Akio Morita Quotes

In all my years in business I can recall very few people I have wanted to fire for making mistakes.

The important thing in my view is not to pin the blame for a mistake on somebody, but rather to find out what caused the mistake.

I have always made it a point to know our employees, to visit every facility of our company, and to try to meet and know every single employee.

I believe one of the reasons we went through such a remarkable growth period was that we had this atmosphere of free discussion.

...I established the rule that once we hire an employee, his school records are a matter of the past and are no longer used to evaluate his work or decide on his promotion.

We want to keep the company healthy and its employees happy, and we want to keep them on the job and productive.

The investor and the employee are in the same position, but sometimes the employee is more important, because he will be there a long time whereas an investor will often get in and out on a whim in order to make a profit.

What we in industry learned in dealing with people is that people do not work just for money and that if you are trying to motivate, money is not the most effective tool.

The concept of lifetime employment arose when Japanese managers and employees both realized that they had much in common and that they had to make some long-range plans.

'There is a major difference between you and me,' I told him. 'Yes, I am rich. But you are wealthy. And that is why you can buy such (expensive jewelry (for your wife and why I cannot.'

The effect of three things - the new laws, the revision of the tax system, and the elimination of the zaibatsu conglomerates - was to make Japan an egalitarian society for the first time.

The most important mission for a Japanese manager is to develop a healthy relationship with his employees, to create a familylike feeling within the corporation, a feeling that employees and managers share the same fate.

There is no secret ingredient or hidden formula responsible for the success of the best Japanese companies.

A company will get nowhere if all of the thinking is left to management.

Executives of the company must have the necessary qualities to direct the personnel by showing them the way to do things.