SHOP AT THE COMPANY STORE. PLEASE

摘要

As Japan stalls out, some Japanese companies are asking employees to consume where they work. Electronics giant Panasonic kicked off its campaign in February, asking 10,000 midlevel and senior managers to spend at least $1,050 on its products by July 31. At Toyota, bracing for its first annual loss in nearly five decades, 2,200 managers are being encouraged to buy new cars. And tech conglomerate NEC's president, Kaoru Yano, has urged employees to demonstrate their loyalty via their wallets in a message on NEC's internal Web site. It's not a bottom-line tactic. Toyota's selling an extra 2,200 cars-it sold 8.9 million last year-couldn't plug the $3.9 billion loss the company projects for the fiscal year ending in March. But such buy-at-the-office programs create "a real sense of crisis for employees," says Chiaki Nakano, a management professor at Reitaku University near Tokyo. "That's very important in Japan when you are trying to change the company from the inside."