ABSTRACT
While the flow of journalistic and speculative wnting on Japanese management cont1nues unabated. analytical research efforts to document differences between Japanese and U.S. organizations 1ncreasmgly lag behind. Moreover. few of the popular wntlngs prov1de useful gUidelines or testable hypotheses for systematic research. Many such accounts are impresSionistic, pos1t1ng an often mystical-sounding "Japanese management style" dtstlngUished chtefly by the sensttMty and concern wtth whtch Japanese managers treat the1r employees. Although these elements of workplace climate and leadership style may be qutte real and have some effect on the mot1vatton of Japanese employees and the compet1t1ve success of Japanese ftrms. they are extremely hard to measure. or even conceptualize wtth much prectston. as the literature on organtzattonal cultures amply attests. There ts a small body of scholarly qualitative studtes tdentifymg formal structures. management practices. and employment systems that seem distmctively Japanese(e.g .. Vogel.1963; Cole.1971. 1979; Dore. 1973; Rohlen. 19741 but. wtth few excepttons. these are hmtted by the absence of expltctt compansons to Western organtzat1ons and. desptte much nch observatton and dtscuss1on. by the usual problems of case study parttculansm. Quantitative comparattve research on large samples of organtzatlons that addresses Japanese/Western differences tn structure. staffing. and performance. as well as stmtlanttes and differences tn the effects of task envtronment conungenctes. ts still scarce. although a handful of studies provtde some parttal eVIdence (Pascale and Magwre. 1980; Azumt and McMtllan. 1981; Marsh and Mannan. 19811. Thts paper reports on findings from parallel surveys of 55 manufactunng plants tn the United States and 51 plants tn the same manufactunng tndustnes 1n Japan. concentratmg on the relatively concrete aspects of orgamzat1on structure and management practtce that theoretical considerations and past research suggest vary between the countnes and can be measured wtth a fatr amount of prectsJon. The organtzattonal vanables chosen have been the object of numerous past surveys. mcluding a growtng body of studtes conducted outstde Britatn and the United States. whtch proVIdes background to our research and a base of comparison agamst wh1ch the findings may be assessed.
