The current debate about corporate governance in Japan revolves around two axes. First, the nationalist axis sets the desirability of introducing changes seen as conforming to global (i.e., American) standards against the desirability of preserving valuable elements of Japanese tradition....

Books reviewed in this article: Peter A. Hall and David Soskice (eds.), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage Robert E. Goodwin, Bruce Headey, Ruud Muffels and Henk-Jan Dirven, The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn,...

SummaryThe focus of many European and American companies is currently on "modular"strategies in product design and production. A modular product has individualelements which are designed independently but function together as a seamless whole.In this article Mari Sako and Fiona Murray compare...

This paper analyses the implications of combining direct and representative forms of workerparticipation for business performance. Direct participation refers to such things as quality controlcircles, continuous improvement teams and other problem-solving groups, while representatweparticipation...

What factors facilitate and constrain the sustained development and replication of organizational capabilities at suppliers? This question is addressed in a comparison of historical case studies at Toyota, Nissan and Honda in Japan. First, as expected, replication difficulty is overcome by...

This comparison of labor-management relations at Deutsche Telekom (DT) and NTT Group (formerly Nippon Telephone and Telegraph) demonstrates the value of considering both institutions and strategic decision-making to understand the interaction between companies and unions. As corporations...

This paper investigates how employee representation affects, and is affected by, the way corporations structure themselves. In the analytical framework employed in the paper, the structure of the corporation and national labour institutions constitute key constraints on the goals of unions and...