Multinational corporate restructuring and international competitiveness

Article Abstract:

This article addresses an important facet of corporate restructuring: namely, the implications for future competitiveness. It compares patterns of restructuring within leading U.S. and Japanese companies since the late 1970s. Marked differences are apparent. U.S. firms rely to a considerable extent on intensification, rationalization, collaboration, and incremental internationalization. In contrast, major Japanese enterprises' restructuring has concentrated on investment and technical change and incremental internationalization. In the long term, the restructuring strategies pursued by Japanese multinationals appear to offer more significant and enduring competitive benefits. This is because the most widely adopted strategies have their principal impact on proprietary competitive assets and internationalization advantages. In contrast, the emphasis of U.S. corporations has been on overcoming locational disadvantage and restoring the conditions for competitive operation in the home market. This emphasis, while enhancing locational or comparative advantage, does little to create proprietary competitive advantages. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Planning, Competition (Economics), International business enterprises, Multinational corporations, Corporate reorganizations

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The international competitiveness of Japanese service industries: a cause for concern?

Article Abstract:

This article offers an assessment of the international competitiveness of Japanese service industries and examines the sources of competitive edge which have been developed within Japan. It distinguishes three groups of service industries: those where Japan currently enjoys a high degree of international competitiveness (banking, finance, and construction); those where international competitiveness is unlikely to be achieved in the foreseeable future (education, legal services, and software); and, most important, an intermediate group within which Japan's international competitiveness is rising rapidly (advertising, engineering services, real estate, and insurance). The article concludes with a number of analogies between the success of Japanese manufacturing firms and their counterparts in the service sector. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Services industry, Service industries

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Employee work attitudes and management practice in the U.S. and Japan: evidence form a large comparative survey

Article Abstract:

This article provides a broad overview of findings from a survey of 106 Japanese and U.S. factories and 8,302 of their employees. Its focus is on how work attitudes and motivation differ between Japanese and U.S. employees and whether management practice and organizational design can account for those differences. The article concludes that practices such as quality circles, the ringi system, centralized authority combined with de facto participation, employee services, seniority compensation, and enterprise unions do, in fact, help to explain the "commitment gap" that divides the Japanese from the U.S. manufacturing workforce. When these and similar practices appear in U.S. factories, similar positive changes in employee work attitudes result. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Employee motivation

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