The International Organization of Technology Acquisition Activities: A Comparative Study of Japanese and German High-Tech Business Units

Capitalism, we can now see, has two faces, two personalities. The neo-American model is based on individual success and short-term financial gain; the Rhine model, of German pedigree but with strong Japanese connections, emphasises collective success, consensus and long-term concerns. In the last decade or so it is the Rhine model…that has shown itself to be the more efficient of the two, as well as the more equitable. Michel Albert (1993), 18 Corporate governance and policy reforms have been major topics for academic debate at the beginning of the new decade. There are many signs of changes in the traditional corporate governance systems in both countries; some are dramatic. This chapter focuses on two questions: first, how deeply have the changes already transformed the traditional systems in those countries? Second, what are the broader implications of these changes for the social systems of production, the ‘styles of capitalism’ in both countries? The changes of corporate governance are part of a more general transformation process of last century’s production regimes. They seem to indicate a universal process of levelling national specificities, of standardization. Thus it is not by accident that they follow on the heels of the lean-production movement which has introduced standard principles of production organization worldwide. That move was oriented at learning from Japan.The success of the ‘Japanese model’ had the adverse effect of reducing transformative, innovative forces in Japan. The leanproduction movement was very much about socio-technical issues, about production and work organization, about workshop control and best-practice management. The main addressees were managers.