To take a pay freeze when you're earning $12m a year like the boss of Intel, or $5m a year if you're a senior Intel exec, might seem like a meaningful gesture, but the directors of Japan's Sharp Electronics are said have agreed to a pay cut of up to 50 per cent.
Sharp has recorded its first loss for 50 years - a $1.3 billion loss for the financial year to the end of March 31 2009. Sharp blamed: "Faltering consumption, harsh price competition and inventory cutbacks." The strong Yen has also eroded revenues.
To take a 50 per cent pay cut and forgo all bonuses, as the Sharp bosses have agreed to do, shows a very Japanese sense of contrition that their management efforts have not resulted in a better outcome, and a typical wish to be seen to share in the pain of the whole company and particularly in the pain of the 1,500 contract workers being laid off.
That is very different from the attitude of Western bosses. The contrasts between Japan and America were highlighted back in the early '90s when it seemed that Japanese industry could do no wrong, and their business model was being held up to the world as the one to follow.
When it was pointed out to one Wall Street exec that, in Japan, the top boss never earned more than thirty times the worst paid person in the company, the Wall Street-er groaned: "Behold - the million dollar a year doorman."
TOMORROW MORNING: THE 1975 SEMICONDUCTOR TOP TEN (as MOS and the Japanese start to affect the rankings)
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