Japanese Scientific And Technology Information in the United States - Public Policy and Private Initiatives

In January 1983 a group of US government, industry and university information specialists gathered at MIT to take stock of efforts to monitor, acquire, assess, and disseminate Japanese scientific and technical information (JSTI). It was agreed that these efforts were uncoordinated and poorly conceived, and that a clearer understanding of Japanese technical information systems and a clearer sense of its importance to end users was necessary. That meeting led to formal technology assessments, Congressinal hearings, and legislation; it also helped stimulate several private initiatives in JSTI provision. Four years later there exist better coordinated and better conceived JSTI programs in both the public and private sectors, but there remains much room for improvement. This paper will recount their development and assess future directions.

The Japanese Business System: Key Features and Prospects for Change

This paper argues that the Japanese business system cannot be adequately understood without extending the focus of analysis beyond the individual firm to the vertical keiretsu, or business group. The vertical group or keiretsu structure was first identified and studied in the auto and electronics industries, where it is most strongly marked, but it characterizes virtually all sectors, service industries as well as manufacturing. Large industrial vertical keiretsu are composed of subsidiaries engaged in three distinct types of activities (manufacturing, marketing, and quasirelated business). The coordination and control systems are built on the flows of products, financial resources, information and technology, and people across formal company boundaries, with the parent firm controlling the key flows. The paper examines the prevailing explanations first for the emergence and then for the persistence of the vertical group structure, and looks at the current pressures for change and adaptation in the system.