Travels in the Riel World

As the global financial system tries to right itself after staggering to the brink of collapse, one banking sector finds itself in somewhat better shape than most of the world. That would be the Islamic banking system, which credits its steadiness to practices that are unique to Islamic finance, such as banning interest and shying away from excessive debt and risk. The Washington Post has a story on the topic:

As big Western financial institutions have teetered one after the other in the crisis of recent weeks, another financial sector is gaining new confidence: Islamic banking.

Proponents of the ancient practice, which looks to sharia law for guidance and bans interest and trading in debt, have been promoting Islamic finance as a cure for the global financial meltdown.

This week, Kuwait’s commerce minister, Ahmad Baqer, was quoted as saying that the global crisis will prompt more countries to use Islamic principles in running their economies. U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert M. Kimmet, visiting Jiddah, said experts at his agency have been learning the features of Islamic banking.

Though the trillion-dollar Islamic banking industry faces challenges with the slump in real estate and stock prices, advocates say the system has built-in protection from the kind of runaway collapse that has afflicted so many institutions. For one thing, the use of financial instruments such as derivatives, blamed for the downfall of banking, insurance and investment giants, is banned. So is excessive risk-taking.

“The beauty of Islamic banking and the reason it can be used as a replacement for the current market is that you only promise what you own. Islamic banks are not protected if the economy goes down — they suffer — but you don’t lose your shirt,” said Majed al-Refaie, who heads Bahrain-based Unicorn Investment Bank.

The theological underpinning of Islamic banking is scripture that declares that collection of interest is a form of usury, which is banned in Islam. In the modern world, that translates into an attitude toward money that is different from that found in the West: Money cannot just sit and generate more money. To grow, it must be invested in productive enterprises.

“In Islamic finance you cannot make money out of thin air,” said Amr al-Faisal, a board member of Dar al-Mal al-Islami, a holding company that owns several Islamic banks and financial institutions. “Our dealings have to be tied to actual economic activity, like an asset or a service. You cannot make money off of money. You have to have a building that was actually purchased, a service actually rendered, or a good that was actually sold.”

The United States is renowned for having a culture that rewards risk-taking and innovation. This is so ingrained into the culture that it’s easy to forget it’s actually a somewhat unique trait that is not always so easily replicated elsewhere. Here’s a reminder of that, buried in a NY Times profile of scientist-businessman John Kao.

Before long he had written dozens of the kinds of case studies that are the basis of the school’s teaching and had organized a course on entrepreneurship, creativity and organizations.

Many of his cases were about failures — individuals under pressure, partnerships unraveling, learning through trial and error and so on. Today, Dr. Kao says failure’s relative lack of stigma is “a unique aspect of U.S. culture” that does not exist even in countries like Singapore or Finland, both clients and both, he said, “relatively hip.”

“There’s a saying in Silicon Valley,” he said. “If you haven’t gone bankrupt a couple of times you are not trying hard enough. It’s part of our national advantage.”

What happens when a prominent Thai businessman takes over a British football team that is managed by a Swede? Perhaps a clash of cultures was inevitable.

Regardless of your interest in sports, there is a fascinating recent article in the Financial Times that illuminates many of the cultural differences between Thailand and northern Europe. The story specifically recounts the management issues that arose between Thaksin Shinawatra, former prime minister of Thailand and a wealthy entrepreneur who last year took over the Manchester City Football Club, and Sven-Göran Eriksson, the team’s now former manager. The article includes numerous insights for anyone who works across cultures. An excerpt:

Mr Thaksin … is fond of promoting “modern” business techniques, yet he remains steeped in Thai culture. He tends - like most Thais - to trust family, friends and old associates, above all others. So he placed loyal executives and a son and a daughter on the Manchester City board.

A boss who commands awe and respect in Thailand will also expect to be obeyed in a fashion that Mr Eriksson may have found alien. “Over the centuries, the kings of Thailand have been feared and adored. Thais have grown to expect a leader to demonstrate a blend of authoritarianism and benevolence,” writes Henry Holmes in his book Working with the Thais .

