This book evaluates the conditions for the international transfer of Japanese-style management and production techniques to Europe. Using an investigation of Japanese manufacturing companies with operations in Europe, the authors shed light on 'hybrid factories', which combine elements of Japanese and European management and production techniques.

This book assesses the transferability of Japanese-style management and production systems to 81 factories in North America owned by Japanese companies. All of the book's investigations are based on an original methodology, "hybridization analysis", which quantifies the degree to which features of the Japanese system have been transplanted, using an elaborate checklist and scoring system. With its wealth of data, it should serve as a handy reference volume to anyone interested in the issue of international management and the impact of globalization upon production models.

This book presents the findings of the Japanese Multinational Enterprise Study Group and offers the 'Application-adaptation' framework as a means of measuring the degree to which Japanese parent systems are transferred to the subsidiary. It proposes this as a model for assessing the transferability of systems in any multinational enterprise.

Explores the Latin American economy and management through the study of Japanese companies in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Based on detailed case studies, this volume offers a bird's eye view of foreign investments in Latin America.

Though in its infancy, the European enterprise has the power to change both the perception and the actual face of Europe. This book evaluates the future potential of this new type of enterprise. The contributors look for European convergence at all levels of the economy: firm, branch, state, and EU. They stress various points of view, using diverse methods, and propose different measures.

Over the last few decades, circuits of capital have been stretched through processes of economic globalization, leading to complex and hybrid outcomes that result in different modes of production and consumption. Understanding these new economic configurations and their geographic patterns requires incorporating new theoretical arguments based on, for example, chain and network concepts. This edited volume brings together theoretically-informed analysis from Asia, Europe and North America to illustrate the way in which new economic configurations have been developed and to understand individual, local and regional responses to a variety of global challenges, threats and opportunities. The different examples presented illustrate that economic structures and flows have changed dramatically over the past decades with profound impacts for the economic and regional actors involved.