Japan's Network Economy: Structure, Persistence, and Change: 24 (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences, Series Number 24) - Hardcover

Lincoln, James R.; Gerlach, Michael L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521453046 ISBN 13: 9780521453042

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2004

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Authors

James R. Lincoln holds the Mitsubishi Chair in International Business and Finance at the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author (with Arne Kalleberg) of Culture, Control, and Commitment: A Study of Work Organizations and Work Attitudes in the US and Japan (with Arne Kalleberg, Cambridge University Press, 1990).

Michael L. Gerlach is Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Alliance Capitalism: The Social Organization of Japanese Business (1992).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521453046
• ISBN 13: 9780521453042
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 430