Differences in Perceived Levels of Informal Punishments for Noncompliance and Rewards for Compliance: A Comparison of Japanese and American Workers

Abstract

The current article integrates differential association/social learning theory into Grasmick's extended deterrence theory to propose that rational actors, in deciding whether or not to comply with workplace rules, should be expected to consider not only costs of noncompliance but also rewards of compliance. The cultural differences in perceived levels of informal punishment threats of shame and embarrassment for the rule violations and informal rewards of pride and praise for the rule conformity are then examined in merged samples of employees in Japanese and U.S. hospitals. Consistent with the prediction, these punishment threats and rewards are perceived to be higher and lower, respectively, among Japanese employees than among Americans.

Acknowledgments

We thank Harold G. Grasmick for his comments on earlier versions of the article.

Notes

¹For each of the three offenses, the two punishment threats for noncompliance, as well as the two rewards for compliance, are also positively correlated. The correlations range from a low of +.539 for the threats of shame and embarrassment for coming to work late or leaving early to a high of +.651 for the rewards of pride and praise for not using sick leave. All six of these correlations are significant beyond the .001 level.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emiko Kobayashi

EMIKO KOBAYASHI is an Associate Professor of Foreign Language Institute at Kanazawa University, Japan. She received her Ph.D. in communication from the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests include intercultural communication, cross-cultural psychology, and comparative sociology of deviant behavior, with a particular emphasis on comparisons between Japan and the United States.

Harold R. Kerbo

HAROLD R. KERBO has been a professor of sociology at Cal Poly since 1977. He has been a Fulbright professor in Japan, Thailand, and Austria, and a visiting professor in Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Thailand, and Japan. From June 2006 to August 2007, Professor Kerbo was the recipient of an Abe Fellowship to conduct fieldwork on poverty and poverty programs in Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. He has recently finished the first manuscript from this fieldwork titled The Tragedy of Cambodian Poverty: From the Killing Fields to the 21st Century. Professor Kerbo has published several books and numerous articles on the subjects of social stratification, comparative societies, and economic development and world poverty. He is the author of a basic sociology text book, Sociology: Social Structure and Social Conflict (MacMillan, 1989) and most importantly the author of the nation's leading textbook on social stratification (Social Stratification and Inequality, published by McGraw-Hill, now in its 7th edition, recently translated into Spanish, and currently being translated into Russian). Along with John A. McKinstry, he is the author of Who Rules Japan?: The Inner-Circles of Economic and Political Power (Greenwood/Praeger, 1995). Professor Kerbo is creator and general editor of the McGraw-Hill Comparative Societies Series, which includes books on 11 countries. The first volume, Modern Japan (by Harold Kerbo and John McKinstry) was published in 1998. He has also coauthored the volumes Modern Germany, with Professor Hermann Strasser at the University of Duisburg, Germany, and Modern Thailand, with Robert Slagter, both of which were published in 2000. Professor Kerbo is also the second author of the widely used text Social Problems now in its 10th edition (first author James Coleman, Prentice-Hall, 2008). His latest book, World Poverty: Global Inequality and the Modern World System was published by McGraw-Hill in 2006.