The New Japanese President

The above graph shows GDP growth rate of UK (red line), JPN (green line), and US (purple line as a bench mark for global economy) between 1961 and 2010. In addition, red and green arrows indicate the succession of both Britain's and Japan's prime minister, respectively.

As you can see, the Japanese prime ministers change more frequently than those of UK. According to research on the managerial succession, there are two things regarding top management's changes. One is that poor performance in a firm is more likely to lead a leader to change than good performance. The other is that the more often a manager and CEO in a firm change, the poorer the firm's performance is.

As long as I can see the above graph, I think those facts may apply to this case (though I have not conducted a statistical test to the relationship between the turnover and GDP growth). If the relationship is true, what I expect the new Japanese prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda,  is to be in office as long as possible.

Even as one of the Japanese, I cannot remember the name of the prime minister anymore.

15 things I have still tried to learn

Two months ago (I think)  there was an article on the headline of Yahoo!. I'm not a child, technically...

Photo: Flickr

However, my behaviors are still like a kid sometimes. After finishing reading the article, I counted up how many manners out of 25 I know and carry out. I picked 15 manners from the article as follows (parentheses are my comments):

1. Do not interrupt grown-ups who are speaking with each other unless there is an emergency. They will notice you and respond when they are finished talking. (Sometimes I cannot wait and help but interrupting until someone finishes talking...It's not good, though.)
2. If you do need to get somebody's attention right away, the phrase "excuse me" is the most polite way for you to enter the conversation. (I don't say "excuse me." Well, I suddenly speak or say a hesitation. Just because I didn't know this manner...)
3. When you have any doubt about doing something, ask permission first. It can save you from many hours of grief later. (I see. I forget to ask any permission, and should do it.)
4. The world is not interested in what you dislike. Keep negative opinions to yourself, or between you and your friends, and out of earshot of adults. (I know, but it's very difficult not to utter what I dislike.)
5. When people ask you how you are, tell them and then ask them how they are. (I have to follow this rule next time.)
6. When you have spent time at your friend's house remember to thank his or her parents for having you over and for the good time you had. (I know it's important, but sometimes I don't do that...)
7. When you make a phone call, introduce yourself first and then ask if you can speak with the person you are calling. (It's dependent on situations because now we can know who is calling through the display on a cell phone and phone. But, I should introduce myself first anytime. It's more appropriate way.) 
8. Be appreciative and say "thank you" for any gift you receive. In the age of e-mail, a handwritten thank-you note can have a powerful effect. (Sending a handwritten thank-you latter is a fabulous way to convey our appreciation. My mother always does send a handwritten thank-you letter, but I don't...Really I should.)
9. Never use foul language in front of adults. Grown-ups already know all those words, and they find them boring and unpleasant.
10. Do not make fun of anyone for any reason. Teasing shows others you are weak, and ganging up on someone else is cruel. (OK...But I'm not sure to follow this manner.)
11. Even if a play or an assembly is boring, sit through it quietly and pretend that you are interested. The performers and presenters are doing their best. (Yes...But, pretending is my weak point because I'm naive, honestly(?).)
12. If you bump into somebody, immediately say "Excuse me." (Don't retort, of course.)
13. As you walk through a door, look to see if you can hold it open for someone else. (And, lady first!!)
14. If you come across a parent, a teacher, or a neighbor working on something, ask if you can help. If they say "yes," do so -- you may learn something new. (It's a good way to start a conversation with someone as well.)
15. When an adult asks you for a favor, do it without grumbling and with a smile. (Smile plays a significant role in giving good impression. At least, we shouldn't express Pan Am smile. When we are asked something, we should do it with smile with "crow's-feet," according to a speech by Guy Kawasaki.)

Resolution

A happy new year! How was 2010 for you? For me, it was a wonderful year. A reason for that was that I stayed five countries: Austria, China, Japan, Canada, and U.S.. This was definitely a precious experience for me.

On other hand, I had a lot of regret and failure. But, it is fine because we are able to learn from our own failure and also others', and we will be able to do the better job next time. Jay-Z, who is a famous hip-hop singer, said the same kind of thing in the one of OWN programs. Moreover, he stated that he doesn't know how to learn from success. It is a very difficult problem for us, especially when we would like to sustain our success, although it is totally different between getting and sustaining success as he pointed out. Anyway, we at least want to avoid going on the following situation by learning from our own experience or others'.   

