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A major aspect of Japan's international economic success has been its industrial firms' ability to develop a system of subcontracting with suppliers. Through an exploration of the evolution of subcontracting in Japan as well as an analysis of its current practice in advanced economies,Nishiguchi reveals what he believes to be the shortcomings of existing theories of contractual relations. He shows that subcontracting can be described as the evolutionary product of complex historical interaction among social, political, technological, and company-level strategic plans--but not oneconstrained by culture. This makes it possible for other countries to use models similar to those employed in Japan, encouraging continuous improvement in product quality and cost reduction.
When James Womack, Daniel Jones, and Daniel Roos wrote THE MACHINE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD in 1990, Japanese automakers, and Toyota in particular, were making a strong showing by applying the principles of lean production. However, the full power of lean principles was unproven, and they had not been applied outside of the auto industry. Today, the power of lean production has been conclusively proved by Toyota's unparalleled success, and the concepts have been widely applied in many industries. Based on MIT's pioneering global study of industrial competition, THE MACHINE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD offers a groundbreaking analysis of the entire lean business system, including product development, supplier management, sales, service, and production - an analysis even more relevant today as GM and Ford struggle to survive and a wide range of British abd American companies embrace lean production. A new Foreword by the authors brings the story up to date and details how their predictions were right. As a result, this reissue of a classic is as insightful and instructive today as when it was first published.
"Knowledge management buzzes around as the best way for organizations to gain and sustain competitive advantage in the knowledge-based economy. During recent years, the number of books, articles, seminars and conferences on knowledge management has increased dramatically - leaving it even more difficult to understand what knowledge management is, and how to actually practice it. Furthermore, knowledge management combines the fluffiness of knowledge with the rationality of management creating an oxymoron that is quite difficult to understand, practice and evaluate. "
Draws conclusions for the future of the industry in the USA.
This volume merges four streams of inquiry and interpretation in a study of the evolution and emergence of Japan's leading industrial firms during the twentieth century. First, it is a historical study of how the industrial institutions of modern Japan appeared and matured. Second, it is anorganization study of the basic forms of social and economic interaction in Japan. Third, it is a development study of how circumstances of rapid technical and economic change have shaped the Japanese business system. It is also a strategy study of how Japanese managers have responded to andshaped these circumstances. This fourfold synthesis offers a model of institutional development under conditions of late economic development and private initiative that falls somewhere between a capitalist development state and a free market economy. Business policy rather than industrial policy is accentuated, revealing aset of robust institutions and a dynamic to activate and interrelate them.
The New Division of Labor: Emerging Forms of Work Organization in International Perspective.
This book describes why, for the past twenty-five years, Japanese productivity has been growing more rapidly than productivity in the U.S. Unlike other books on the subject of the Japanese success in manufacturing, it looks at what actually happens in factories. The author brings his experience of working at the Yanagicho Works of the Toshiba Corporation, in Kawasaki City. Like so many Japanese factories, this one is highly productive, efficient, and flexible. While the factory is ordinary looking on the outside, its workers are anything but ordinary as they constantly strive to improve the way they work and the quality of the products they produce. The key to this is the continuous creation and application of knowledge throughout the factory, from workers on the shop floor, to research and development engineers, to top management. Fruin explains how Japanese culture and religion prepare workers for their role in this process of creating and disseminating knowledge.
The emergence of specialized markets has profoundly improved the means of market access, enriched the driving forces of value chains, and changed the business environment for small firms in the developing world. This ground-breaking book summarizes the experience of specialized markets in a systematic manner. Specialized markets are a unique product of China's economic transition. They are marketplaces located in industrial clusters, specializing in the wholesale of local commodities and related goods. Ding Ke reveals that, despite their seemingly primitive form, specialized markets appeared in many of the modern industrial sectors and were paradoxically upgraded and expanded as these cluste...
How do markets work? This reader introduces the student to the workings of the market, explaining both the reasons for its success and its shortcomings. Throughout, the text encourages a critical approach demonstrating the diversity of market economies. In particular it explores: the social nature of market economies the range of approaches to the study of the market: Marxist, Austrian, Keynesian and institutional economics are discussed as alternatives to the neo-classical mainstream the differences between Anglo-American, European and Asian economic models the historical development of markets globalisation: its extent and its impact the costs and the benefits of markets With chapters by Will Hutton, John Gray and Eric Hobsbawm, this reader provides an excellent introduction.
China has become an innovation powerhouse in high-tech industries, but the widely held view assumes the Chinese model is built on technological borrowing and state capitalism. This book debunks the myths surrounding the Chinese model with a fresh take on China’s strategies for technological innovation. The central argument is that indigenous innovation plays a critical role in transforming the Chinese high-tech industry. Like any successfully industrialized nation in history, indigenous innovation in China allows industrial enterprises to assimilate knowledge developed elsewhere, utilize science and technology resources and human capabilities accumulated in the country, and eventually appr...