Japanese-Style Management in America

For the origins of this story, see Dore R. P. , “Problems of Learning from a Diagonal Society,” in The Japanese Challenge and the American Response: A Symposium (Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1982), p. 15.

Richards Evelyn , “Clashing Cultures in Corporations,” San Jose Mercury News, November 10, 1987.

Cf. Sumitomo Shoji America, Inc. v. Avagliano, 457 US 176 (1981). See also McNulty Francine , “Employment Rights of Japanese-American Joint Ventures in the United States Under the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation,” Law and Policy in International Business, 16/4(1984): 1225–1248.

On Kyocera, see “Japanese-Style Management on Trial in America,” Oriental Economist, 51 (September 1983): 11; Yamada Mitsuhiko , “Japanese-Style Management in America: Merits and Difficulties,” Japanese Economic Studies, 10/1 (Fall 1981): 27; and Dodsworth Terry , “As Japanese as Apple Pie,” Financial Times, July 11, 1984, p. 16. For evidence that Japanese-style management may work better with an Asian-American work force, see Lincoln James R. Hanada Mitsuyo Olson Jon , “Cultural Orientations and Individual Reactions to Organizations: A Study of Employees of Japanese-owned Firms,” Administrative Science Quarterly 26 (March 1981): 93–115.

Torrance William D. , “Blending East and West: With Difficulties Along the Way,” Organizational Dynamics, 13/2 (Autumn 1984): 23–34.

See “From Japan with Yen” and “Fujitsu's Oregon Workers Take to Team Management,” The Oregonian (Portland), January 10, 1988. This report includes a useful roster of 15 major Japanese factories built in Oregon since 1982.

For the categories of product-, process-, and management-centered strategies, see Kujawa Duane , “Technology Strategy and Industrial Relations: Case Studies of Japanese Multinationals in the United States,” Journal of International Business Studies, 14/3 (Winter 1983): 9–22.

Taira Koji , “Japan's Lifetime Employment Revisited,” Faculty Working Paper No. 1137, College of Commerce and Business Administration, Bureau of Economic and Business Research, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, April 1985, p. 2.

Ibid., p. 15.

Koike Kazuo , “Japan's Industrial Relations: Characteristics and Problems,” Japanese Economic Studies (Fall 1978), p. 46 (trans. from Shokuba no rodo kumiai to sanka [Labor Unions in the Workshop and Their Participation], Tokyo: Toyo Keizai Shimposha, 1977).

Yamada , op. cit., p. 17.

See Hatta Tatsuo (Professor of Economics, Osaka University), “It's Not What You Learn But Where You Learn It,” Articles from the Japanese Press, TSC 886, The Asia Foundation, San Francisco, June 8, 1987.

Krauss W. Paul , “Will Success Spoil Japanese Management?” Columbia Journal of World Business, 8/4 (Winter 1973): 26, 28.

See Holusha John , “A New Spirit at U.S. Auto Plants,” New York Times, December 29, 1987.

Cole Robert E. , “Learning from the Japanese: Prospects and Pitfalls,” Management Review, 69/9 (September 1980): 22–23.

See Halberstam David , The Reckoning (New York, NY: William Morrow, 1986).

Drucker Peter F. , “Japan's Choices,” Foreign Affairs, 65/5 (Summer 1987): 924.

This and the succeeding quotations in this paragraph are from Johnson Richard Tanner Ouchi William , “Made in America (Under Japanese Management),” Harvard Business Review, 52/5 (September/October 1974): 61–69.

Haberman Clyde , “Japanese Remove Sequence from Film ‘Last Emperor,”’ New York Times, January 21, 1988.

Koike , op. cit., pp. 48–49.

Ford Bill , “A Learning Society: Japan Through Australian Eyes,” in Twining John , ed., World Yearbook of Education 1987: Vocational Education (London: Kogan Page, 1987), p. 268.

These distinctions are derived from Koike, op. cit., pp. 53–61.