Japan and the political and economic changes it has undergone since 1980

Running Head : Japan and the political and economic changes it has undergone since 1980

Japan and the political and economic changes it has undergone since 1980

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Japan 's economic successes can be explicated primarily as the result of a greater dispersion of flexible manufacturing strategies in the country than in other nations . In Japan a large number of manufacturing enterprises produced goods according to elastic principles . In the United States , a contrasting case , both customary industrial ideology and actual manufacturing practices have imitated a much deeper

br commitment to mass production as the base for organizing the economy

Several competitive advantages resulted from the wider acceptance of flexible production in Japan . First , Japanese manufacturers could contend through product delineation as much as through price differentiations 1 . They could offer goods that appealed to more specialized tastes , thus drawing demand ahead of the standardized products made by mass producers elsewhere . Such a strategy , as in the Japanese incursion into the U .S . auto market , is successful because mass producers cannot readily change products to meet new demand their labor , machines , and organization become fixed on manufacturing one basic type of good . The only response a mass producer can make to a product challenge - apart from likable to the state for trade sanctions against the flexible manufacturer - is to cut prices . But even if lowering prices is economically realistic , it does not guarantee success where flexible firms offer products so tempting that consumers distinguish standardized goods as inadequate . Japanese manufacturing was decentralized amongst many flexibly organized firms and so Japanese producers could change goods easily and struggle by offering new products . The result was a partial breaking up of mass markets into specialized segments , which Japanese manufacturers could develop and to which mass producers were less able to adapt

The subsequent advantage was the capability to launch completely new products more easily than producers elsewhere and to form new markets from overlooked technology . The Japanese political economy developed a network of financial and organizational practices that supported the continuous creation of small , flexible firms throughout the high-growth period . Compared to their competitors in other nations , particularly the United States , Japanese entrepreneurs faced low startup costs that made it easier for them to use unexploited technologies in the global marketplace . Hence skilled entrepreneurs with access to underutilized technology could quickly set up operations and enter the market

The system of small-firm support also affected product innovation in existing enterprises , as the diffusion of flexible firms in Japan made it less costly even for large and established manufacturers to accept new designs or ideas . Most large firms spread production among smaller-scale suppliers , each of which was pursuing , to a greater or lesser extent , flexible production strategies . The overall costs of new product development were thus reduced as firms could adapt more readily to new parts designs or even generate such designs themselves . In contrast , the high startup costs and rigidities imposed by mass production in America cut against rapid accomplishment of...