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

这是对日本和美国制造企业两年来国际技术转移的比较研究的结果。我利用自己之前对美国跨国公司的研究，以及我们联合研究小组日本多国企业研究小组的主要结果和数据，对子公司日式生产系统的可转移性问题进行了研究。主要结果如下：1)日本制造企业的移植规模虽然不是很大，但到20世纪90年代初，几乎以惊人的速度蔓延到世界的每一个角落。另一方面，美国跨国公司的规模通常很大，更多地集中在发达地区。2)由于日式柔性生产技术与人相关的竞争优势，这一优势深深植根于日本的社会文化背景，决策过程中的“不情愿”是日本跨国公司最重要的特征之一。与美国公司基于更多的工业工程和领先的大规模生产技术的“大学”导向的行为相比。3)这种有点复杂的关系可以很好地解释，当我们分析日本公司的灵活适应能力时，这些公司非常渴望通过派遣大量日本侨民到当地工厂来应用日本的做法。

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.