IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/ijimxx/v01y1997i01ns1363919697000061.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Realising the Shift Towads Closed-Loop Recycling: Strategies of the Japanese Firms

Author

Listed:
  • Yasunori Baba

    (Research into Artifacts, Centre for Engineering (RACE), The University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153, Japan)

  • Masaru Yarime

    (United Nations University Institute for New Technologies (UNU/INTECH) and Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT), Kapoenstraat 23, 6211 KV Maastricht, The Netherlands)

  • Hiroyuki Hatashima

    (African Development Bank, Abidjan, Ivory Coast)

Abstract

A sign of the shift towards closed-loop recycling has emerged in Japan. By referring to eight firms in the "film with lens", electronic photography, and electric and electronic appliances industries, this paper demonstrates how and why these firms have adopted recycling strategies. Our observation identifies the industrial taxonomy which determines a particular type of corporate strategy, based on three factors: market structure; user characteristics; and technological characteristics. First, a dominant firm, with profits due to the market structure, can bear the cost of recycling privately, while no surplus profits accrue to firms in a competitive market. Second, the type of users, i.e. end users or system users, influences the firm's cost of recovering products. Third, the match between the pace of a product's technological changes and its life-span determines the technological possibility of recycling.

Suggested Citation

  • Yasunori Baba & Masaru Yarime & Hiroyuki Hatashima, 1997. "Realising the Shift Towads Closed-Loop Recycling: Strategies of the Japanese Firms," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 1(01), pages 89-110.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:ijimxx:v:01:y:1997:i:01:n:s1363919697000061
    DOI: 10.1142/S1363919697000061
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S1363919697000061
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S1363919697000061?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bartzokas, Anthony & Yarime, Masaru, 1997. "Technology Trends in Pollution-Intensive Industries: A Review of Sectoral Trends," UNU-INTECH Discussion Paper Series 1997-06, United Nations University - INTECH.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:ijimxx:v:01:y:1997:i:01:n:s1363919697000061. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/ijim/ijim.shtml .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.