「ポスト冷戦期」の終わりと国内現場の再評価

グローバル経営への含意

抄録

This paper proposes a field-based (“genba”-based) framework for analyzing industrial performances and trade structures. It is based on an evolutionary framework of design-based (or architecture-based) comparative advantage with a hypothesis that dynamic fit between organizational capability in manufacturing and product-process architecture tends to result in international competitive advantage of an industry (Fujimoto 2007). The proposed framework includes the following components: (i) the design-based concept of manufacturing (“monozukuri” in Japanese), which reinterprets firms’ development-production-sales activities as creation and transfer of value-carrying design information flowing toward the customers; (ii) the generic logic of comparative advantage, which assumes that a fit between country characteristics and product attributes creates competitive advantage of a given product in a given country (Ricardo 1817; Fujimoto and Shiozawa 2011); (iii) the evolutionary theory of manufacturing capabilities,, which explains ex-post rational objects without fully depending upon ex-ante rational reasoning, which explains ex-post rational objects without fully depending upon ex-ante rational reasoning (Fujimoto 1999); ; (iv) the concept of product-process architecture, originated from a theory of axiomatic design in engineering (Ulrich 1995). The paper also indicates that David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage (with its dynamic and design-based reinterpretation) is simple but realistic enough to explain the 21st century’s trade phenomenon in Japan and the world. While the mainstream economics (arguably after Alfred Marshall’s Industry and Trade: Marshall 1919) tended to avoid to incorporate the messy concept of industry and industrial performance in its pursuit of mathematically sophisticated theories of general equilibriums, today’s empirical studies of technology and operations management (TOM), manufacturing-oriented cost accounting, and renewed variants of classical economics may be able to collaborate for this type of genba-based industrial analysis. This paper also tries to describe and analyze a postwar history of Japanese manufacturing industries (i.e., tradable goods). After going through confusions right after World War II, the beginning of Cold War and the strategic geographical position of Japan brought about opportunities for rapid economic growth at the unexpectedly early timing. In 1950s and 1960s, “economy of scarcity” forced many of the Japanese factories and sites to build up coordination-rich manufacturing capabilities based on the teamwork of multi-skilled employees. This historical imperative subsequently brought about Japan’s comparative advantage in coordination-intensive (i.e., integral architecture) goods such as small cars and analog consumer appliances. In the 1970s and 1980s, internal and international competition became tougher due to appreciation of yen and lower economic growth, but many of Japan’s manufacturing sites (monozukuri genba) accelerated their efforts for capability-building and productivity increase for overcoming these handicaps, As a result, many of Japanese manufacturing industries enjoyed competitive advantage, Japan’s trade surplus expanded, which created trade frictions and the boom of Toyota Productiion (Lean Production) system in and out of Japan. This was an era of the “international competitions between advanced nations under the Cold War.”(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)