There are arguments among academics about how deferential Thais really are these days, but no one doubts that society is much more hierarchical than in the west. The nuances are complex but, crudely, traditional Thai bosses delegate less and are less inclined to discuss their plans with people outside their inner circle.

“Traditional Thai and western management practices are like night and day,” says Stuart Raj, an expert in cross-cultural management.

The Thai boss is very likely to be a rather paternal figure, who is never “off duty”. Every meeting with subordinates is, in this sense, formal. A senior Thai is expected to consult with his juniors but to have the authority, strength and wisdom to make his own decisions. On the other hand, as a father-figure, he is expected to look after his loyal staff, family and friends…

Mr Eriksson, from conspicuously egalitarian Scandanavia, may not have been comfortable as poodle, as he might have seen it. Once relations had cooled, the Swede would most likely have found himself further outside Mr Thaksin’s circle of favoured advisers and - as wins became rarer - increasingly distrusted.

Any sharp comments Mr Eriksson might have made will have been taken badly. “Thais are extremely sensitive to criticism. Everything is about relationships, so criticism becomes very wounding,” says Somjai Pakapasvivat, a Thai management expert at Chulalongkorn University.

There was an interesting column by Joe Nocera in the New York Times business section a few days ago. It started by looking at the relative lack of MBA-type skills among Chinese managers, but then diverted into an examination of Chinese and Western business cultures and the difficulties that companies have in meshing the two. An excerpt:

When dealing with each other, the Chinese, quite simply, do business differently than Western companies do business. For one thing, there is a lot of petty corruption that is an ingrained part of business, especially among the state-run companies. Purchasing managers favor one vendor over another because they get a kickback. A sales rep buys customer loyalty with under-the-table payments. And so on.

People also tend to put their own interests over the interests of their company — not a huge surprise, given that everyone worked for the state just a generation ago. Middle managers tend not to take much initiative. “Somebody said to me the other day, ‘We are paid to obey,’ ” said one American manager at a Chinese company…

But there are also things that can seem straightforward to a Westerner that are anything but in China. “Take the word ‘accountability,’ ” said Liu Chijin, the chairman of Pan Pacific Management Institution, a management consulting firm he founded in 1999. “It is a natural concept in the West. Here, people know what it means, but it is not in their blood. If you give them an assignment, tomorrow they are likely to tell you that something else came up.”

Finally, there is the gnarliest issue of all: the importance placed on the deep, intertwining set of relationships known as guanxi. Unlike the West, you don’t just have a business relationship in China; you have a relationship that interchangeably mixes the personal with the professional.

“Most Americans would say that we have it as well with the old boys network,” said Mr. Chiang, the marketing professor. “But Chinese intertwine business and personal affairs much more deeply. They do things for their partners even if they are personal affairs. And it is very difficult to disentangle what is institution to institution and what is person to person.” On the one hand, this leads to a sense of deep mutual loyalty. On the other hand, it is at the heart of the petty corruption that is so prevalent.

So, if a Western company wants to utilize the best of its own culture, but also recognize the need to “retain at least some aspects of a Chinese business culture,” what would the end result look like? Matthew McDougall, an Australian who founded a company in Beijing, had this advice:

“We want to be viewed as a Chinese company. We deal with investors in the American way, but we deal with customers in the Chinese way. In the U.S., you talk to customers about your unique selling proposition. In China, you talk to them about schools, your family, your friends in common, and what you can do for them.”

There was an article in the NY Times this week about the challenges and the allure of doing business in emerging markets around the globe. Or, more accurately, “emerging emerging markets.” Buried within the story was a fascinating account of just how business gets transacted in some cultures.

First, the overview of these markets:

Forget Hong Kong, Beijing, Moscow and Mumbai. Intrepid bankers, investors and hedge fund managers are journeying to farther corners to do deals…

Many of the new investment targets are mineral- or oil-rich nations, like Ghana, where high commodity prices are spurring domestic economic growth, the political framework is solid or stabilizing, and doors are opening to foreign investment. Others, like Vietnam, are adopting capitalism and creating industries. Most of these places have large young populations that are moving from rural economies into cities, eager for cellphones and cars.

