If you read about the Toyota production system and compare it to the ford system you will see a lot of this difference. The Japanes system emphasized human skill while the ford system made humans into monkeys reapeating the same dumb operation over and over.

As a Norwegian I've seen this difference between Scandinavian and American work culture. In the US there tends to be deep levels of management where the people at the bottom have almost no autonomy or power. Yet this is again far worse in many developing countries. There is an excellent piece by an American military officer about why arab armies are so bad. People at the bottom have no decision power.