COMPANY AUTONOMY AND N.Y.K.-O.S.K. COOPERATION IN THE INTER-WAR YEARS

Abstract

This paper deals with the plans for a merger between the N.Y.K. and the O.S.K. and the effects that the failure of the negotiations had on N.Y.K. management.
Japan's large shipping companies were relatively independent of the zaibatsu to which they belonged. However, in the late 1920s and early 1930s several forces prompted Mitsubishi to take a more ieterventionist policy toward the N.Y.K. These forces included N.Y.K. managerial dissension and the financial problems of the depression. In particular Mitsubishi favored N.Y.K.-O.S.K. cooperation because it had developed close financial ties with the O.S.K., which had become a major market for its ships.
Kagami Kenkichi, the leading financial executive within the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, tried to implement cooperation and merger with the O.S.K. during the early years of his tenure as N.Y.K. president. The principal focus of this paper is Kagami's attempt to negotiate this merger and the opposition that arose against it from “mainstream” N.Y.K. executives, that is, managers who had spent their whole careers with the company. These managers were more concerned with obtaining government subsidies and preserving the identity of their firm than with negotiations for the merger. Their successful opposition strengthened the forces of company autonomy.