everyone working together to get runs on the board. The Americans, who are less team oriented, try to do everything themselves and try to hit the ball as far and hard as they can every time they come up to bat.

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