Japan S Network Economy

Japan's economy has long been described as network-centric. A web of stable, reciprocated relations among banks, firms, and ministries, is thought to play an important role in Japan's ability to navigate smoothly around economic shocks. Now those networks are widely blamed for Japan's faltering competitiveness. This book applies structural sociology to a study of how the form and functioning of this network economy has evolved from the prewar era to the late 90s. It asks whether, in the face of deregulation, globalization, and financial disintermediation, Japan's corporate networks - the keiretsu groupings particularly - have 'withered away', losing their cohesion and their historical function of supporting member firms in hard times. Using detailed quantitative and qualitative analysis, this book's conclusion is a qualified 'yes'. Relationships remain central to the Japanese way of business, but are much more subordinated to the competitive strategy of the enterprise than the network economy of the past.

Network economics is a new, rapidly developing field. In this volume theoretical and empirical contributions are collected, each deals with different aspects of the network economy. The book assesses networks as a complement to pure market relations and studies innovation networks and strategic alliances among innovative corporations. Product differentiation and specialization in reciprocal networks are emphasised as a strategy of sustainable development. The book presents econometric methods of barrier and network analysis, including communication and trade patterns.

Recent development experience points to the way business can be the key to a dynamic small business sector, especially where those links are built on high trust co-operative relations. This book reviews different types of small business network, illustrated by an international selection of case studies, including: * Chinese family business networks * ethinic minority business networks * Japanese and South Korean business group networks * Taiwan's subcontracting networks * European industrial districts Network promotion initiatives in Singapore, New Zealand, Scandinavia and the UK are each discussed to provide a comprehensive comparative assessment of small business networks.

Japan is attempting to build a new economy. It goes by various names, such as 'Society 5.0', 'sustainable capitalism', and 'new form of capitalism'. It is to be constructed through digital and green transformation, and a 'virtuous cycle of growth and distribution'. The effort faces strong headwinds, including demographic decline and ageing, Japan's external energy dependence and geopolitical turbulence, and the legacies of Japan's 'lost decades'. Nonetheless, since 2015 a path has been identified that steers between Big Tech market oligopoly on the one hand, and an overbearing state on the other. For others facing the same post-neoliberal, sustainability transformation challenges as Japan, this public-private coordinated building effort is noteworthy. Building a New Economy uses an evolutionary conceptual framework of states-and-markets, organizations-and-technology, and institutional change. It shows how the institutional coherence of the manufacturing-centred postwar model broke down, and was followed by the ideological and institutional dissonance of the 'lost decades'. However, new institutional building blocks have been identified and (partially) assembled which could lead Japan towards a new model which is more open and adaptive. These blocks include a reconfigured developmental state, and new forms of coordination with and within the corporate sector, at times encompassing civil society. Importantly, for a country that has favoured social stability over creative destruction, and has struggled with change, the path forward may require 'controlled dis-equilibrium' of institutions rather than tight coherence. 'Society 5.0' and the 'new form of capitalism' claim to be people-centred; making them so will be the crucial challenge.

Much of the existing literature within the "varieties of capitalism " (VOC) and "comparative business systems " fields of research is heavily focused on Europe, Japan, and the Anglo-Saxon nations. As a result, the field has yet to produce a detailed empirical picture of the institutional structures of most Asian nations and to explore to what extent existing theory applies to the Asian context. The Oxford Handbook of Asian Business Systems aims to address this imbalance by exploring the shape and consequences of institutional variations across the political economies of different societies within Asia. Drawing on the deep knowledge of 32 leading experts, this book presents an empirical, comparative institutional analysis of 13 major Asian business systems between India and Japan. To aid comparison, each country chapter follows the same consistent outline. Complementing the country chapters are eleven contributions examining major themes across the region in comparative perspective and linking the empirical picture to existing theory on these themes. A further three chapters provide perspectives on the influence of history and institutional change. The concluding chapters spell out the implications of all these chapters for scholars in the field and for business practitioners in Asia. The Handbook is a major reference work for scholars researching the causes of success and failure in international business in Asia.

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous, grade: bestanden, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, 11 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: "Traditionelle Unternehmen haben ausgedient, die Zeit der Netzwerke bricht an." - Ken Everett, Australian manager Thinking about social networks one might first think about times long ago when hierarchical structures were a target thing. In those days people were more related on each other. As there has been no social solution in cases of illness or unemployment, for instance, the family was the only solution to help one in such crises. Furthermore the people were living together in tribes, where all generations came together, so the group-feeling was very strong. Nowadays people, especially in the Western cultures, try to create a system of individuality and independence: children should be reared in a way that they are become independent very early and more generations families living in same house together are hardly to find. But of course there are still areas where networks play an important role. Looking in the internet, for instance, one can find an immense number of networks and communities. Although individuality is quite important, furthermore networks play a more and more important role in the business world, as researchers found out that economy is a compact netting of social networks. (Krupp 1996: 290) But Nevertheless, the role of social networks differs between the cultures. In Japan, for instance, business networks have existed for hundreds of years and play an essential role, while Western cultures have just started to discover their importance in business. As the Japanese economy is playing an increasingly important role as a leader and economic superpower in the world (second largest economy on the globe) (De Mente 2005: 140), one may assume that by copying the Japanese networks, one can also copy their success. By looking at these Japan

This collection of scholarly papers examines the influence of Japanese dominance on the politics, economies, and cultures of Southeast Asia. A major question probed is whether Japan has now attained, through economic power, the predominance it once sought through military means. Japan's hegemonic system is not the first to work over the area--before it were those from China, from Britain, from the United States. This collection's comparative perspective acknowledges the distinctiveness of Asian regionalism and Japan's changing role with it. As the subtitle of this book indicates, it is concerned with Japan and Asia and not with Japan in Asia, thus suggesting a complex and at the same time problematical regional identity for Japan.