Free John Higgins Case Study Sample

This case is about the relationships between two executives of Weaver-Yamazaki Pharmaceutical of Japan: Leonard Prescott, vice-president and general manager, and John Higgins, his executive assistant. Weaver-Yamazaki Pharmaceutical is joint subsidiary of the Weaver Pharmaceutical, the parent company. The former one was created in order to produce a part of Weaver’s product line and thus enter the Japanese market.
Though officially the subsidiary was headed by Shozo Suzuki who, as an executive vice president of Yamazaki, he limited his participation to determining basic policies. In fact, the company was managed by Prescott, assisted by Higgins, according to the Weaver’s policy of moving U.S. personnel to its foreign divisions.
Leonard Prescott was an experience international manager with 25-year career at Weaver abroad. John Higgins had served in the army for 5 years where he attended the intensive course in Japanese at the Army Language School as well he served as an interpreter and translator in Tokyo. After his service in the army Higgins finished his studying at college and joined Weaver Pharmaceuticals.
However, these two colleagues had opposite views on U.S. personnel policies in the Japanese operation implementation. Leonard Prescott believed that Japanese were not so dedicated to their customs and traditions so that he found no sense in the company’s copying local customs. He thought that while introducing the U.S. ideas and personal policies in the Japanese operations in particular, the company was making contribution to the Japanese society. Thus, Prescott’s opinion was that the executive should follow the home point of view while understanding his foreign colleagues.
Higgin’s approach, on the contrary, was the opposite one. He thought that an international executive should respect and follow local culture and customs and, thus, respectively treat his foreign colleagues. This becomes evident from his behavior as he had taken many characteristics of a typical Japanese both at personal life and at work. As a result, his colleagues treated him respectively and shared all their requests and complaints.