The Cultural Impact of Globalization: Korea's Experience and Its Implications

This paper explores the impact of globalization on corporate culture. Korea has recently instituted various reform measures in its corporate structure and labor market, which involve subtle but significant cultural changes. Familism is quite alive in the chaebols governance structure. It also persists among managers and workers employed by core firms, forming a symbiotic relationship with increasingly pervasive individualism. But it seems to havε languished in peripheral firms. These cultural changes are slighted in the Korean discourse on economic reform. It is focused on market mechanisms VS. state interventions and corporate ownership vs. professional management. Social scientists and policy makers have rarely paid attention to the point of production where workers, along with managers, decide productivity under a given production regime. Compared with their American counterpart, core firms of Korea appear to have established a peculiar production regime. They have instituted Fordist production processes, while skipping taylorism and failing to develop work organizations; they resorted to outdated forms of labor control as well as repressions by the state. Korean firms have still remained competitive, owing not just to low wages but to work ethic based on familism. But this production regime is not safeguarded against cultural changes, including the decline of familism, involved in economic reform.이 논문은 2004년도 학술진흥재단의 지원에 의해 연구되었음. (KRF-2004-044-A00001