The Strategy and structure of top 100 Japanese industrial enterprises 1950–1970

Abstract

This paper examines the strategic and structural development of the 100 largest Japanese manufacturing enterprises between 1950 and 1970. Unlike other studies of Japanese business the author focuses not only on some of the key differences between Western and Japanese firms such as the emergence of widely diversified industrial groups, but also on similarities. Using the model developed originally by Channon the author traces the development of diversification in Japan and the emergence of the multidivisional forms of organization which as in the West prove to be the major strategic and structural forms in Japan by 1970.