Keiretsu

Carbon fibre is the most commercially significant of the advanced materials, and its development has been driven by both civil and defence interests. With the end of the Cold War, demand from the defence sector virtually collapsed. The data presented in this thesis reveal the consequent global restructuring of the industry. Over the five year period 1990-1995, European market share fell over twenty percentage points, while that of Japan increased markedly. Meanwhile, US production levels faltered and then recovered following government intervention to stabilise this dual-use technology. This thesis examines the subsequent international shift in the location and ownership of carbon fibre production capacity and the variation in corporate response over this turbulent time. It is found that the national business systems in which this particular high technology sector operates have played a fundamental role in shaping the eventual competitive structure of the industry.

A key factor in the sustainability of China's economic growth is the potential of Chinese firms to develop innovative capabilities autonomously and international management know-how thus enabling them to move up the technological ladder of the production process and to globalise their operations. If successful, some Chinese firms will eventually develop their own brands and open up subsidiaries abroad like their Japanese and South Korean counterparts a few decades ago. If this is not achieved, then China's future growth could remain overly dependent on overseas markets and foreign technology. The purpose of this paper will be to assess the capacity of China's largest firms to transform themselves into global competitors possessing ownership-specific advantages or intangible assets like some of their East Asian counterparts. The fact that a firm establishes a subsidiary abroad does not make it a global competitor, not even a Multinational Enterprise (MNE) or a Trans-Na...

It has been assumed that industrial networks, particularly of keiretsu-based organizations, play the major role in dictating the formation of industrial agglomerations for Japanese investment in overseas locations. In this paper, I examine whether currently available establishment data on Japanese firms in Asia confirm this tendency for the electronics industry. The data show that actual reliance on keiretsu networks in Asia is relatively low, and keiretsu relationships are more likely to reflect a strong relationship at the global level, rather than relationships with suppliers within host countries. This result poses questions on the assumptions of network-based industrialization affecting locations of foreign direct investment.

Abstract: Today, growing complexity and variability of the business environment, calls for more flexible and efficient production systems. Among the most effective and efficient production system, the Japanese lean production is the most known and studied, but still not the most applied with success outside Japan. The reason of the scarce success of lean production outside its native country is the insufficient understanding of the strong interactions among the enterprise system and the business system.

Although most people are familiar with large companies such as Toyota, Sony, and DoCoMo, it is the smalland medium-sized enterprises (SME) that drive the Japanese economy. SMEs account for 99% of the companies and 71% of the labor forced in Japan. For the most part, many Japanese SMEs have benefited from the “pre-employment formal education” of workers in the labor market. In general, Japanese workers across the occupational spectrum are highly literate and numerate. Moreover, SMEs affiliated with the vertical keiretsu (“supporting industries” for corporate groupings such as Toyota, Toshiba, etc.), have benefited from the “post employment training” technical assistance of the large companies. At the shop floor level, the key word here is “skill formation”—that is, the ability of workers to acquire skills by performing work activities (1) under supervision, and then demonstrating they can perform (2) without supervision, and finally they can (3) teach other workers how to perform the...

Despite great advances being made in recent years within many aspects of the history of the  Allied Occupation of Japan (1945 to 1952), the economic and business history of the era remains relatively dormant.

This situation is interesting as the period is argued by many to have had a significant impact on Japan’s subsequent economic and political development, including, according to some, the fostering of the ‘postwar economic miracle’.

This conference aims to reinvigorate the study of this topic and open up numerous previously neglected elements of the business and economic history of Japan in this pivotal era.

Papers: 

An Empire Reborn: The Japanese Fishing Industry during the Occupation

William M. Tsutsui examines the collapse, recovery and expansion to overcapacity of the Japanese fishing industry during the Occupation and the level of continuity this represented between pre-war and Occupation fisheries policies. 

The Occupation, Jeeps, and the Postwar Revival of Toyota

In this paper Tom French looks at the, largely unexamined, but pivotal, roles jeeps of both of US and Japanese origin, played in the revitalization of the Japanese automotive industry and within the history of the Occupation itself. 

The Structure of Industrial Policies by GHQ/SCAP towards the Japanese Cotton Spinning Industry

Takahiro Ohata analyses the relationship between the rehabilitation of the Japanese cotton spinning industry and the policies of the Occupation, which sought to expedite its rehabilitation.

