Paradigmatic Shifts in Automobile Manufacturing
ABSTRACTOne of the greatest problems facing the U.S. auto industry is the erosion of its manufacturing base. Another is the increasing challenge from Japan, which keeps building on its solid postwar accomplishments mapped out by such pioneers as Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo. Their enduring legacy includes a reliance on the firm's human resources for maintaining productivity and quality control. The Japanese paradigm thus has a built-in mechanism for self-improvement and competitiveness enhancement.The continued strife in Detroit suggests that the older American paradigm must be restructured; its top-down way of conducting business must allow labor to become a genuine partner with management instead of an adversary. The Japanese immigrant plants in the United States clearly show the way to do this. While such restructuring is frequently time-consuming, the period available for reform dwindles as the Asians keep strengthening their U.S. operations.
Japan's technology trade
Abstract Japan's heavy importation of technology is placed within a historical context and found to be highly efficient in terms of the country's economic development goals. The Asian nation's comprehensive approach in securing and importing the appropriate know-how together with the necessary investments in human resources and capital all aided the transfer and employment of the acquired technology. Statistics on education and study and the use of foreign expertise and schools are cited to illustrate the various efforts at keeping abreast of the West during the turmoil of the last century. Over the long term, these efforts have proved consistent and in the end, usually rewarding. Currently, the trade picture appears poised for a fundamental change as Japan becomes a net exporter of advanced technology. Such a shift will have worldwide consequences for science and commerce.
Japan's Technological Challenge to the West, 1950-1974: Motivation and Accomplishment
Japan's economy has enjoyed unprecedented technological growth in the decades since World War II. At first stereotyped as an exporter of shoddy good, Japan now enjoys a worldwide reputation as an efficient manufacturer of high-quality products. This book focuses on the unique experience of Japan's postwar industrialization. Although the literature of economics has frequently pointed out in passing that foreign technologies have been crucial to the formation of Japan's industries, until now there has been no detailed analysis to support this assertion. The book first describes the postwar technological environment in and outside of Japan. It identifies the Schumpeterian characteristics of economic development and the particular set of relationships that Japan had with the United States and with developing nations in Asia that provided it with the incentive and the necessary mechanisms to advance technologically. The book then examines the Japanese government's selective policy of importing technology for the development of key industries, government controls on imports and on foreign industrial ownership, the efforts of individual Japanese firms to choose, adapt, and perfect imported technologies, and the development of indigenous technologies and their export to the rest of the world. Two final chapters probe the social and psychological causes of Japan's century-old desire to catch up with and surpass the West in industrialization. They discuss the impact of recent changes in the international and domestic economic situation on both the traditional values of the Japanese and the direction of Japan's technological future, and take up some of the implications for the United States policy on technology and trade of Japan's rising competitiveness in the world market.