Character of Japanese Business Management

This is a study of the character of Japanese business management, its strengths and weaknesses, how it compares with American management, and what lessons (if any) American business can learn from the Japanese system and experience of management. It will be argued that important lessons can indeed be learned from the Japanese, but that these are limited in many respects by fundamental differences of cultural values between the two societies.

In the 1980s, two independent but disturbing trends caught the attention of students of American business management and of the American public at large. One was purely domestic: evidence that American business was not performing as well as it had in the past. National economic growth was sluggish, and managers seemed more interested in shortterm financial manipulations than in business fundamentals. By the late 1970s, America's industrial plant was drifting into antiquation and obsolescence, yet managers were reluctant to plow resources back into capital development for fear that the expenditure would depress earnings and shortterm return on investmentand, perhaps, cost them their jobs at the hands of irate superiors or shareholders (Moody, 1990, p. 38).

The second trend was the sudden emergence of Japan as an economic powerhousemost vividly brought home to Americans by the proliferation of Japanese imported cars on our highways, and by their generally acknowledged superiority to contemporary American cars. This was str

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Category: Business - C