Ethics and Working with the Japanese: The Entrepreneur and the “Elite Course”

Sahlins Marshall , Stone Age Economics (New York, NY: Aldine Publishers, 1972), p. 199.

Inoue Yuko , “Ministries Rapped for Excessive ‘Guidance’,” The Japan Economic Journal, December 2, 1989, pp. 1, 6.

Ibid.

Prestowitz Clyde , Trading Places: How We Allowed Japan to Take the Lead (New York, NY: Basic Books, Inc., 1988), p. 87.

Ogihara Makiko , “MITI: Japan Firms Overseas Slow to Adopt Local Customs,” The Japan Economic Journal, December 31, 1988, January 7, 1989, p. 5.

Morita Akio Ishihara Shintarω , The Japan that Can Say No, U.S. Congressional Record, November 14, 1989; Morita Akio Ishihara Shintarω , “NO” to ieru Nihon (Tokyo: Kobunsha, 1989).

Carter John Mack , “Translating the Japanese Market,” Adweek, February 28, 1987, p. 26; The New York Times, Op-ed page, December 29, 1986. The former Editor-in-Chief of Reader's Digest Japan has written a detailed account in Japanese of the subsidiary's demise, pointing out errors by both union and management, see Shioya Kω , Riidai no shi (A Requiem for Reader's Digest) (Tokyo: The Simul Press, Inc., 1986).

Nagashima Hidesuke , The Japan Times, February 28, 1990; Berger Michael , The San Francisco Chronicle, March 19, 1990, pp. C1, C10. There is also an interesting series of articles in a special edition of the Japanese magazine Kin'yū zaisei jijω (October 1989) entitled, “‘Jinzai no jidai’ ga kita” (“‘The Age of Human Resources’ Has Come”). In this series, for example, a personnel manager of a prestigious financial institution cites his company's plan for midcareer hires to eventually number at least 20% of all employees, up from zero as recently as six years ago.

Tatsuno Sheridan , Created in Japan: From Imitators to World-Class Innovators (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1990); Michael Armacost, U.S. Ambassador to Japan, “We Know What We Need to Do, and We Will Do It!” The Journal of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (September 1989), pp. 49–60.

Other writers have adopted the term “Elite Course,” including, for example, Thomas Rohlen and Robert Frager in Austin Lewis , ed., Japan: The Paradox of Progress (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976), p. 264.

See, for example, Tatsuno's discussion (in his Created in Japan, op. cit.) of Japanese “intrapreneurs” and the considerable efforts of Japan's government and commercial enterprises to fill out what Tatsuno calls the “mandala of creativity.”

Geertz Clifford , Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York, NY: Basic Books, Inc., 1983), p. 151.