Some investors and deal-makers call them “frontier” markets, but there are plenty of other names for these nations. A Merrill Lynch analyst refers to them as “emerging emerging” markets, while Goldman Sachs focuses on the N-11, or Next 11, developing countries.

And, for our purpose of understanding cultures, here is a description of a business meeting in Saudi Arabia in which the actual business was transacted at the very last moment - literally on the way out the door, and only after the necessary relationship-building was accomplished.

Bassam Yammine, a managing director and co-chief executive of the Middle East at Credit Suisse, recently took a colleague from the bank’s London office to see a client in Saudi Arabia. He noticed his guest’s discomfort when, 40 minutes into the meeting, Mr. Yammine, a 40-year-old Lebanese banker, and the client were still chatting about politics and the weather. His colleague shot him a panicked look when everyone got up to leave, still not having mentioned business deals. Halfway out the door, Mr. Yammine turned around, quickly discussed the deal and he and his colleague left the meeting with a check.

“In this part of the world, that’s how you do business,” said Mr. Yammine, who spends his time in Riyadh or Dubai and traveling the region. “Relationships are an important factor in clients’ decisions.”

For more of an understanding of the work culture of this region of the world, check out Margaret Nydell’s book, Understanding Arabs.

Cultural lessons also apply to the military, as evidenced by this interesting piece in Newsweek, which shows how one soldier took cultural lessons learned as a youngster in Peru and applied them to some of his dealings with locals in Iraq. 

For Capt. Jim Marckwardt, coming to Iraq in 2005 was like being a kid again. Blackouts, water shortages, car bombs and guerrilla shoot-outs—just like his middle-school years in Peru, where his father worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development in the 1980s. Even the people seemed familiar. He was good at bargaining with Iraqi contractors.

“In the U.S., you sit down and negotiate directly,” Marckwardt says. “In Iraq you have to build more relationships. It’s very similar to the Peruvian way of doing business.” He also recognized the sense of honor that drives many Iraqis—another echo of his childhood in Latin America—and has used it to his and his men’s advantage.

Now that corporations recognize not only the benefits of international experience but also a real need for managers to have a broad global perspective, a wide array of programs are popping into existence in order to meet these training needs. One of the more interesting programs that I’ve heard about was just profiled in the NY Times. IBM is actually sending budding managers abroad to work as volunteers in various business-related projects.

In July, a team of 8 to 10 I.B.M. employees will travel to Ghana to help tiny businesses make their operations more professional. Another team will help entrepreneurs seek microloans in Turkey, while yet another will create training programs on information technology in Vietnam.

The projects, which were devised by I.B.M.’s citizenship group and are being coordinated through nonprofit organizations, have all the trappings of corporate philanthropy. But that is not why they were created, or how they are being used.

“This is a management development exercise for high-potential people at I.B.M.,” said Randy MacDonald, senior vice president for human resources.

What does I.B.M. hope to gain from sending these employees on volunteer missions abroad? Quite a lot, actually.

“As a development tool, this is a four-for-one,” said Allan R. Cohen, dean of the Olin Graduate School at Babson College, near Boston. “It’s stretching to work in another culture, to work in a nonprofit where the measurement of accomplishment isn’t clear, to take a sabbatical from your everyday routine and to learn to accomplish things when you can’t just bark orders.”

Indeed, Paul Ingram, a management professor at the Columbia Business School, is planning a similar program for this fall, in which executives attending the school’s Senior Executive Program will work with nonprofit groups in New York. Because 80 percent of the students are not from the United States, the New York location is outside their comfort zone.

“The fact that you are an excellent programmer or salesman, or can lead a project in your own area and culture, doesn’t mean you can be a great leader outside of your technical or cultural expertise,” he said.

That is I.B.M.’s logic as well. The company views the Service Corps as a way to learn how well employees work with strangers, in strange lands, on unfamiliar projects.

