ABSTRACT
Japan’s recent climb to the top spot as the world’s most competitive nation in business could well be explained by the effectiveness of management as practiced in the home country. As Japan’s direct investments overseas keep on growing at a phenomenal rate, the home-grown practices of Japanese-style management are also being exported abroad by an increasing number of Japanese companies which are setting up or expanding their overseas operations. Can the features, unique to Japanese management, be successfully transferred abroad to realize the same sort of management effectiveness that has been achieved at home? As a step toward obtaining an answer to this question, it may be useful to find out how much (or how little) of Japanese-style management is actually practiced outside Japan. This chapter presents findings from a survey conducted to examine the extent to which some of the most distinctive features of Japanese-style management are employed by Japanese companies operating in two predominantly Chinese city-states, Hong Kong and Singapore. In addition, findings from the identical survey conducted among Hong Kong’s local companies are also presented in order to uncover similarities and differences in the practices of management across nations as well as cultures.
