Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of tables and figures
- List of contributors
- Part I Overview
- Part II National experiences of big business
- 3 The United States: Engines of economic growth in the capital-intensive and knowledge-intensive industries
- 4 Great Britain: Big business, management, and competitiveness in twentieth-century Britain
- 5 Germany: Competition abroad – cooperation at home, 1870–1990
- 6 Small European nations: Cooperative capitalism in the twentieth century
- 7 France: The relatively slow development of big business in the twentieth century
- 8 Italy: The tormented rise of organizational capabilities between government and families
- 9 Spain: Big manufacturing firms between state and market, 1917–1990
- 10 Japan: Increasing organizational capabilities of large industrial enterprises, 1880s–1980s
- 11 South Korea: Enterprising groups and entrepreneurial government
- 12 Argentina: Industrial growth and enterprise organization, 1880s–1980s
- 13 USSR: Large enterprises in the USSR – the functional disorder
- 14 Czechoslovakia: The halting pace to scope and scale
- Part III Economic and institutional environment of big business
- Index of company names
- General index
10 - Japan: Increasing organizational capabilities of large industrial enterprises, 1880s–1980s
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of tables and figures
- List of contributors
- Part I Overview
- Part II National experiences of big business
- 3 The United States: Engines of economic growth in the capital-intensive and knowledge-intensive industries
- 4 Great Britain: Big business, management, and competitiveness in twentieth-century Britain
- 5 Germany: Competition abroad – cooperation at home, 1870–1990
- 6 Small European nations: Cooperative capitalism in the twentieth century
- 7 France: The relatively slow development of big business in the twentieth century
- 8 Italy: The tormented rise of organizational capabilities between government and families
- 9 Spain: Big manufacturing firms between state and market, 1917–1990
- 10 Japan: Increasing organizational capabilities of large industrial enterprises, 1880s–1980s
- 11 South Korea: Enterprising groups and entrepreneurial government
- 12 Argentina: Industrial growth and enterprise organization, 1880s–1980s
- 13 USSR: Large enterprises in the USSR – the functional disorder
- 14 Czechoslovakia: The halting pace to scope and scale
- Part III Economic and institutional environment of big business
- Index of company names
- General index
Summary
THE GERM OF ORGANIZATIONAL CAPABILITIES OF JAPANESE INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES
Japan, to its good fortune, avoided colonization, thanks to its quick emergence from self-imposed isolation and mutual restraint among the Western powers. Its continued independence was one way in which Japan differed from Korea or China. In fact, Japan not only managed to eliminate its unequal treaties with the Western powers by about 1910 but also turned Korea into its own colony and began working toward domination of East Asia.
The key to Japan's building a solid economic foundation while maintaining its independence under the impact of the West was industrialization. With its limited natural resources, industrialization was the only route to economic independence, a route Japan followed rapidly. Thanks in part to the effects of government protection and promotion immediately after the Meiji Restoration (1868), modern industries started up in the 1880s, and the economy began to achieve takeoff.1 During the modern business enterprise's sudden rise to power as the principal actor in industrialization, some of these modern business enterprises grew sufficiently large to set up a hierarchy.
Those who discuss the modern business enterprise in prewar Japan always talk about zaibatsu. The zaibatsu, like the chaebol in contemporary Korea, was a major presence in the business history of prewar Japan. One can define a zaibatsu briefly as a diversified enterprise group exclusively owned and controlled by a single wealthy family.
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- Big Business and the Wealth of Nations , pp. 305 - 335Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997
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