The two pictures show a typical japanese office and a typical american office

The diagrams above purport to show the typical layout of two offices, one Japanese and the other American, although given the limitless variation in office design and layout around the world, it appears likely that it is meant to function as a visual metaphor for the perceived differences between Eastern and Western approaches to management.In the Japanese office, there is only one window. In front of it sits the department man-ager, his working area occupying a full third of the available floor space, offering him an uninterrupted view of his workers, labouring together in two separated sections of closely-packed blocks of cubicles, each further overseen by a section manager, who emulates the positioning of the overall manager by placing themselves at the “head” of their respective groups in a clear, pictorial example of East Asia’s power-distance index.

The American office, meanwhile, enjoys two windows on either side. The eastern window stretches across the whole wall, and is shared by the management team — the two section managers occupying offices each half the size of the department manager’s. The workers themselves occupy a “bullpen” in the centre of the office, where workers from one section intermingle with workers from another in a loosely-spaced, but organised configuration that provides personal space and privacy while remaining open. The west wall is again a single window. It is utilised by the communal spaces: two conference rooms, the storage closet and the copier room, wherein gossip is shared.