ABSTRACT
Organisational Culture 2 Organisational culture only became a topic of interest in the 1970s when academics
began to seek to understand why Japanese companies were so successful, on the world
stage, in a growing number of industries. Japanese motorcycles, cars, shipbuilding and
electronics, amongst other products and industries, were rapidly moving to dominate
the world market. Implicit in this was that the domestic industries in the rest of the world were coming under severe competition and were losing market share, with firms
going bankrupt and having to shed staff. People began asking whether there was
something special about Japanese firms that marked them out as different from firms in
other countries; some magic ingredient that made them more successful. The conclu-
sion drawn was that it was the culture within Japanese firms that was making the
difference.
