Is Globalization Making Us All the Same?

When I first began teaching organizational sociology to undergraduates in the late 1980s, the students could not get enough of Japan. It was obvious to them and (to come clean) to their teachers that Japan was the way of the future and that the American corporation would need to remake itself radi-cally to compete in the global economy. Japan had, for reasons of culture or history or politics, happened on a model of corporate organization that was more stable, more innovative and more productive than the warmed-over Fordism found in American firms. Change or rust, that was the lesson for America. Fast-forward a decade or so and the period of Japan worship is regarded as folly, as misplaced American self-doubt. Japan was the model for us; now we are surely the model for Japan. The new generation of undergraduates cannot get too little of Japan. It is now the poster child for crony capitalism and all that went wrong in Asia. It is obvious to the students, and (again) to their teachers, that the United States is now the way of the future. We are i