A punishing South Korean work culture is gradually being relaxed
economist.com
economist.com
"Korean women with high levels of education actually have a more difficult time being accommodated in the workforce. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2012, the current ratio of women to men in upper management positions and public office is a meager 1 to 9. At 104th, Korea ranks below some of the world’s least developed countries, such as Burkina Faso, Malawi and Syria."
"Women in Korea make on average 39 percent less than men. This difference in wages ranks Korea bottom amongst peer nations in regards to pay equality."
http://thediplomat.com/2014/05/south-koreas-woeful-workplace...
That culture sounds like it would be extremely damaging to conductive effective business.
Only companies big enough to endure this kind of damage (or smart enough to make sure it doesn't happen) are the ones that make it. If you're running a startup with 3-5 people, and someone is wrong about something, chances are the stakes are much much larger than a 100 person company. As such, you can't afford to have this kind of culture at startup scale, but you can, at large scale, because everyone gets more chances to be wrong (and have the company stay afloat). Then you start thinking about 1,000+, 10,000+, 100,000+ people companies and you can imagine how many small inefficiencies/mistakes like this companies can withstand.
Depending on where you work in the US, there are still managers/bosses that don't like to be contradicted, because of some perception of loss of authority/power/credibility/etc (and most likely some personal insecurity).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Cargo_Flight_8509
In most cultures co-pilots are encouraged to speak out when the pilot has or is about to make a mistake. There were several Korean Air crashes where the co-pilots knew the pilot was wrong and did nothing, in some cases costing them their lives. After recognizing this there was a strong push to change the culture at Korean Air, but I don't know that this was a lesson brought over to other industries.
http://askakorean.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/culturalism-gladwe...
Do the wrong thing that your manager requests and suffer the consequences.
0) There is a problem that needs to be fixed.
1) Boss recommends A
2) Engineer knows A won't work, but they try it anyway
3) A doesn't work, so they stay up late implementing B. (Of course, they wouldn't have had to stay up late had they just been allowed to implement B first...)
4) B works
5) Boss takes the credit
6) After years of making the boss look good, engineer gets promoted
> MEETINGS to last no more than 30 minutes; junior staff allowed to speak freely with superiors; a cut in bonuses for bosses whose teams do not take enough holidays. Since 2012 “Pride”, a handbook, has set a new tone for the internal culture of Hyundai Capital. Departments whose staff work latest into the evening are listed on the firm’s intranet: not to hold them up as models of hard work, but to tell them off for not working efficiently enough.
Noticed something missing? Like, employees taking initiatives or changing something. Instead, "cultural change" is mandated from the top. "You have to be less hierarchical, and here's an employment handbook telling you how to!"
The more things change, the more they stay the same...
When the professor refused to pay my scholarship, I took it up with the international office. The international office had a word with the professor. The professor's "solution" was to fire me, for "disrespecting his authority".
I lost my professor, so I lost my lab. So I lost my university. So I lost my student visa. Suddenly, I had to leave the country.
Korea is my ex-country. We had so much in common, but it's over. The whole culture is judging based on appearance. Cheat in tests, do plastic surgery, copy shamelessly - just get the results, and nobody cares how you got there. Students would typically stay in the lab until 3 am and return at 6 am, if they ever left. Fold-out camping beds were very common. One professor even put a GPS tracker on an international student in his lab "for research purposes". Gender equality is abysmal. Forced after-hours drinking was one part where I actively refused, and I probably only avoided judgment for that because I'm a foreigner.
Contrast that to Taiwan. Hours here (9 am to 7 pm) are longer than Europe (9 am to 5 pm) and holidays are short (8 days per year), but the culture is infinitely better. All opinions may be aired. Elders are respected, but are not considered infallible. Gender equality is excellent in both the corporate world and the rest of society. Stereotypes do exist, but abusive racism is rare. Foreigners are welcomed: I will never be a true local, but it's not a bad thing to be an outsider. The lack of a deep-seated culture makes society more welcoming, as is common in young countries e.g. Canada, New Zealand, Australia, even the US. So in short, while Taiwan and Korea seem to get the same results, in Taiwan, the end does not justify the means, and people here generally do things the right way.
There are endless reasons why societies and economies converge on non-optimal ways of doing things. The market doesn't fix everything.
This seems to be true of all sorts of large, complicated systems. Smith naturally focused on countries, but large organizations like companies and nonprofits can waste resources like this, too. The human body exhibits this behavior, too — imagine how many things that could go wrong with yours that would nevertheless still leave you able to go to work.
Many of the strict changes will likely be from the start-up world that make their way up as they are doing now. However, you're probably right particularly regarding vacation time and time worked. I've worked and have friends working at start-ups that, while are relaxed about other parts of company culture, still remain fairly antiquated when it comes to those topics.