A growing number of contemporary organizations have management structures that are less centralized and hierarchical than the traditional bureaucratic model. This book takes a close look inside one such organization: an employee-owned manufacturing corporation. It addresses the question of how conflicts are handled when bureaucracy is greatly reduced--and its findings will surprise and enlighten many readers. Therapy, a behavior or practice normally thought to be confined to the offices of psychiatrists and the wards of mental hospitals, turns out to be the most common way of handling...

Criminal proceedings in which people can lose life, liberty, or reputation tell us a great deal about the character of any society. In Japan, it is prosecutors who wield the greatest control over these values and who therefore reveal most clearly the character of the Japanese way of justice. In this book, David T. Johnson portrays Japanese prosecutors at work; the social, political, and legal contexts that enable and constrain their actions; and the content of the justice thereby delivered. Johnson is the first researcher, Japanese or foreign, to gain access to the frontline prosecutors who...