As a modern, industrial country, Japan has been able to significantly and steadily improve its productivity and enhance the quality of its manufacturing processes to the point where it is providing world leadership in the art and science of management, especially production management. Although the West has expressed considerable interest in Japanese management techniques over the last few decades, there has been only limited interest in adopting particular aspects of Japanese management into the American corporate environment. This is due, in part, to the overriding belief that Japanese management is inexorably tied to Japanese culture, and hence is not transferable. In fact, although there are numerous examples of culture and management being intertwined, particular variables and techniques from Japanese management "are transferable to the West, although Western management may not necessarily want nor need to adopt them all" (Pegels, 1984, p. xiii). This paper will focus on some of the variables that contribute to Japanese management and decision making, particularly in relation to Japanese culture. After first reviewing both Japanese culture and management style, the paper will turn to an analysis for the Japanese cultural basis for superiority, the economic, sociological, and philosophical resources of Japan, Japan's industrial strategy, focusing on two examples of Japanese production Toyota and Kanban, finally concluding with the implications for the United States.
One of the most dominant paradigms in the business world today revolves around the contemporaneous nature of Japanese management. Numerous books and articles have been written about the particular style of "Japanese Management" - indeed the term itself has become a business buzz-word for the 1980s and 1990s. It is used in seminars, scholarly articles, the poplar press, governmental bureaucracy, academia, and has even become a part of popular culture. Many...