Foreign Direct Investment into Japan and Strategy of Multinational Enterprises

本研究的目的是澄清日本近期的外来直接投资趋势，特别关注跨国公司的决策过程，即实际进行投资的经济动因。这将通过应用被称为国际生产理论框架的OLI范式来实现。结果表明，OLI范式可以很好地解释以下两点：(1)自明治维新以来，日本的外来投资长期停滞不前，处于很低的水平；(2)自20世纪90年代末S以来，日本的外来投资开始增长。然而，近年来，随着全球竞争的加剧，企业获得竞争优势所需的知识和能力的地点趋于分散。因此，跨国公司开始在海外进行直接投资，以加强或创造所有权优势，以期实现…。更多的企业拥有新的竞争优势，而不是提前拥有所有权优势作为竞争的武器。鉴于刚才提到的跨国公司的新战略，有必要重新考虑对日本直接投资的理论分析，按照下面解释的方向分别重新评估OLI范式提供的三个要素。(A)决定直接投资流动的因素不是公司之间所有权优势的差异。考虑到所有权优势在全球范围内变得平等的情况，更确切地说，企业创造新的竞争优势的动力成为直接投资的主要动力。(B)在“跨国”管理或“元国家”管理的时代，重要的是创造技术、知识、技能、创新能力等资产的区位特定优势。为了使地方政府有效地实施对跨国公司具有吸引力的政策，如何积累这些必须在投资后获得的资产，以及跨国公司在当地的子公司应该发挥什么样的战略作用变得重要。(C)战略联盟将在内部化激励分析中发挥更重要的作用，因为那些创造的资产不是与生俱来的，与企业的特殊性和背景独立性密切相关。较少

The objective of this research is to clarify the recent trends of inward direct investment in Japan, putting special attention on the process of decision making made by multinational firms, the economic agent actually making investment. This will be done by applying OLI paradigm known as the theoretical framework for the international production. The result showed that the OLI paradigm could explain quite well the following tow points, namely, (1) the inward investment in Japan has been stagnated for a long period of time at very low level since the Meiji Restoration, (2) the inward investment in Japan has started to grow since the late 1990's. Recently, however, the locations of knowledge and capabilities necessary for the firms to possess in order to obtain competitive advantages tend to disperse worldwide as the global competition becomes severe. As a result, multinational firms started to make direct investment overseas in order to strengthen or create ownership advantages and to o … More btain new competitive advantages rather than doing so having ownership advantages in advance as weapons to compete. Given the new strategies of multinational firms as just mentioned, it will be necessary to reconsider the theoretical analysis of direct investment in Japan by reappraising the three elements offered by OLI paradigm respectively in the direction explained as follows. (A) The factor which determines the flow of direct investment is not the disparities of ownership advantages among firms. Considering the situation where ownership advantages become parity among firms worldwide, it is rather the dynamism of firms to create new competitive advantages becomes primary motive power for the direct investment. (B)During the age of "transnational" management or "metanational" management, what are important as location specific advantages are created assets such as technology, knowledge, skill, innovation ability, and so on. In order for hocal governments to effectively conduct the attractive policies for multinational firms, it becomes important how to accumulate such assets which must be obtained after investment and what kind of strategic role should be expected for the local subsidiaries of multinational firms. (C) The strategic alliances will play even more important roles for the analysis of internalization incentives, because those created assets not innately possessed are closely related to the firm specific and context independent natures. Less