Managerial Dominance of Japan's Major Corporations

This paper presents a model which suggests that four factors-~nan~ial and ownership structure, an industrial encouragement policy, barriers to entry and the labor market-combine to produce a situation in which Japanese management isfreedfiom all the major threats to its dominance-shareholders, trade unions, government, domestic ompetitors, domestic speculators, foreign competitors and foreign capital. Hence, in line with classical managerial theories of the firm, Japanese managers have developed the long run strategies and policies that are typical of the large Japanese corporations-market share emphasis, slow personnel evaluation, MIT systems, etc. Some suggestions for further work are offered. The literature on Japanese management is very extensive and Sullivan and Peterson (1989) have rightly stressed the richness of theorizing that has occurred in this field. Until the early 198Os, what Kagono, Nonaka, Sakakibara and Okumura (1985) termed the “dominant perspective ” focussed largely on the uniqueness of the Japanese management characteristics and the socio-cultural milieu from which they arose. In the last decade, approaches have ranged through, among others, welfare corporatist (Lincoln and Kalleberg, 1990), contingency (Kagono et al., 1985; Shenkar, 1990), neo-transaction cost (Aoki