Content area
Full text
CAN JAPAN COMPETE? By Michael E. Porter, Hirotaka Takeuchi and Mariko Sakakibara. London: Macmillan Press. 2000. xi, 208 pp. (Graphs, tables, figures.) US$49.50, cloth. ISBN 0-333-78658-0.
Will greater competition revive Japan's economy? This is the question asked by Michael Porter, one of America's foremost specialists on corporate management and strategy. Japan's economy suffered a lost decade during the 1990s, when it was plagued by poor economic growth, bankruptcies and rising unemployment. Porter and his research team argue that new approaches to competitive strategies (micro-economic variables) are required to restore economic vitality, rather than macro-economic policies associated with government spending and generating increased consumer demand.
The key to understanding Porter's thesis is the knowledge that the Japanese economy is really a dual economy, one comprised of a few outstanding industries and firms (electronics and automobiles) alongside a wider array of uncompetitive industries with very low productivity and high cost structures (agriculture and food products, as well as most service sectors such as banking, retailing, construction, transportation and distribution)....