Zaibatsu Dissolution and its Meaning to Japan after World War II

Iwakazu Takahashi looks at the development of Japanese competition law in this period, its relation to the Occupation’s Zaibatsu dissolution program, and its links to similar programs undertaken in occupied Germany. 

Present but Largely Missing:  Japanese Businessmen and SCAP Business Reforms

Steven Ericson adopts a new approach to the study of the Zaibatsu dissolution program through focusing on the hitherto neglected role of Japanese business leaders in resisting Occupation policy, and their role in the eventual rollback of some of the same policies. 

Hokkaido, Regional Economic Policy and the Occupation 

Juha Saunavaara looks at the renewed Japanese focus on the economic potential of Hokkaido in this era as a result of the loss of key colonial markets and sources of raw materials, and the role the Occupation in this change of policy.

This paper,examines,how,the arrival and expansion,of Japanese,automotive assemblers in North America during the 1980s and 1990s, has been character- ized by a complex,process of mutual adaptation by both the transplant assem- blers and North American suppliers. It argues that despite the arguments,that globalization is necessarily associated with a convergence,in supply-manage- ment practices, Japanese assemblers generally remain more committed to long-term supplier development ,and ,technical assistance and ,are less price focused than their North American counterparts. Nonetheless, I argue that a hybrid system,is emerging in which the Japanese have modified some,of their strategies to the more,adversarial and price oriented systems,which character- ize North America. The second ,half of the ,paper ,examines ,Canadian-based supplier relations with the transplants and ,concludes ,that despite the emer- gence of a core of large R&D intensive Canadian suppliers, most remain smaller an...

The ultimate goal of this paper is to derive inspiration from Coase Theorem and the Japanese model of Keiretsu to empower the producers and suppliers of fish – namely, the fisher folk and to place them at the centre stage of control of rural entrepreneur-led private organizations, wherein the fisher community will not be deemed as mere consumers or vendors of fish, but will enter as dignified co-producer partners with significant shares in residual claim and residual control in those organizations.[W.P. No. 2010-02-03]

En marzo del 2011 Japón sufre uno de las peores tragedias desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial. El día 11 un triple evento provoca el fallecimiento de más de 20 mil personas, el desplazamiento de otras 40 mil y la pérdida de 70 mil puestos de trabajo. Al quinto terremoto más potente desde que se tiene registro planetario, le sucedió un tsunami y un accidente nuclear.

La influencia del Keiretsu y el Shunto en el milagro japonés...

La década perdida
En 1991 la especulación, el exceso de confianza provocaron el estallido de una burbuja inmobiliaria; la burbuja se refiere a un fenómeno que se caracteriza por una subida prolongada del precio de un activo o producto, que se vuelve anormal porque el precio del producto, debido a la especulación; se aleja cada vez más su valor real.

ABSTRACT The implementation of buyer-seller relationships based on cooperation have been viewed as a key issue in Total Quality Control programs. This paper discusses the relationships between firms and raw material suppliers, considering its relevance for TQC programs and power-sharing related aspects. Keywords: Suppliers, TQC, buyer-seller relationships, competition.

Two and a half years since the Asia Crisis began there are signs of economic recovery in the East Asian countries. The crisis has had a significant impact on the structure of the Asian economies, and on the structure of the manufacturing sector in particular. Due to the crisis, industrial restructuring is taking place everywhere in Asia. Japan is reforming its keiretsu, abandoning the traditional lifetime employment and seniority systems, and trying to nurture entrepreneurship. The Korean government made a bold attempt to split up the chaebol system and aggressively reform industry to promote participation of small and medium-sized enterprises . Hong Kong attempted to strengthen the manufacturing sector, realising that it had relied too heavily on the service sector. It can be argued that even in the absence the crisis, the industrial structure of the Asian economies had already changed significantly from a few decades earlier. In the case of Thailand, the adoption of an export-led ...

This paper examines the association between institutional ownership and income smoothing through bank loan loss provisions for a sample of Japanese banks during the period 1991–1999. We find that as the percentage of institutional ownership of banks increases, income smoothing via loan loss provisions increases. Additional tests show that there is a significant positive relationship between the extent of income smoothing and the percentage ownership of banks by domestic financial institutions and affiliated (keiretsu) institutions. Consistent with the idea that foreign institutional holders do not play an important role in the corporate governance of Japanese banks, we do not find a significant association between foreign institutional ownership and the extent of income smoothing. Our results imply that institutional owners may play a different role in monitoring income smoothing during the recessionary period in Japan from the normal economic periods studied in most prior studies.