Sushi Culture And Jiro’s Leadership Style: A Comparison Of Cultural Differences

The Cultural Differences Between Sushi Culture in Japan and the USA

1. The motivation theories that could be seen in this film is goal setting and expectancy. Jiro Ono who is 91 years old is considered to be the greatest master chef in the history. The film Jiro Dreams of Sushi depicts the life of Jiro Ono, the skills that he possesses and the future of sushi. The experts of sushi comprise of the theories such as goal setting and expectancy that has been followed by Jiro and the experts. The film depicts the adaption of the theory of GOAT (Greatest of all time) as it determines itself to be the greatest among others (Pan et al. 7). It can be seen in the film that the experts of Sushi do not believe that the son of Jiro could be as great as his father due to his bias. As per their theory if Jiro’s son works as good as his father then he will be considered better than his father. Jiro is always focused on setting a goal to achieve the target and expects higher from the members of Sushi.

2. The Sushi culture is different from the motivation culture of USA. Despite Sushi’s progress in the USA it fundamentally remains different than in Japan. It is because the Sushi meals originated in Japan now is considered to be an American meal. In most of the places in Japan considers themselves as sushi bars of American style and it is the same with Japan (Moscato 187). The changes related to the cultural differences that must be made in the USA are the change in the attitude of the Americans based on religion. The Americans need to be more formal, must be nationalistic rather than political. The people in America should be more subtle instead of blunt and direct. They must give importance to the social hierarchy and should possess collectivist culture.

3. From the film, it is observed that Jiro is a good leader as his motivation theories and leadership style are unique and different from others. The film is an inspiration for most of the leaders and people as Jiro is committed, dedicated and disciplined towards his work. These qualities bring success to him by gaining more selling and profit. However, he is rigorous or strict but his leadership style inspires his employees to strive better and work harder to achieve success. In the end, he gives the entire credit to his team for the success they achieved. As per Jiro, his job is easy as his team is very efficient and does all the hard work. But as a leader, his job is the most difficult one to guide all the employees to do better. It can be seen that he is very passionate about his work which makes him different from others.

References:

Moscato, Derek. “Cultural congruency in mediated gastrodiplomacy: a qualitative framing analysis of the US–Japan Sushi Summit.” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy14.3 (2018): 187-196.

Pan, Tze-Jen, and Tzung-Cheng Huan. “It is not about Compensation: Resolving Customer Complaints in Hospitality Management.” Trade Tales: Decoding Customers’ Stories. Emerald Publishing Limited, 2017. 7-13.