the costs (and annoyances) of repair for Toyota cars were only one-sixth to one-eighth of those for American cars.
Not so many years earlier, "Made in America" and been a worldwide badge of quality, while "Made in Japan" was a joke, a sign of cheap, shoddy merchandise. By 1980, when it came to that most American of products, the automobile, the situation was reversed. Detroit cars had a reputation for poor quality which they have not yet altogether shed. "Made in Japan" might still mean inexpensive, but it didn't mean "cheap" or shoddy, it meant excellent quality and value for money. Even today, when identical cars roll off a joint production facility, some bearing Japanese and some bearing American nameplates, those with the Japanese name are strongly preferred by American consumers.
In response, American management specialists began to look with increasing interest at Japanese industrial management: how it functioned, what its values were, and why it seemed to be so much more effective than long admired American approaches to management. Americans began to hear about exotic notions such as "lifetime employment" and "quality circles," and strange customs such as the singing of company songs by employees at the start
The "classic text" of this new interest in Japanese management approaches was Theory Z, by William Ouchi. Ouchi related a number of anecdotes which vividly illustrated the difference in attitudes between the two management styles. In one instance, a Japanese bank opened a branch office in the United States, and hired a number of American managers. In questioning them, Ouchi found that the American managers were generally satisfied with their employer, but were continually frustrated by the Japanese senior management's persistent refusal to set guidelines for them. "They just don't understand objectives," the Americans complained (1981, pp. 40-41).
In questioning the Americans' Japanese bosses...