Thursday, February 25, 2010

More commentary on ... Toyota

Check out the great PR observations about Toyota's corporate culture and more:

http://adage.com/globalnews/article?article_id=142277

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Check out #thuglife conversation on Twitter

Here's a link to a great article about the conversations on Twitter, which bring together everybody, perhaps, not just the Twitterati or Twitter elites or early adopters or whatever they are. Maybe the Twitterati are parts of these conversations, but they obviously extend beyond them, and that's the best thing about anything on the internet, when something breaks open and includes everybody.

http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=141994

Almost as interesting as the article are the comments underneath--check 'em out.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Japanese apologies ...

... to help with our analysis of cross-cultural corporate apologies. These links were given to me by one of my co-researchers, Koji Fuse, Ph.D., University of North Texas.

An extremely high-class Japanese restaurant and store chain committed a fraud selling low-quality beef:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVm_FkJfuj8

A Japanese music producer committed a copyright fraud and was convicted:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik3v19SAm5Q

A Japanese comedian’s barbecue restaurant caused food poisoning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhMC-jLch4M

A comedic report on uniquely Japanese apologies with a little bit of academic interpretations:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4wCnShO7hY

(These are all examples of "shazai kaiken" or "apology news conferences," says Dr. Fuse. He elaborates: "A report says that depending on how appropriately you apologize, you’ll gain people’s sympathies or you’ll go down. The report also says that Westerners feel this Japanese practice 'creepy,' because in the Christian world, people apologize to God, not to victims. An interesting interpretation!")