The more "useless" Japanese meetings are, the more structurally necessary they are to continue to exist. - 12/30/2025

Abstract

This study explores how "useless meetings" in the Japanese business world are not a bug that leads to inefficiency, but rather function as an extremely rational security system aimed at distributing responsibility, demonstrating loyalty, and ensuring collective self-preservation.

Keywords

Dilution of responsibility: The act of diluting responsibility for failure across all participants rather than concentrating it on a specific individual.

Signaling: Communicating one's abilities and attributes (e.g., loyalty) to others through actions rather than direct words.

Opportunity cost: The benefits that could have been gained from alternative options are lost by choosing a certain course of action.

Why do "never-ending meetings" and "undecided meetings," symbols of inefficiency, persist in the Japanese business world despite calls for improvement? Apart from the organization's superficial purpose (profit-seeking), there exists an extremely cold-hearted rationality aimed at ensuring the survival of individuals. This paper analyzes meetings not as "business" but as a "security system" centered around responsibility and loyalty.

Meetings as Rituals: A Place for "Suppression" Rather than "Decisions"

Meetings are generally thought of as a place to make decisions. However, in many Japanese-style organizations, meetings function as a "ritual" to ensure unanimous approval of already decided matters.

What would happen if we pursued rationality by eliminating meetings and instead made decisions solely through email? At first glance, it might seem like this would reduce travel and time costs and improve productivity. However, there is a huge hidden risk: "responsibility becomes too clear."

Maintaining Meetings = Cost of Delayed Decision-Making + Insurance Premium for Shared Responsibility

For individuals, to avoid the risk of making a mistake due to their own judgment and bearing full responsibility (increasing opportunity cost), it is overwhelmingly the right survival strategy to create the appearance of "unanimous agreement," even if it means wasting a few hours.

"Boredness Tolerance" Measures Organizational Loyalty

Next, there's the question of why silent attendees are tolerated. This stems from the lack of objective measures of individual motivation in today's highly specialized work.

In work where results aren't immediately visible, the easiest way to demonstrate a sense of belonging to an organization is to donate your time. Enduring long, content-poor meetings sends a powerful signal to those around you: "I obey organizational rules and don't disrupt harmony."

Skimming meetings in the pursuit of efficiency means abandoning this "proof of loyalty." As a result, a reverse phenomenon occurs: sitting through meetings is more advantageous for gaining organizational recognition than using the freed-up time to focus on practical work.

The Pressure of "Responsibility" Hidden by Idealism

The idealism of "clarifying the agenda and making decisions quickly" sounds very appealing. However, this decision relies on the nonexistent assumptions of a "culture of tolerance for failure" and "clear job authority."

Many organizations try to reduce meetings for the sake of appearances without these assumptions. As a result, things proceed without clarity on who is responsible, leading to internal conflicts when problems arise, with employees claiming they "weren't heard" or "didn't agree." The resulting repair costs easily exceed the time spent in the meetings.

In other words, today's "useless meetings" function as a minimum failsafe to prevent organizational collapse.

Continuing useless meetings = Organizational status quo bias > Individual reform costs

Conclusion: Inefficiency as a security measure

The reason meetings in Japan persist is because they aren't "work." They are "insurance" to prevent scapegoating in the event of failure, a "ritual" to pledge loyalty to the organization, and a "survival check" for upper management to ensure control over their subordinates.

Dismantling this system will require more "painful" structural changes than simply time-saving techniques, such as a contract culture that legally separates responsibility and the introduction of a ruthless evaluation system that evaluates people solely on results. Unless these are put in place, organizations will continue to buy the security of "useless meetings" in order to preserve themselves.