Conclusion

To the outsider there is much about Japan that is puzzling, even mystifying. Few things are quite what one would expect. For an observer used to the dictates of Western management theory, with its stress on the supremacy of competitive and market-oriented institutions, much of the way in which the Japanese do business will seem wrong. The state will seem too directive, the banks too powerful and shareholder value too poor. The internal labour market will seem a costly waste of resources and a source of far too much organisational slack. The importance placed on creeds will seem naive — even the most uncritical would argue that it is not very likely that a few words could capture the complex relationship that people have with the world in which they work.