During the last few years Japanese management has increasingly attracted attention, not only due to the rapid expansion of the Japanese economy and the consistent redefinition of the familiar economic world order, but also because Japanese management is apparently opposite to Western ways of thinking. For decades Western scholars and management practicians relied on management approaches which were based on stability and relative rigidity against changes in the industrial environment. Contingency theory, transaction cost and popUlation ecology approaches are examples from this tradition of Western thinking. What all three approaches have in common is that organizational self-renewal is widely neglected. Grown structures confirm the further course of organizational development and sudden organizational reversals are the exception rather than the rule. Up till now this management paradigm has described Western corporations rather well as, due to to their success hitherto, they have not had to care about organizational renewal.