A Comparative Study of international Transfer of Production Technology between Japanese and American Auto and Electronics Firms

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This is the result of two years comparative study of the international technology transfer by Japanese and American manufactureing firms. I carried out the above by using my own previous research on the American multinationals and the main results and data of our joint research group, the Japanese.Multinational Enterprise Study Group, which has been undertaking research on the transferability problems of Japanese style production systems at subsidiary. The main results are as followed.1) The transplants of Japanese manufacturing firms, while not very large, have spread by the early 1990s with surprising speed almost every nook and corner of the world. On the other hand, the American multinationals have been usually very large in their size and centered more into the developed regions.2) "Reluctance" in decision-making processes is one of the most important characteristics of Japanese multinationals due to the human-related competative advantage of Japanese-style flexible production technologies, an advantage deeply rooted in the Japanese sociocultural background, compared with the more "university" -oriented behavior of American firms based on the more industrial engineeringlead mass production technologies.3) This a little complicated relations could be well interpreted when we analyzed the flexible adaptability of the Japanese firms which have been very eager in applying the Japanese practices by sending large number of Japanese expatriates to the local plants.