Searching for a New Role in East Asian Regionlization: Japanese Production Networks in the Electronics Industry

This paper will be published in Peter and J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi, eds. Remaking East Asia: Beyond Americanization and Japanization, Cornell University Press. Part 1 introduces a few conceptual building-blocks that we need to capture the interactions between international business organization and regionalization. Part 2 describes the growing dependence of Japan's electronics industry on Asia, and explores how Japanese electronics firms are searching for ways to expand and upgrade their regional production networks, with China as the main prize. Part 3 examines constraints to change. I highlight peculiar features of the Japanese network management model in East Asia that once may have reflected strength. But now these very same features have turned into systemic weaknesses, as they constrain the capacity of Japanese firms to cope with and shape East Asia's increasingly complex processes of regionalization. The chapter concludes with an illustrative example of how some Japanese electronics firms are seeking to turn around gradually their EAPNs, by developing strategic alliances with emerging new industry leaders in Asia, primarily from Greater China. Forthcoming as: "Searching for a New Role in East Asian Regionalization - Japanese Production Networks in the Electronics Industry", chapter 7, in: Peter and J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi, eds., Remaking East Asia: Beyond Americanization and Japanization, Cornell University Press.