The Japanese Firm

• The Japanese firm as a system of attributes, Aoki; learning and incentive systems in Japanese industry, Koike; different quality paradigms and their implications for organizational learning, Cole; training, productivity and quality control in Japanese multinational companies, Sako; co-ordination between production and distribution in a globalizing network of firms, Asanuma; the evolution of Japan's industrial research and development, Westney; R&D organization in Japanese and American semi-condutor firms, Okimoto and Nishi; SME's, entry barriers, and "strategic alliances", Whittaker; Japanese human resource management for the viewpoint of incentive theory, Itoh; co-ordination, specialization, and incentives in product development organization, Itoh; the economic role of corporate grouping and the main bank system, Hoshi; interlocking shareholdings and corporate governance in Japan; the Japanese firm under the wartime planned economy, Okazaki; equality-efficiency trade-offs - Japanese perceptions and choices, Dore

This is an excellent collection of papers for which the authors, the editors and the conference organizers should be congratulated. I found valuable insights in almost every chapter, and the whole was even better than the sum of its parts. One point that was brought out by a number of authors was what the editors referred to in their introduction as `systemic awareness' - that specific attributes of the Japanese firm should not be considered in isolation, as they are all interrelated elements of a broader system. This book brings together many of these elements, and provides the reader with that vital systemic awareness.