It’s always a challenge for an individual to fit into the work culture of a new country. The NY Times recently profiled Heidi Manheimer and asked about her experiences as an American working for the Japanese cosmetics company Shiseido. Here is some of what she had to say:

Shiseido is a large, old, conservative Japanese company that still offers lifetime employment. People joining it often shift positions every three years. They might run fragrance marketing and then become general manager of one of the company’s restaurants. (Restaurants are another company business.)

When I started, it felt like being in a traffic jam. To manage projects, I had to learn who was last to serve in a position and who was coming to that job next. I knew where I needed to go but I wasn’t quite sure how to get there.

I was used to having meetings to make decisions. I had to learn when things get done in Japan. You get information in meetings, but the important decisions are made in sidebar conversations, during coffee in the hallway, over dinner at night, or at karaoke. In the beginning, I skipped dinner and karaoke often because I was so exhausted, but not after I learned that’s where things get done.

There was just a three-part series about Russia in the Christian Science Monitor. It focused on the young people who are part of what has been dubbed the “Putin Generation” - those who have come of age in a Russia that is more stable and prosperous, but still tightly-controlled politically and beset by corruption in business.

The whole series is worth a read, but there were some interesting cultural points in the second article, which focused on a young woman who has struggled to establish herself as a new business owner. The story points out the opportunities of the new Russia, but also the country’s inability so far to break free of some of the stifling practices of the past. An excerpt:

Yulia Barabasheva never wanted to have her own beauty salon…But with a dream of securing a steadier income and starting a family, she opened her unmarked brown metal door to the public in April last year.

It took the help of her husband, Igor Barabashev, a businessman, to get $180,000 in start-up loans and complete a six-month slog through Russia’s formidable bureaucracy to obtain a license. Now, she and her staff of 14 take clients up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week, giving them thinner eyebrows or 5-inch nails.

At 25, Barabasheva is politically unengaged, like many of her “Putin generation.” But she enjoys a rising prosperity, which Russians typically chalk up to President Vladimir Putin. Serving that new wealth has opened the door to opportunities that would have been unheard of for average Russians just a decade ago. But even as Mr. Putin’s Russia allows ever greater numbers of people, like Barabasheva, to move up the economic ladder, it demands a scrappy persistence to battle red tape and corruption while trying to get ahead…

That shift toward broader prosperity, especially in Moscow, has been dramatic. In his first five years in office, Putin brought the poverty rate of his countrymen down to about 16 percent, according to the World Bank…Official figures put the middle class at about 20 percent of the population…

But the backstage of business in Putin’s Russia is much messier, according to Barabasheva and other entrepreneurs. “The state structure is quite complicated, quite corrupted, and it requires a lot of financial investment and emotional investment,” she says.

In a recent speech, Putin acknowledged such challenges. “To this day, it’s impossible to start a business within months,” he said, laying out his vision for Russia through 2020. “You have to go to every office with a bribe: firefighters, hospital orderlies, gynecologists, you name it. It’s just a nightmare.”

Here’s an interesting confluence of religion and business - the Dow Jones Dharma for faith-based investing. Business Week has the story.

Back in India, a new generation of gurus is promoting the latest thing to hit the Indian stock market: values investing. Not to be confused with Warren Buffett-style value investing, values-based investing draws on the principles of Indian religions such as Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Buddhism. Last month Dow Jones launched the faith-based Dow Jones Dharma indices, which measure the performance of 254 companies that have characteristics like good governance and environmental friendliness in common.

Letters are pouring in to support the new group of five indices. They are not your typical congratulatory notes, but blessings and endorsements from assorted Indian spiritual leaders and scholars. “May the maximum number of investors utilize it, and thus globally advance core Hindu values,” writes Shastri Narayanswarupdas, a religious leader from Ahmedabad in western India. Writes another: “Trust is the breath of business, ethics its limbs, to uplift the spirit its goal.” …

The dharma-compliant stocks, according to Gor, are those that adhere to the precepts relevant to good conduct. They include opposition to animal slaughter, support of the environment, and adherence to good corporate governance. Assorted temples, scholars, and academicians support the idea…

There’s no shortage of companies that adhere to these Dharma principals. Already, in India, Dow Jones has compiled a list of 254 companies that are dharma-compliant.

