Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Some Notes on Style
- Introduction
- I Facing History: Getting Past the Nation-state
- II Global Communication: A Matter of Heart
- III Escaping Mercantilism: From Free-Rider to Driver
- IV Embracing Business Risk: Entrepreneurs and Kaisha Reborn
- V Open Politics: Unleashing Civil Society
- VI Geopolitics: A Global Citizen
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
IV - Embracing Business Risk: Entrepreneurs and Kaisha Reborn
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Some Notes on Style
- Introduction
- I Facing History: Getting Past the Nation-state
- II Global Communication: A Matter of Heart
- III Escaping Mercantilism: From Free-Rider to Driver
- IV Embracing Business Risk: Entrepreneurs and Kaisha Reborn
- V Open Politics: Unleashing Civil Society
- VI Geopolitics: A Global Citizen
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the Japan of the second half of the twentieth century, the military battalions were replaced by the kaisha, the corporations. The mission statements of virtually all major Japanese companies included a strong patriotic component. As the late James Abegglen and other specialists have argued, whereas the typical American company would have shareholders as first priority, stakeholders second and the country in third place, in Japan the order was generally reckoned to be country, stakeholders and shareholders.
Since the crisis of the early 1990s, the government–industry nexus has somewhat fractured, Japanese companies have moved a lot of production offshore and the proportion of permanent employees to temporary employees has been significantly reduced. But while there has been an evolution, there has been no revolution. The big Japanese kaisha are emphatically not state-owned enterprises and Japanese capitalism cannot be labeled state capitalism. However, nationalist capitalism would still remain an accurate description. Senior management of the big kaisha still tend to be, pretty overwhelmingly, lifetime employees, and they still tend to introduce themselves by giving the name of their corporation first (e.g., “I am Hitachi's WATANABE”). Just as Japan would benefit from more international trade, imports, higher interest rates and letting the yen find its level, these macro changes ought to be complemented by openings at the firm level: new ways of conceiving of and undertaking work, both for businesspeople at the kaisha, and entrepreneurs outside the kaisha.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Japan's Open FutureAn Agenda for Global Citizenship, pp. 113 - 144Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2009