Internal Communication and Employee Engagement

Chapter Twenty-OneRevs Your Heart: How Yamaha Motors Revved Up Its Employees during Corporate Transformation

Masamichi Shimizu and Koichi Yamamura

DOI: 10.4324/9781003195580-31

Introduction

Globalization of business is not an easy task for many Japanese companies. Unlike Anglo-American companies, the de facto global language—English—is not their mother language. Unlike European companies, they are not used to dealing with different cultures and languages in their daily life. This case study illustrates how YMC communicated with its employees, in particular with those in its overseas operations, when the company went through a major transformation in response to the 1997 Asian currency crisis and the 2007–2008 global financial crisis. YMC's ...