German and Japanese Business in the Boom Years

ISBN-13: 9780415288767 / Angielski / Twarda / 2003 / 304 str.

Akira Kudo

Opis

During the twentieth century as a whole, the United States has been a refernce point for industrialised economies around the world. This volume examines the American influence on two of the most important and dynamic economies in the so-called boom years of the post-war period (1950-73), the West German and the Japanese. Contributions to this volume analyse five different business sectors which played an important role as engines of economic growth and also in the development of the consumer society in both countries: automobiles, electrical engineering and electronics, synthetic fibres and rubber, consumer chemicals and retail trade. The paired case studies examine the process of introducing new technology and management methods in each company and industry with respect to the American influence. They look at the possible Americanisation across a wide variety of functions, including R&D, production, sales and marketing, HR and finance. The book shows that the American models led to a transformation of existing production and management systems which subsequently became the core of the successful West German and Japanese models in the 1970s and 80s. German and Japanese Business in

O autorze

Akira Kudo is Professor at the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo. His interests cover modern German economic and business history and business and economic relations between Japan and Germany in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is the author of Japanese-German Business Relations (1998). Matthias Kipping is Associate Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. He also teaches at the University of Reading. He has written and published extensively on the evolution of management consultancy and business education and on the American influence on European Business. Harm G. Schröter teaches at the University of Bergen in Norway. His main field of research is European economic history from 1850 to the present day, including the level of firms (eg multinational enterprise, innovation) and countries (eg state-industry realations).