Japan's Network Economy: Structure, Persistence, and Change

by James R. Lincoln, Michael L. Gerlach

Overview

This book uses quantitative and historical methods to trace the evolution of the Japanese economy's business network from the prewar period to the end of the century. It addresses whether the controversial "keiretsu" enterprise groupings have outlived their usefulness and are withering away in the face of deregulation, globalization, and market liberalization. While concluding that these relationships are still central to Japanese business, the book also notes that they are much more subordinated to the strategies of individual enterprises than was true of the prewar network economy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521453042
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/16/2004
Series:	Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences , #24
Pages:	430
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 1.14(d)

About the Author

James R. Lincoln holds the Mitsubishi Chair in International Business and Finance at the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author (with Arne Kalleberg) of Culture, Control, and Commitment: A Study of Work Organizations and Work Attitudes in the US and Japan (with Arne Kalleberg, Cambridge University Press, 1990).

Michael L. Gerlach is Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Alliance Capitalism: The Social Organization of Japanese Business (1992).

Table of Contents

List of figures; List of tables; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. The structural analysis of the network economy; 2. The origins of Japanese network structures; 3. The evolution of a corporate network: a longitudinal network analysis of 259 large firms; 4. Exchange and control: explaining corporate ties: a longitudinal dyad analysis; 5. Intervention and redistribution: how keiretsu networks shape corporate performance; 6. Japan's next generation industrial architecture; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"I highly recommend this book to students of formal network analysis, complex organizations and markets, and Japan. It inspires the reader's confidence that the years the authors spent studying keiretsu enabled them to really know what they are talking about"
-Robert M. Marsh, Contemporary Sociology

"The structural analysis and knowledge of the context works very well in combination to inform the reader of Japanese business networks, and the evidence Lincoln and Gerlach present supports a stronger role for the individual firm and its network position and a weaker role for the keiretsu as a unitary actor in understanding Japanese business networks...The theory of organizational networks thus seems to travel well across contexts."
-Heinrich R. Greve, Administrative Science Quarterly

"Japan's Network Economy: Structure, Persistence, and Change is an ambitious, original, and meticulously researched analysis of the rise and fall and future of the great Japanese keiretsu...Supported by careful analysis, Lincoln and Gerlach get the story right and provide new insights into keiretsu behavior."
-Brian Uzzi, Northwestern University, American Journal of Sociology

From the Publisher