Structural Change of Japanese Firms

The effort to streamline management after the oil crisis: Great changes have occurred in the Japanese economy in the way firms are managed and in the way industry is structured. In what follows, I shall attempt to describe two phenomena. One is the important roles that Japanese firms' adaptive management practices and the existence of a competitive industrial system in Japan have played in enabling the Japanese economy to overcome the effects of the rising yen value. The other is the way some of the unique features that have heretofore been characteristic of Japanese management and industrial structure are changing to meet the needs of a changing economic environment.