Culture, gender and corporate control: Japan as “other”

Abstract

Several diverse strands of accounting research have recently exhibited fascination with issues of power, gender, race, and Japanese culture. Crafting Selves: Power, Gender and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace, by Dorinne Kondo (1990), explores each of these topics and thus provides a rare opportunity to reflect upon the direction of accounting research in these areas. While Kondo does not specifically refer to accounting, this paper utilizes her exploration of the “company as family” idiom and her experience working in a small Japanese factory to challenge the ethnocentric views of Japanese culture and business practice prevalent in many management and accounting texts. In addition, her analysis of power differentials and modes of exclusion according to class, race and gender have significant implications for accounting research, which typically does not recognize the complexity and importance of these issues. Finally, the paper examines Kondo's unusual ethnographic style, in which she immerses herself in her study and emphasizes the complexity, ambiguity, and specificity of anthropological research.