Business schools in China are growing by leaps and bounds, with more programs and a significant increase in the number of international students, according to this article in Business Week. The expatriate students are there to gain a better understanding of the Chinese business world, which they gain not only with on-the-ground experience in the country but also with academic programs that focus on integrating the unique culture of China with Western business thought.

In a course on competition strategy at BiMBA (Beijing International MBA), readings include Sun Tsu’s The Art of War and cases on military battles drawn from ancient and modern Chinese history. “We are integrating Chinese philosophy and realities with Western management theories,” says BiMBA’s U.S. dean John Yang.

Perhaps no school has gone as far as Cheung Kong GSB, which runs its MBA program from a 70-year-old villa in Shanghai. Courses range from the globalization of Chinese companies to Confucian humanism. While its faculty is drawn from top universities worldwide, the majority of professors are of Chinese origin.

One of them is Zheng Yusheng, associate dean and a professor of operations management. After spending 20 years in the U.S. and becoming the first tenured Chinese professor at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, he returned to the mainland in 2002 to help set up the school.

His understanding of both Western and Chinese business cultures has made a mark on the MBA program. “In the U.S. there is almost no manufacturing, so what we teach there is how to manage retailers,” he notes. “China is a center of manufacturing, so we focus on manufacturing here. I say: You need to produce the right product, at the right time, for the right customers. That’s exactly what we have been doing.”

The world of the business expatriate is not what it was a decade or two ago. The destinations are different, the cultural challenges have changed, and new business skills are needed for success abroad. That’s the opinion, at least, of this interesting article in Time magazine, which focuses especially on executives who work in China and India.

The expat gig used to be a cushy one for U.S. executives of a certain level: jet into Tokyo or Paris, tuck family into American schools and clubs, slide into fully established local office as the bigwig from headquarters. It was more of an exotic detour for loyal lifetimers than a slingshot into directorship for the young and ambitious–but who cared?

Somewhere, perhaps in Tokyo or Paris, that old-timey expatriate still sips his midday martini at the foreigners’ club. But in the rough-and-tumble markets of China and India, a new generation of expats–they prefer “global executives,” thank you–haven’t yet had a chance to sign up for membership. They’re too busy chasing local talent, adapting to a wildly different culture and riding phenomenal growth in markets vital to their companies’ futures…

The U.S. expat population has leaped over the past five years, according to experts, in large part because of growing delegations to China and India. And yet the two emerging giants remain famously tough for Western executives to navigate. In a 2006 survey by GMAC Global Relocation Services, they are cited among the three most difficult locations for expats (the third is Russia). Corporations are learning that these 21st century markets require a new kind of expat.

What are some of the cultural and business challenges now faced by expat executives in these Asian nations?

The right leader in China and India, for many companies, is someone with the drive and creativity to manage what often feels like a start-up. The highest hurdle is usually building a local workforce from the ground up in savagely competitive labor markets…

In India, Leonhardt has to wage a full-court recruiting press. Candidates might receive dozens of offers, accept them all–then simply show up at the one that’s most appealing. Leonhardt estimates that as many as 3 in 10 accepted hires are no-shows on the first day of work. “It’s pretty frustrating, as you can imagine,” he says.

Employers there thus use what’s called a keep-warm strategy, in which newly approved hires are plied with informational packets, calls from executives and even small gifts for their parents … before their first day of work. Appealing to workers’ filial loyalty is so critical in India that some employers fly parents to headquarters for visits, and at least one is said to offer parents free Internet service. Target competes by offering health insurance to workers’ parents.

Once a team is in place, expat bosses often have to reinvent themselves as managers. Lin Chase, 44, arrived in Bangalore in January 2006 to head Accenture’s research and development lab. “I come from a culture where people love a plan,” she says. “The plan is God.” Not in India. She would step away from meetings confident that a plan was in place and wait for its execution. And wait. And wait. “It happened so many times that finally I changed my whole style,” says Chase. “I talk to my team every day, ask them how it’s going. I spend a huge proportion of time chasing people for commitments they made to me, but now I see it less as chasing than as a relationship.”

