Japanese Multinationals Abroad

Individual and Organizational Learning

Edited by Schon L. Beechler and Allan Bird

Japan Business and Economics Series

This book brings together research on the spread of Japanese multinational firms around the world. The authors' research includes firms operating in the United States, Germany, Spain, Mexico, Italy, as well as countries in Southeast Asia. The continuing success of these firms provides a model for other countries and firms to understand and emulate.

The contributors in this book demonstrate how Japanese multinationals manage the people in their overseas operations, which has wide-ranging implications for multinational performance as well as the performance of the local economies in which they operate. For example, when Japanese managers find a cultural conflict with local workers, they must learn to find ways to overcome this conflict in order for the local affiliate to succeed. In these pages, the authors draw conclusions that can be applied to multinational firms in other countries that are expanding into different cultures.

Japanese Multinationals Abroad

Individual and Organizational Learning

Edited by Schon L. Beechler and Allan Bird

Japan Business and Economics Series

Description

A defining feature of Japan's emergence as a global economic superpower has been Japanese firms' establishment of thousands of affiliate operations in North America, Europe, and Asia. Despite the tremendous importance of this development, there have been surprisingly few articles published on the management of Japanese operations abroad, and even fewer attempts to collect and make sense of this scholarship.

Schon Beechler and Allan Bird remedy this situation with Japanese Multinationals Abroad: Individual and Organizational Learning, a unique collection of essays from an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars. The book opens with an introduction by the editors, followed by a chapter analyzing the evolution of research on multinational enterprises in general and on Japanese multinational corporations in particular.

The remainder of the book is divided into three sections. In the first section the contributors address the impact of Japanese management practices on individuals and groups, analyzing the interactions between Japanese expatriates and local employees that lead to negotiated "third cultures." The second section shifts to the business unit level, examining the ways in which Japanese firms attempt to transfer or substantially modify home country management philosophies, policies, and practices to fit the local affiliate. The final section, focused on the corporate level, deals with the impact of subsidiary management activities on the organization as a whole. The contributors address various aspects of organizational learning related to the transfer of managerial knowledge from subsidiary to parent or from one overseas affiliate to another.

Japanese Multinationals Abroad: Individual and Organizational Learning addresses a set of issues that are critical for both international business researchers and practicing managers. It not only provides an integrated picture of how Japanese employees and organizations learn to adapt and prosper, it presents an clear lessons for all multinational corporations, regardless of their national origins.

Japanese Multinationals Abroad

Individual and Organizational Learning

Edited by Schon L. Beechler and Allan Bird

Japan Business and Economics Series

Part I. Introduction
1. The End of Innocence: Japanese Multinationals Abroad, Allan Bird and Schon Beechler
2. Changing Perspectives on the Organization of Japanese Multinational Companies, D. Eleanor Westney
Part II. Putting Japanese and Local Nationals Together: Creating Third Cultures
3. When Japanese and Other Nationals Create Something New: A Comparative Study of Negotiated Work Culture in Germany and the United States, Mary Yoko Brannen and Jane E. Salk
4. Negotiated Understandings: The Organizational Implications of a Cross-National Business Negotiation, Jill Kleinberg
5. Roles of Knowledge and "Cross-Knowledge" in Creating a Third Cutlure: An Example of Performance Appraisal in a Japanese Corporation in New York, Noiya Sumihara
6. The Rice-Paper Ceiling in Japanese Companies: Why It Exists and Persists, Rochelle Kopp
Part III. Transplanting and Transforming Human Resource Management: Philosophies, Policies, and Practices at the Subsidiary Level
7. National Origin and the Development of Organizational Capabilities: The Case of International Human Resource Management in Two Japanese MNCs, Sully Taylor
8. Labor-Management Relations in the Japanese Consumer Electronics Maquiladoras, Martin Kenney, Jairo Romero, Oscar Contreras, and Mauricio Bustos
9. When Performance Does Not Matter: Human Resource Management in Japanese-Owned U.S. Affiliates, Vladimir Pucik
Part IV. Organizational Learning and the Parent-Affiliate Connection
10. Globalization of Pharmaceutical Research and Development in Japanese Companies: Organizational Learning and the Parent-Affiliate Relationship, David T. Methé and Joan D. Penner-Hahn
11. Working Together, But How? The Need for Intercultural Awareness, John Kidd
12. Organizational Learning in Japanese Overseas Affiliates, Allan Bird, Sully Taylor, and Schon Beechler
Index

Japanese Multinationals Abroad

Individual and Organizational Learning

Edited by Schon L. Beechler and Allan Bird

Japan Business and Economics Series

Author Information

Schon Beechler is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University and Director of the Columbia Senior Executive Program.
Allan Bird is Professor of International Management and head of the Global Strategy & Law Area in the College of Business at California Polytechnic State University