Abstract
The Japanese enterprises provided, chiefly in the 1980s, a viewpoint possibly alternative to the traditionally U. S. -centered theories on corporate behavior. However, the slump of the Japanese economy in the '90s led not only to decline of interest in the Japan model but to changes in the Japanese corporate behavior itself. This paper reviews discussions in the '80s on Japanese enterprises, particularly their product and technology strategies, and compares them with the behavior of Japanese companies and observations on them in the '90s and later, to examine the circumstance they are now facing. The earlier discussions concerned a broad range of dynamic aspects including product and technology strategies as well as the corporate strategy at large, which attracted less attention in the U. S. where the static compatibility was of major concern. However, Japanese enterprises are experiencing poor performance in such dynamic aspects, and some have switched their efforts to pursuit of static compatibility. Some features of the Japanese model were certainly overestimated ; not all of the modes of behavior perceived as "dynamic" actually functioned. Nevertheless, what is rational in a particular point of time does not necessarily remains so in a lapse of time. Strategies based on dynamic elements should still be effective for Japanese enterprises.
