My first manager was an ex-military crew-chief who was stationed in Japan for a bit.
In his words, "Whatever your job is, you take pride in it and try to do it the best you can every day. If you're a gas station attendant, you try to be the best gas station attendant you can be."
His description obviously stuck with me, as it's a nice summary of a fundamental social bargain: everyone is important and valued, and in exchange everyone will put in effort.
I know everything isn't peaches and roses in Japanese culture and society, but it makes a good point that excellence is pervasive throughout an organization... or not at all.
That's a very western lens still. Hierarchy doesn't mean you view those under you with contempt. The entire concept of a team, on a micro scale, is that it has a leader who is invested in the group's success and people who choose to follow them because they think the leader respects them and can provide the necessary coordination.
Toxic individualism doesn't get things done, nor does it encourage excellence. A hierarchy with mutual respect does, though it must be fair and tempered with reasonable mobility.
I think this was the needle Kant was trying to thread with the categorical imperative.
Hierarchies are efficient and necessary, but ethically dubious and subject to abuse. Ergo, a hierarchy where everyone acts as though their position in it may be randomly swapped at any time is the optimal configuration.
You see the same with Yamaha. Japanese manufactured Yamaha's are a notch above those produced elsewhere in quality. It doesn't really show in the first couple of years but later on the difference becomes more and more pronounced. The resale value of a Japanese made Yamaha piano is much better than the rest as well on account of this.