In the Japanese culture, loyalty and conformity have long been valued traits. This is especially true in the relationship between workers and employers, where nonconformity has long been frowned upon. In recent years, though, Japan has seen the emergence of a new phenomenon - the whistleblower. According to a story in the Christian Science Monitor:

It’s not easy for an individual to call attention to illegal or unethical behavior in the workplace in any culture. But in Japan, where conformity is seen as a virtue, it can be especially difficult.

When officer Toshiro Semba revealed that his bosses in the police department were forging receipts in order to wine and dine on the public’s money, they took his gun away. He was decreed too emotionally unstable to carry a weapon – a humiliation, he says, designed to corner him into quitting. For 500 days, he was ordered to sit alone in a tiny room at the Ehime Prefectural Police…

Whistle-blowers like Semba have been especially solitary in Japan, where conformity and respect for hierarchy are venerated as tradition. They have been labeled as traitors. But that attitude is gradually changing. As Japan modernizes, people increasingly see themselves as individuals and consumers, with a duty to speak up against wrongdoing…

Whistle-blowers have been rare because Japanese companies, even major ones, are run like families, and individual workers don’t see themselves as hired by contract as do American workers, says Koji Igata, business administration professor at Osaka University of Economics. “Whistle-blowers are seen as eccentrics who’ve turned on their parents,” he says. 

The term guanxi refers to the time-honored way of doing business in China by cultivating relationships. Anyone who works in China or with a Chinese company eventually has to learn about guanxi.  This week, Business Week magazine has an article about the practice of building relationships with the Chinese and discusses not only the traditional meaning of guanxi but also more contemporary ways of networking in China.

Loosely translated, guanxi means “connections” and, as any China veteran will tell you, it is the key to everything: securing a business license, landing a distribution deal, even finding that coveted colonial villa in Shanghai. Fortunes have been made and lost based on whether the seeker has good or bad guanxi, and in most cases a positive outcome has meant knowing the right government official, a relationship nurtured over epic banquets and gallons of XO brandy.

Now, like so many things in China, the old notion of guanxi is starting to make room for the new. Businesspeople—local and foreign—are tapping into emerging networks that revolve around shared work experiences or taking business classes together. Networking that once happened in private rooms at chichi restaurants now goes on in plain view—at wine-tastings for the nouveau riche, say, or at Davos-style confabs such as the annual China Entrepreneurs Forum held annually at China’s Yabuli ski resort.

Can the ancient Indian philosophy of Vedanta be of help to high-powered modern businesspeople? Many seem to think so, at least according to this Time magazine article about Swami Parthasarathy, an 80-year-old spiritual teacher from India who has been making a living and a name for himself as a business consultant.

An excerpt from the story:

The private dining room in Manhattan’s timelessly tony 21 Club is packed with more than 60 CEOs, corporate presidents and managing partners. They represent a cross section of mostly midsize New York City-area businesses. There’s a biotech exec from Manhattan, an aerospace guy from Long Island, the head of a jewelry firm in New Jersey, a manufacturer of architectural lighting–all of them members of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), an international fraternity of business leaders who have won their corner offices by age 45.

This group of BlackBerry-wielding overachievers has filled every seat to hear from a man who will let them know that, despite the title on their business cards, they are functioning at less than full throttle, distracted by needless anxiety and basically missing the boat on their voyage through life. He’s a man who adds new meaning to the phrase business guru: 80-year-old Swami Parthasarathy.

