Japan's Extreme Workplace vs. Sweden's Liberal Flexibility: How Work Culture Shapes The Future Of The Office
In Japan, there is a word for death through overwork, karōshi, given such deaths are not infrequent among workers. In Sweden on the other hand, paid parental leave is 16 months, and the idea of your boss checking on whether you were working hard enough would be severely frowned upon. The two countries represent the two ends of the spectrum when it comes to white-collar office work. We tend to think of office and workplace culture as an inevitable natural state, but Japan and Sweden show how these distinct cultures are forged by centuries of unique cultural, political and military events.