"This study is a useful corrective to assumptions that technology transfer is straightforward or even necessary in its entirety."--Business History
"One of the most systematic and extensive studies ever conducted on Japanese manufacturing transplants in the United States. An invaluable contribution to the literature on Japanese management as well as foreign direct investment."--Toshihiro Nishiguchi, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
"[R]epresents an important step towards understanding Japanese manufacturing facilities in the U.S."--Journal of International Business Studies
"The pioneering work by Tetsuo Abo and his colleagues will provide us with some useful tools for analyzing and evaluating Japanese transplants, including the application-adaptation approach."--Takahiro Fujimoto, The University of Tokyo
"This is an important book and a major contribution to the field. It sheds important light on the efforts of Japanese corporations to transfer their systems of production organization and manufacturing management to the United States. Their message is important: The Japanese system can and is being transferred to the United States, but success depends upon the effort and resources companies put into this process. This book is essential reading for everyone interested in the globalization strategies of Japanese companies and the transfer of Japanese management to the United States and elsewhere at the close of the 20th century."--Richard Florida, Director, Center for Economic Development, Carnegie Mellon University
From the Back Cover
As Japanese automotive and electronics firms have expanded their operations into the United States, more attention has been focused on Japanese management and manufacturing. In Hybrid Factory a team of Japanese and American scholars explores the potential for the effective transfer of Japanese management and production systems that have been credited with giving Japanese firms their competitive superiority in a much different national culture. The study on which Hybrid Factory is based focused on Japanese manufacturing firms that, beginning in the 1970s, and increasingly in the 1980s, vigorously embarked on overseas production in the United States. The book looks in particular at which management factors that provide strength to Japanese production systems can survive the transfer to the United States, or whether the radically different social and cultural environment makes such a transfer impossible. Hybrid Factory takes a different approach from previous books which only examined Japan's "lean production systems" unrelated to the Japanese socio-cultural background. The first book of its kind, it will be of great interest to human resources managers, business managers, and government employees involved in multinational enterprises, as well as to scholars and students of economics, international business, and management.
About the Author
Tetsuo Abo is Professor of Economics at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Tokyo and Head of the Japanese Multinational Enterprise Study Group.
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