Inside the Kaisha

Promising to demystify the traits that continue to confound Westerners even after a deluge of books on Japanese management and business philosophy, this book leaves the impression that mysterious they must remain. The authors (a vice president of Bankers Trust in Tokyo and a business professor at Dartmouth, respectively) show a boundless zeal for their subject, which leads them to frequently repeat admonitions against what is wrong in our perceptions, but does not present a clear view of what is right. Nor do the authors develop a cohesive organization of their ideas on various and overlapping aspects of Japanese business practice. Each case study chosen from the 50-odd Japanese middle-managers interviewed for the book is invariably used to reiterate the authors' entire platform. The book does however, illuminate certain important and peculiarly Japanese characteristics that Westerners may not recognize or may mistake for consensus: process and market share orientation, context and status definition, cartel-like cooperation within industries and the many ways in which the fear of shame acts as a paramount motivator. With the Nikkei's plunge extending below 50% of its 1989 peak, and Prime Minister Hashimoto's tough plan to open Japanese markets, one wonders what's in store for behaviors analyzed here. Already diluted in some outward-thinking Japanese firms, five years hence, some may be regarded as anachronisms from a time when Japanese businesses operated like clubs with lifelong membership. (Mar.)