Since the bursting of Japan’s bubble economy, from 1990 onwards, its multinational companies (MNCs) have faced new competitive challenges, and questions about the management practices on which they had built their initial success in global markets. Japanese engagement in the international economy has undergone a number of phases. Historically, Japanese MNCs learnt from foreign companies, frequently through strategic alliances. After the post-war ‘economic miracle’, Japanese manufacturers in particular converted themselves into MNCs, transferred their home-grown capabilities to overseas subsidiaries, and made an impact on the world economy. But the period after 1990 marked declining Japanese competitiveness, and asked questions about the ability of Japanese MNCs to be more responsive and global in their strategies, organization, and capabilities. It has been argued that the established management practices of Japanese MNCs inhibited adaptation to recent demands of global competition. This volume presents new case evidence on how Japanese MNCs have responded to the new challenges of the global market place, and it provides examples of how they have transformed strategies and competitive capabilities. This book was originally published as a special issue of Asia Pacific Business Review.

Amid the current, protracted recession in Japan, new corporations termed global excellent companies by the authors of this book have been rising since the end of the 20th century. They are not yet in the spotlight but have a huge market share worldwide with regard to their specialized products and services.

Even casual observers will be familiar with the Cherry Blossom or Sakura tress of Japan. When in full bloom the sight is spectacular but it sadly only takes a week until the tree is bare. In a longer cycle of nations and business, we see, unfortunately, a similar pattern for Japanese Multinational Corporations.

A defining feature of Japan's emergence as a global economic superpower has been Japanese firms' establishment of thousands of affiliate operations in North America, Europe, and Asia. Despite the tremendous importance of this development, there have been surprisingly few articles published on the management of Japanese operations abroad, and even fewer attempts to collect and make sense of this scholarship. Schon Beechler and Allan Bird remedy this situation with Japanese Multinationals Abroad: Individual and Organizational Learning, a unique collection of essays from an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars. The book opens with an introduction by the editors, followed by a chapter analyzing the evolution of research on multinational enterprises in general and on Japanese multinational corporations in particular. The remainder of the book is divided into three sections. In the first section the contributors address the impact of Japanese management practices on individuals and groups, analyzing the interactions between Japanese expatriates and local employees that lead to negotiated "third cultures." The second section shifts to the business unit level, examining the ways in which Japanese firms attempt to transfer or substantially modify home country management philosophies, policies, and practices to fit the local affiliate. The final section, focused on the corporate level, deals with the impact of subsidiary management activities on the organization as a whole. The contributors address various aspects of organizational learning related to the transfer of managerial knowledge from subsidiary to parent or from one overseas affiliate to another. Japanese Multinationals Abroad: Individual and Organizational Learning addresses a set of issues that are critical for both international business researchers and practicing managers. It not only provides an integrated picture of how Japanese employees and organizations learn to adapt and prosper, it presents an clear lessons for all multinational corporations, regardless of their national origins.

The purpose of this book is to study an unexplored area of corporate governance. The authors examine whether the corporate governance system can be affected by organizational culture, leader culture, and the operations management system in general. In addition, they study how a specific corporate governance system can affect the organizational culture and operations management system and create a different type of leader culture. This is an in-depth study of Japanese multinational companies and a comparison of their corporate governance system at home (in Japan) and in host countries like Britain, India, and Thailand.The authors conducted a series of in-depth interviews with the senior executives of major Japanese multinational companies to construct quantitative models for Japan, Thailand and India, and to analyze the aforementioned propositions.

This book offers a long-term comparative perspective on the evolution of Japanese and Asia Pacific multinational companies (MNCs), and provides new insights into how Japanese MNCs have transformed strategies and competitive capabilities in response to new challenges of the global market place since 1990. This book was originally published as a special issue of Asia Pacific Business Review.