Asian Studies - East Asia - Japan, Japan - International Business, Japanese History - General & Miscellaneous, National Characteristics - Asia, Industrial Management
Available on Bookshop
Write a review
Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Log in to track your reading progress.
Overview
Inside the Kaisha is an in-depth and sensitive exploration by a Japanese middle manager - a salaryman now in his thirties, who spent five years at Sumitomo Bank - and an American professor. Only after leaving Sumitomo could Noboru Yoshimura write this book; no Japanese employee currently inside a Japanese organization could report and interpret with such honesty and perspective without fear of rejection. Collaborating with Anderson, who was determined to teach his management students from a global perspective, Yoshimura interviewed dozens of salarymen to paint a distinctive picture of Japanese organizational life - as told to one of their own. Yoshimura and Anderson unravel six apparent contradictions in Japanese business conduct - such as why Japanese firms emphasize cooperation yet display fiercely competitive behavior, and why so much ambiguity can coexist with careful attention to documentation, precision, and clear rules. The results of their investigation will help all those who do business with the Japanese (whether as suppliers, customers, allies, or rivals) understand and step into the world of the salaryman.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Promising to demystify the traits that continue to confound Westerners even after a deluge of books on Japanese management and business philosophy, this book leaves the impression that mysterious they must remain. The authors (a vice president of Bankers Trust in Tokyo and a business professor at Dartmouth, respectively) show a boundless zeal for their subject, which leads them to frequently repeat admonitions against what is wrong in our perceptions, but does not present a clear view of what is right. Nor do the authors develop a cohesive organization of their ideas on various and overlapping aspects of Japanese business practice. Each case study chosen from the 50-odd Japanese middle-managers interviewed for the book is invariably used to reiterate the authors' entire platform. The book does however, illuminate certain important and peculiarly Japanese characteristics that Westerners may not recognize or may mistake for consensus: process and market share orientation, context and status definition, cartel-like cooperation within industries and the many ways in which the fear of shame acts as a paramount motivator. With the Nikkei's plunge extending below 50% of its 1989 peak, and Prime Minister Hashimoto's tough plan to open Japanese markets, one wonders what's in store for behaviors analyzed here. Already diluted in some outward-thinking Japanese firms, five years hence, some may be regarded as anachronisms from a time when Japanese businesses operated like clubs with lifelong membership. (Mar.)Book Details
Published
April 1, 1997
Publisher
Boston, Mass. : Harvard Business School Press, c1997.
Pages
259
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780875844152