The New Community Firm
Employment, Governance and Management Reform in Japan

Japanese employment, corporate governance and management issues set in context of modern business practice, originally published in 2005.

T. Inagami (Author), D. Hugh Whittaker (Author)

9780521843706, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 January 2005

296 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.61 kg

"The book is an illuminating tour through a mountain of evidence on what has been going on...readers will walk away much better informed about the 21st-century Japanese corporation."
Paul Almeida, American Journal of Sociology

After sweeping all before it in the 1980s, 'Japanese management' ran into trouble in the 1990s, especially in the high-tech industries, prompting many to declare it had outlived its usefulness. From the late 1990s leading companies embarked on wide-ranging reforms designed to restore their entrepreneurial vigour. For some, this spelled the end of Japanese management; for others, little had changed. From the perspective of the community firm, Inagami and Whittaker examine changes to employment practices, corporate governance and management priorities, in this 2005 book, drawing on a rich combination of survey data and an in-depth study of Hitachi, Japan's leading general electric company and enterprise group. They find change and continuity, the emergence of a 'reformed model', but not the demise of the community firm. The model addresses both economic vitality and social fairness, within limits. This book offers unique insights into changes in Japanese management, corporations and society.

Part I. The End of the Community Firm?: 1. Company as community
2. The classic model: benchmark for change
3. Change and continuity
4. Company professionals and creative work
5. Corporate governance and managers' ideologies
6. Consolidated management and quasi internal labour markets
7. Summing up
Part II. Hitachi: 'Here, the Future': 8. Hitachi: a dancing giant
9. A victim of its own success?
10. Organization reform
11. Recasting the employment relationship
12. The impact on industrial relations
13. Evaluation
Part III. The Reformed Model: 14. New model in the making?
Appendix
References.

Subject Areas: Industrial relations [KNXB], Organizational theory & behaviour [KJU], Business & management [KJ]