Crisis Prevention and Toyota's Corporate Culture

The Economist suggests a connection between Toyota's continuing manufacturing problems and a corporate culture that fails to raise problems because it is overly deferential.  I have separately heard that Asian airplane co-pilots have had to be specifically trained to overcome their traditional cultural deference and challenge the actions of pilots, if warranted, in emergency situations.  Here's an excerpt from article:

Toyota’s problems are its alone, but they highlight broader failings in Japanese corporate governance that make large companies particularly vulnerable to mishandling a crisis in this way. Such firms typically have a rigid system of seniority and hierarchy in which people are reluctant to pass bad news up the chain, thus keeping information from those who need to hear it in a misguided effort to protect them from losing face. In many firms, including Toyota, family ties make challenging the boss all but impossible. Any attempt to short-circuit the hierarchy is deemed an act of disloyalty and a violation of the traditional consensual corporate culture. Groupthink becomes entrenched because there is so little mobility between companies: hiring from outside is thought to disrupt a firm’s internal harmony, and an executive willing to move will be stained as a disloyal “job-hopper”. This further hinders firms’ ability to take bold, decisive action. The preference for harmony crowds out alternative viewpoints.

BGS