Parthasarathy … has been traveling the globe for 35 years, speaking to business people–including at such bastions of commerce as Wharton, Kellogg and Harvard business schools–luring them with assertions about learning to improve concentration and productivity, eliminate stress and develop their intellectual discipline and overall well-being. His message derives from his lifelong study of the ancient system of philosophy called Vedanta, the focus of a nonprofit academy he established 19 years ago outside Mumbai…

Swamiji’s message, delivered in part via that transcendental software, PowerPoint, and some well-placed jokes, is that stress is not a function of external demands–the number of employees and dollars to manage, e-mails to answer, strategic plans to complete or loved ones to placate. Stress is internal, he insists. Make a rational assessment of your situation with all its requirements and flaws–consider, for instance, the past behavior of your customers, your colleagues, your spouse–adjust your expectations accordingly, and the stress will vanish…

Such equanimity might appear to be incompatible with soaring professional ambition, but he disagrees. Parthasarathy, who studied international law at University College, London, tells the room that he starts his day at 4 a.m. and ends it at 9:30 p.m., never needing a break or vacation, though with plenty of time to maintain his health with yoga and cricket.

“You believe work tires you? Work can never tire you!” he scolds. “What tires you are your worries about the past and anxiety for the future.” The undisciplined mind, he says, too easily slips into the past and future, veering toward likes and dislikes that prevent you from staying focused on your present objectives.

Despite other changes in Japanese society, women who pursue a career path in Japan still battle ingrained cultural traditions that make it difficult for them to advance on the job, according to this International Herald Tribune story.

Yukako Kurose joined the work force in 1986, a year after Japan passed its first equal opportunity law. Like other career-minded young women, she hoped the law would open doors. But her promising career at a department-store corporate office ended 15 years ago when she had a baby.

She was passed over for promotions after she started leaving work before 6:30 each evening to pick up her daughter from day care. Then, she was pushed into a dead-end clerical job. Finally, she quit.

“Japanese work customs make it almost impossible for women to have both a family and a career,” said Kurose, 45, who now works for a polyester company.

Although discrimination may be responsible for part of this problem, most observers say the bigger issue is a demanding Japanese work culture that makes few allowances for family responsibilities.

Experts on women’s issues say outright prejudice is only part of Japan’s problem. An even bigger barrier to the advancement of women is the nation’s notoriously demanding corporate culture, particularly its expectation of morning-to-midnight work hours.

Government statistics show that many women drop out of management-track jobs when they reach their late 20s and early 30s and start having children. As Japan’s birthrate rapidly declines and its population ages, there are growing concerns that Japan can ill afford to lose so much potential.

“If expected to work 15 hours a day, then most women will give up,” said Kuniko Inoguchi, a former cabinet minister in charge of gender equality. “Japan is losing half of its brainpower as it faces a labor shortage.”

That’s the question posed in this recent article in the International Herald Tribune, which in turn quotes from a debate taking place among some French leaders.

France is the country that produced the Enlightenment, Descartes’s one-liner, “I think, therefore I am,” and the solemn pontifications of Jean-Paul Sartre and other celebrity philosophers. But in the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy, thinking has lost its cachet.

In proposing a tax-cut law last week, Finance Minister Christine Lagarde bluntly advised the French people to abandon their “old national habit.”

“France is a country that thinks,” she told the National Assembly. “There is hardly an ideology that we haven’t turned into a theory. We have in our libraries enough to talk about for centuries to come. This is why I would like to tell you: Enough thinking, already. Roll up your sleeves.”

Needless to say, not everyone agrees.

But the disdain for reflection may be going a bit too far. It certainly has set the French intellectual class on edge.

“How absurd to say we should think less!” said Alain Finkielkraut, the philosopher, writer, professor and radio show host. “If you have the chance to consecrate your life to thinking, you work all the time, even in your sleep. Thinking requires setbacks, suffering, a lot of sweat.”

Bernard-Henri Lévy, the much more splashy philosopher-journalist who wrote a book retracing Tocqueville’s 19th-century travels throughout the United States, is similarly appalled by Lagarde’s comments.

“This is the sort of thing you can hear in café conversations from morons who drink too much,” said Lévy, who is so well-known in French that he is known simply by his initials BHL “To my knowledge this is the first time in modern French history that a minister dares to utter such phrases. I’m pro-American and pro-market, so I could have voted for Nicolas Sarkozy, but this anti-intellectual tendency is one of the reasons that I did not.”

Of course, perhaps the real lesson is here isn’t whether to think or not to think. What’s more interesting, from a cultural perspective at least, is that the French have found a way to think and debate about whether they should be thinking and debating.