Article: The Seattle Times by Glenn McCoy

 I hope that the situation which is depicted in the above comic strip would never happen to me. So, what is your new year's resolution? A piece of advice from me is that there is no resolution in the toilet!

Enjoy 2011!

Love Thy Neighbor

I'm in NY!
It is a so attractive city. It has a lot of great museums, buildings, shops, parks, foods and musicals.

By kyokke tanaka

Also, I feel that it is very convenient which means easy to find and to go the places. NY city reminds me of a paper of differentiation and agglomeration, Baum and Haveman (1997). In this paper, to use the data of Manhattan hotel industry, both the strategies are using at the same time or either only. Especially, I was interested in being parametrized a variable of agglomeration because  of being based on using a measure as St. and Ave. in NY. St. is a road across east to west, and Ave. is a road across north to south. To use the hotels' address shows how far each of them is located. This stands for how Manhattan is accurately arranged in terms of urban planning. If we lost a way, we could find where we are to look at a traffic sigh and, of course, to listen to a police officer, New-Yorker, or hotel clerks. They are very friendly, kind, and useful. However, fortunately I think we hardly lose a way!

By kyokke tanaka

So, NY is a kind city for travelers!! It is because not only people are very nice, but the city themselves is great!

Who is the Villain/Villainess?

My first blog is about a relationship between Revenge and Scapegoat, both terms are a sociological concept.

Recently I have read The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely. The story of vengeance is introduced the chapter 5 of the book. Especially, I was interested in an experiment of Agents and Principals in the chapter. For instance, when we go to a restaurant, our waitress give us a bad customer service such as spending a lot of time until serving a food. And then, we want to take revenge to her through tipping her a bit less or writing the complaint of the restaurant over the Internet. To decrease the size of tip is vengeance on her, while revenge by using Word-of-mouth is not only for her whom the agent is usually, but also for the restaurant whom the principal is. According to study by Ariely and co-researchers, we tend to seek revenge not to depend on whether the agent or the principal when we want the someone to feel the desire for revenge because they did something to make us get angry.

Next, I will talk about Scapegoat. Seattle Mariners dismissed Don Wakamatsu, manager, due to be miserable team performance, even though some researches show that changing manager during the season is negatively related or not correlated with improving the team performance. Such firing is called Scapegoating in the field of succession study, which deals with how manager or CEO takes over in an organization and a company, and how managerial succession influences on firms. Also, Scapegoating is more likely to be manegers or executives who have less power than more powerful them, according to Boeker (1992). In the case of Mariners, the General Manager who is the principal did not quit, despite a responsibility of the struggling as well as Wakamatsu who is the agent.

Introduced two topics share a common point. It is that we are bad at grasping a causal relationship, and also we prefer passing a blame on to the other people. Accordingly, we often take revenge and scapegoat, which are, I suspect, an instinctive behavior.

Finally, I am going to introduce an example that both revenge and scapegoat are related. Mr. Nozoe, former President of Fujitsu Limited (Fujitsu), was dismissed on September 25, 2009 because of connected with a third-party company that was said to have an unfavorable reputation. In this time, Mr. Nozoe agreed with accepting to be fired, according to a board member of Fujitsu. But, on March 6, 2010 Mr. Nozoe sent a letter about requesting his resignation be nullified to Fujitsu, and then a relationship between him and the company was very threatening. He was about to sue the company for libel, and so far he haven't had a regal fight to them. I think he was scapegoat for a responsibility of having a relationship to a unfavorable company and carrying out too drastic reforms. However, the reason for being dismissed is still unclear. Also, Mr. Nozoe took a revenge to the company by a big report. For this, Fujitsu received to decline a reputation and pay a cost to work out. I still don't know which Mr. Nozoe or Fujitsu said a true thing, and he needed to disclose the issue because of this revenge to the company who is the principal instead of the board members who are the agent. But, Mr. Nozoe seemed to me to be the villain through the series of reports. Which do you think that Mr. Nozoe or Fujitsu is the villain?