Japanese Business Success The Evolution of a Strategy

The spectacular growth of Japanese business to a dominant world position in the post-war era has attracted many western studies and analyses of Japanese management methods in comparison with those of the West. Here, for the first time is an inside account, by leading Japanese experts, of the way in which individual Japanese firms came to dominate world markets. The rise of household names such as Canon and Toyota is charted against the background of the growth and restructur­ing that took place in Japan after the war. Dividing their material into three main sections: innovative, high technology industries; traditional, heavy industry; the service sector; the contributors set their accounts of individual companies against the wider context of internationalization and drastic structural change in the Japanese economy. The volume ends with an analysis of the Japanese business elite and its formation.

This inside account of the Japanese phenomenon will be fasci­nating reading for all those interested in understanding the strategies through which Japanese business has achieved its success.