...a central nervous system to the economy, but one with less capacity for strategic steerage than the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) or the Ministry of Finance in Japan, above all in the financing of long-range investments and rapid alterations in product lines....

...commercial enterprises of Japan may be exerting more power in the framing of national policies than the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) or the Ministry of Finance. 3 However that debate resolves itself, it is indisputable that the Japanese bureaucracy plays a dramatically...

...Layoffs tend to be seen as evidence of management failure, rather than— as in the United States— a consequence or symptom of economic downturn. This...Management Traditionally, Japanese R&D has focused on engineering — product/process development, rapid transfers to manufacturing. Despite the engineering...