Englishnization At Rakuten Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

ABSTRACT:
The following case study is about a Japanese group of thecompany (Rakuten Group), its employees and its chairman and CEO (Hiroshi Mikitani). With the rapidly changing world, Mikitani was expecting to cope the change by availing every opportunity available. In his plan of expansion, Mikitani in 2010 decided to strengthen its roots in English speaking countries and on international plains. Unlike most of the countries in the world. Japan has neglected the need for English language and has always prioritized its own language (Japanese) over other languages. Therefore most of the Japanese people, find it difficult to master English language, as there was never much interaction in English or the need to learn the language. Lack of English language was never given much consideration, but Mikitani felt the need to change this part of thecultureatleast within its organization.
Mikitani realized that his expansion plan could not be achieved unless his employees accept the need for learning English. But he also knew that bringing a voluntarily change is not always effective, hence he forcefully started an English learning campaign within his company and threatened the unwillingness or non-hardworking through demotion.
To motivate his employees, Mikitani for the first time gave a speech in English to his 7100 employees in Jan 2010and suggested, more like ordered, to replace every Japanese content within the company with English ones, and set up a time period of 15months to learn and score 650 out of 900 in Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC). But unfortunately, all his efforts could not give expected results. The followingreport evaluates the reasons why expectation was not met and recommends the possible solutions.
Englishnization At Rakuten Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

BARRIERS IN ACCEPTING ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
Though Mikitani’s idea was truly impressive, but the implementation of English on a Japanese culture was considered next to impossible. The project could fail for many reasons, some of which are stated below:
Acceptance by Chinese Culture:
Except for a very little minority who were happy to get the opportunity of learning English, Rakuten’s every employee in Japan was worried about the change. Japan is an Island country and has always kept the local culture including language at the top priority. Japanese culture is no doubt amazing, where people are trained to work hard and are happy working inside the boundary of Japan. This love for country has made them so ignorant of the outside world, that general public does not know or even care about what is happening outside Japan and media has played a vital role in building and maintaining this culture.
It is very unusual for any community to accept big changes in their norms within a small period. Japan is not a good English speaking country and is certainly not expert in such adoptions. According to 2009 TOEFL results, Japan was the second lowest in the whole region. This explains why Rakuten’s employees were resistant to this adoption. Many thought that Mikitani would eventually drop the idea, but with the announcement of thedependence of salary on the scoring of English Test, the thought changed. But the idea of adopting the English Language was still fearful.......

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