centralized focus of the Japanese economy by speaking of "Japan, Inc." is misleading. Japan is not a big General Motors, or even a big IBM. (Interestingly, though, IBM, with its tradition of paternalism, is one of the more "Japanese" of American corporations; see the discussion of IBM's corporate culture in Mobley and McKeown, 1989.) It is more accurate to say that the Japanese worker regards himself as a sort of peaceful soldier, and that the Japanese manager regards himself as an industrial samurai (Sayles, 1982). One writer on Japanese industry (Davidson, 1984, p. 3) appropriately begins his discussion of Japanese industrial strategy with a quotation from the great military theorist Clausewitz. A quotation from the ancient Chinese military sage, Sun Tzu, might have been even more in order.
This military or feudal analogy may explain why the Japanese are able to combine intense personal pride and competitiveness with a degree of social conformity and adherence to group values that Americans find alien in most contexts. The relationship of a Japanese empl
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