International Study on New Inter-firm Systems

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This research project aims at exploring and analyzing new inter-firm systems (how firms divide and manage labor and activities among them and what relationships they establish with each other) that have been emerging around the world, building new theoretical frameworks to understand these systems, and obtaining implications for practitioners and policy-makers. We started to investigate field studies with a focus upon the automobile, aircraft, and textile industries through interviews with managers and policy makers in Japan, Asia, U.S.A. and Europe. Incorporating advanced theoretical development in management research, economics, and sociology, we have gradually shifted our efforts to develop new theoretical frameworks and perspectives, while continuing the field investigation to deeply understand the new trends around the world. In the end, we have explored new concepts and perspectives, including the field ("Ba") and knowledge emergence, self-organization, strategic outsourcing, int … More eractions between business architecture and inter-firm systems, the knowledge-based theory of the firm, and interdependency within the inter-firm system. These concepts and perspectives provide valuable contribution to the existing literature on inter-firm relations and present useful research outcomes, which researchers, practitioners policy-makers could use to analyze, design, and manage inter-firm systems around the world. We have also argued that effective practices for inter-firm systems could be applied to public sectors, offering a wide range of policy implications. We have published a large number of articles and books. They include papers on well-respected academic journals in the US and Europe, several research books in both Japanese and English that provide new theoretical arguments, and a book in Japanese for general readers to understand new knowledge in this field. Our outputs could thus be widely shared by many people both in Japan and abroad. Building on the results, we would like to continue to investigate ever-changing inter-firm systems around the world and further theoretical exploration as a next step. Less