The Japanese Firm

This book represents an attempt to explain and understand aspects of the firm in the Japanese economic system, and to explain the corporate success of Japan. It is in interdisciplinary in approach, containing both theoretical and empirical work, and has contributions from the fields of labour economics, comparative institutional analysis, information economics, finance, organizational theory, economic history, political science, and sociology.

The Japanese firm as a system of attributes, Aoki; learning and incentive systems in Japanese industry, Koike; different quality paradigms and their implications for organizational learning, Cole; training, productivity and quality control in Japanese multinational companies, Sako; co-ordination between production and distribution in a globalizing network of firms, Asanuma; the evolution of Japan's industrial research and development, Westney; R&D organization in Japanese and American semi-condutor firms, Okimoto and Nishi; SME's, entry barriers, and "strategic alliances", Whittaker; Japanese human resource management for the viewpoint of incentive theory, Itoh; co-ordination, specialization, and incentives in product development organization, Itoh; the economic role of corporate grouping and the main bank system, Hoshi; interlocking shareholdings and corporate governance in Japan; the Japanese firm under the wartime planned economy, Okazaki; equality-efficiency trade-offs - Japanese perceptions and choices, Dore