ABSTRACT
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the management systems of United States and Japanese firms and to demonstrate that, even considered in the aggregate, they do differ in significant ways.
Past comparative studies have taken an intense look at a relatively small number of specialized cases. The consequence has been limited generalizability of such studies’ findings. In contrast we aim, in this paper, first, to compare general differences between the strategies and organizational characteristics of American and Japanese firms through the statistical analysis of large-sample data.
