The Impact of Zen Buddhism's World View on Modern Japanese Business Culture

Permanent enhancement and development of the employees, business and organization can be reached by the formation of organizational culture that, in its turn, might be the result of managerial practices’ improvement. However, peculiarities of management practices are influenced by national culture. This statement is particularly acute regarding Japanese companies, which international human resource practices are suggested to be “ethnocentric”. The aim of this research is to determine the influence of cultural aspects of Zen Buddhism on Japanese business model. The hypothesis is that Zen doctrine being adopted from China predetermined formation of business practices that are used in Japanese companies nowadays as well. The analyzes show that cultural specificity of Zen Buddhism reflects strongly on main features of Japanese management culture, defining long-term planning, participative management, trust and interdependence, emphasize on teamwork and cooperation as traditional characteristics of Japanese style management.