ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors focus on Japan’s influence on organizational behavior and human resource management. Following a brief review of the evolution of the main literature in these two fields, they identify the most important contributions of Japanese business to management theory and practice. Probably the single largest impact of Japan was the introduction of “commitment” as a form of “social control” and therefore a source of employee motivation, which could be managed by cultivating a distinct organization culture, articulating philosophy and values, and paying attention to work team management. While management theory on culture, organizational capabilities, networks, knowledge transfer, high-performance HR systems, and related areas would likely have grown and diversified even without drawing as much on Japanese management studies research, it is unlikely that these research areas would have become as richly developed and therefore as influential as they did without the work on Japan.
