Studies of reorganization among large firms, the focus of this IDS Bulletin, has been stimulated by the increasing dominance of Japanese industry and the attempts to introduce Japanese methods into Europe and North America.
Japanese firms have been very successful in manufacturing, and a large part of this success has been attributed to the way large Japanese firms are organized – their management structures, their links with supplier companies and the way they organize production activities on the factory floor. Many Western firms are desperately trying to find out the ‘secret’ of Japanese success and adopt many elements of Japanese practices themselves. In this literature there is a varying emphasis on interfirm and intra-firm organization.
Editors
