Production Organizations in Japanese Economic Development

<p>In this important new book the authors explore how production was organized in the context of the economic development of modern Japan. </p><p>Production organizations are taken to mean the long-term relationships which economic agents create for production based on employment contracts or long-term transactions. This includes hierarchical organizations such as factories and corporations but also flexible arangements such as subcontracting. </p><p>Modern Japanese economic development is characterized by the co-evolution of these two types of production organizations while American economic development in the modern period is characterized by the development of a mass production system based on large hierarchical organizations. The question is raised as to why and how a certain type of organization proliferated in a certain industry in a certain period and what the role of that organization was in coordinating production and giving incentives to the economic agents involved. The result is a comparative institutional analysis of the organizational foundations of Japanese economic development in the modern period.</p>