ABSTRACT
Many attempts to explain Japan’s emerging technological prowess and business success in the 1980s conjured up the image of ‘Japan Inc.’, a society where all the central institutions from government, civil service, schools, universities, and industrial corporations were orchestrated together in the concerted pursuit of industrial growth. It had many of the hallmarks of a ‘technocracy’, whether that was meant as a society run strictly on technical decision rules or one whose leading decision-makers were trained in technical disciplines. Gene Gregory, quoted above, underscored this second image of Japan as a technocratic society which drew heavily on engineers to man the important command posts of the economy and society. It is an image which has proved controversial in several respects, from the alleged numbers involved to the deeper implications about the ways in which institutions and organisations work. Two central issues for this chapter are: first, is it possible to identify a distinctive national approach to the organisation of engineers and scientists in the pursuit of innovation, whether at the macro level of the society or at the more micro levels of the company or the project team, and secondly, if there is a ‘national system of innovation’, what are the implications of attempts to change it?
