Japanese management abroad: A literature review and a research agenda

Enrique Yacuzzi

No 452, CEMA Working Papers: Serie Documentos de Trabajo. from Universidad del CEMA

Abstract: The purpose of this review is to evaluate the status of scholarly research on Japanese management as it is applied outside Japan. The first part of the review deals with the concept of Japanese management. The second part aims at understanding how Japanese management is applied in foreign countries, both at subsidiaries of Japanese corporations and in non-Japanese firms; in particular, the issue of transferability of concepts and techniques is considered in detail. Primarily EBSCO databases were used, but other sources were consulted as well. A set of seven steps was used to organize the literature search, analysis, and report. These steps, presented in a section on methodology, are: 1. Rationale; 2. Sampling results; 6. Interpretations, limitations, and implications; and 7. Reporting the review. There is general agreement among different authors on the main tenets of Japanese management (especially those referred to Human Resources Management) and on the ability of firms--Japanese and non-Japanese alike--to use some practices of Japanese management in foreign lands; in particular, the Japanese production management "paradigm" seems to travel everywhere with the Japanese. An attempt is made to detect changes in the nature of themes studied by scholars through the years. To this end a number of variables is explicitly considered for a subset of the literature. While most variables seem to be receiving the same amount of attention from scholars through time, the issue of corporate governance seems to be getting more attention in recent years. On the basis of the literature search, the final part of the paper provides a sketch of a general research agenda. Methodological appendices are provided, as well as a reference list.

Keywords: Japanese management; Japanese management abroad; transferability of Japanese management; international corporations; multinational corporations; Japanese multinational corporations. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F23 M10 M11 M12 M14 P51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 95 pages
Date: 2011-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ucema.edu.ar/publicaciones/download/documentos/452.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cem:doctra:452

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEMA Working Papers: Serie Documentos de Trabajo. from Universidad del CEMA Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Valeria Dowding ().