Hybrid Factory: The Japanese Production System in The United States - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195079744 ISBN 13: 9780195079746

Publisher: OUP USA, 1994

Synopsis

This book describes the results of a ten-year research project by a joint US/Japanese study team focusing on Japanese automotive and electronics firms engaged in local production in the US. The project is concerned with the potential for effective international transfer of the Japanese management and production systems; how and why does the Japanese management style succeed or fail when fused into the American production environment. This would be the first book of its kind to examine the attempts to transplant the Japanese management systems to a country such as the US, where the socio-cultural environment differs so radically and where the systems will probably meet with some resistance.

About this title

About the Author

Tetsuo Abo is Professor of Economics at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Tokyo and Head of the Japanese Multinational Enterprise Study Group.

From the Back Cover

As Japanese automotive and electronics firms have expanded their operations into the United States, more attention has been focused on Japanese management and manufacturing. In Hybrid Factory a team of Japanese and American scholars explores the potential for the effective transfer of Japanese management and production systems that have been credited with giving Japanese firms their competitive superiority in a much different national culture. The study on which Hybrid Factory is based focused on Japanese manufacturing firms that, beginning in the 1970s, and increasingly in the 1980s, vigorously embarked on overseas production in the United States. The book looks in particular at which management factors that provide strength to Japanese production systems can survive the transfer to the United States, or whether the radically different social and cultural environment makes such a transfer impossible. Hybrid Factory takes a different approach from previous books which only examined Japan's "lean production systems" unrelated to the Japanese socio-cultural background. The first book of its kind, it will be of great interest to human resources managers, business managers, and government employees involved in multinational enterprises, as well as to scholars and students of economics, international business, and management.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP USA
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195079744
• ISBN 13: 9780195079746
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352
• Editor: Abo Tetsuo