ABSTRACT
The growing success of the so-called Japanese system of production organization, or kiritsu, paralleled the growth of services and the recognition that information and communication were becoming important inputs to the production process. This model was team-oriented and involved greater horizontal control than the more vertically organized Western model that dominated the industrial age from days of Adam Smith. Along with the rise of the service sector, this trend placed increasing emphasis on, and need for, information management and communication. Parallel yet
interwoven with these two developments was the emergence and growth of the computer or semiconductor industry: this technology promised a vision of vast increases in information and data base management capabilities and thus, productivity enhancement. In fact, continued development of the computer industry and its linkage to communication technology in the 1980s and 1990s made this vision a reality.
