Japanese Industry in the American South

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Overview
Editorial Reviews
Product Details
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Table of Contents

Overview

In spite of Japanese investment in America and the debate on the competitive edge of Japanese enterprise, we know little about the actual people who are managing and working in Japanese plants. Japanese Industry in the American South describes the industrial cultures found in three Japanese industrial plants in the American South. Choong Soon Kim discusses why Japanese industries are coming to the South, to what extent Japanese industrial management in the South replicates the industrial relations model used in the home plants in Japan, and examines the reactions of Americans toward the Japanese expatriates. The Japanese have had a profound effect on Southerners. Meeting the challenges of the Japanese has led Americans to rediscover their own strengths and weaknesses.

Japanese Industry in the American South offers a different perspective. Western scholars have emphasized the positive aspects of traditional values and practices for Japanese industry, and have even romanticized their effects. Utilizing his bicultural experience, Choong Soon Kim discusses how the American public tends to over-estimate Japanese knowledge about American culture and the Japanese ability to be competitive with their American counterparts. He also talks about the idea many Americans still have that Japanese industrialists are so knowledgeable about the South that they can exploit what are seen as southern characteristics: white, rural, polite and non-union--of people who are supposedly eager to work hard for low wages. Conversely, the numerous concessions, compromises, and accommodations required by the Japanese are exposed and analyzed here. Japanese Industry in the American South reveals a more balanced view of Japan's success as well as struggles to remain competitive in an American setting.

Editorial Reviews

Booknews

Kim (anthropology, U. of Tennessee-Martin) examines the cultures in three Japanese industrial plants to investigate why Japanese industries are coming to the southern US, to what extent they replicate the industrial relations used in Japan, and the reactions of Americans toward the Japanese expatriates. He challenges many American assumptions about how much and how little the Japanese know. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780415914031
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Publication date: 9/28/1995
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 224
Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 8.90 (h) x 0.60 (d)

	Illustrations
	Tables
	Acknowledgments
	Introduction	1
1	The South and Selling of the South	19
2	Southern Incentives and Japanese Investment	41
3	Myth and Reality of Japanese Industry in the South	71
4	Industrial Relations of Japanese Industry	103
5	Response of Southerners to the Japanese Challenges	133
6	The Ethnographer's View of Japanese Industry in the South	165
	Notes	175
	Bibliography	190
	About the Author	197
	Index	199

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