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1. Introduction
In early 2011 it was announced that, as from 1 April, Japan Airlines (JAL) would be adopting the amoeba management system (AMS) in an attempt to turn round its ailing fortunes. Perhaps such an announcement should not have come as too much of a surprise since the founder of AMS, Kazuo Inamori, had been appointed chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of the ailing JAL in February 2010[1] . In a speech made to reporters at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in October 2010, Inamori stressed that it was "important to have a system to allow you to grasp details of real-time figures and results so that all employees can pitch ideas to improve business operations" ([50] The Japan Times online , 2010). In the view of Inamori, the government bail-outs of the past had served to de-motivate employees and management, and what was required was a system which "increases a sense of management among employees and rejuvenates their interest in profitability" ([8] Asahi Shimbun , 3 February 2011). Reflecting on Inamori's three-year tenure at JAL - he retired from the board on 31 March 2013 - Yoree Koh, correspondent of The Wall Street Journal , noted that, through the adoption of AMS, Inamori had been able to introduce a "cost-conscious culture at the once profligate national airline" ([82] The Wall Street Journal , 2013). The introduction of AMS, initiated by Inamori at what is now the Kyocera Corporation, enabled JAL to recover rapidly from bankruptcy in 2010, posting in May 2012 an annual net profit of 186.6 billion yen for the previous financial year ([51] The Japan Times online , 2012a). As a result, on 19 September 2012, JAL re-listed its shares on the main section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the first company ever to do so after going through Japan's version of Chapter 11 bankruptcy ([82] The Wall Street Journal , 2013). The market value of the shares, at nearly 700 billion yen, made it the world's second biggest initial public offering in 2012 after that of Facebook Inc. ([52], [53] The Japan Times online , 2012b,c).
In this paper we examine not so much the details of AMS itself (since this has been examined elsewhere, see [17] Cooper...