The price of patents is limited by four sides of business management: (1) avoiding costs of the patent in question; (2) founder's profit of inventors, such as researchers and engineers, to bear risks involved in business establishment; (3) factors supporting competitive advantage identified in the resource-based view of strategic management; and (4) negative impact of big money for the researcher's invention. This tetragon of limitations bounds the price range of patents. This is illustrated by exemplifying the blue LED lawsuit case in Japan. This study presents the four side views on the differences between what companies pursue and what employee inventors pursue. However, these various differences make it possible to coexist and co-prosper between companies and inventors, otherwise they continue the tug-of-war forever on the one-dimensional monetary scale.

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In this study, all employees (including part-time employees) of a shinkin bank were surveyed using the organizational activation diagnostic tool “oractika,” developed by Takahashi (1997). Similar to Takahashi (2014), the results of the survey confirmed a mostly linear, positive relationship between the perspective index and job satisfaction and a mostly linear, negative relationship between the perspective index and the desire to quit one's job. In other words, as the perspective index increases, job satisfaction also increases, decreasing the desire to quit one's job. A further analysis by job type showed that, among part-time employees, overall job satisfaction tended to be high. At the same time, they tended to show an equally strong or somewhat stronger desire to quit one's job in comparison with other types of employees. These findings suggest that part-time employees dissatisfied with their work often quit their jobs, whereas those who continue have higher job satisfaction.

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Brusoni, Prencipe, and Pavitt (2001) posited that the digitization of aircraft engine control systems in the early 1980s caused loose organizational coupling. During this period, the number of control parameters indeed increased significantly with the introduction of full authority digital engine control (FADEC). However, during the period categorized by Brusoni et al. (2001) as the hydromechanical (analog) generation, digital technologies such as analog electronic and supervisory controls were gradually introduced. Moreover, with regard to technological changes in aircraft turbofan engines and control systems, technological improvements in engine power systems were evident in the 1960s and 1970s in terms of the bypass ratio, overall pressure ratio, and turbine inlet temperature. Although engine power systems witnessed negligible technological innovation in the 1980s, control systems improved as the number of control parameters increased due to the advent of FADEC. Subsequently, in the 1990s, great technological strides were made in engine power systems. Hence, technological changes in engine power systems and control systems always occurred alternately. Brusoni et al.'s claim that the decline in organizational coupling was due to the even rate of technological change in engines and control systems or the predictability in their interdependence miss the mark in light of the transition history of engine and control systems.

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Japanese companies often criticize themselves on their own “nurumayu [lukewarm] nature”; however, in reality, according to Takahashi (1989), the lukewarm feeling felt by organization members can be explained through the effective temperature hypothesis. An organization's propensity to change as a system is measured as system temperature, while a member's propensity to change as an organization person is measured as body temperature. The lukewarm feeling felt by members can then be explained using effective temperature, which is defined as the system temperature minus the body temperature. This paper validates the effective temperature hypothesis using data from Survey X, an exhaustive survey of all employees of Japanese Company X, which is successful in organizational reform. The survey was carried out once a fiscal year, during the fiscal years 2004–2013. Like the results of the JPC Survey of Takahashi (2013), those of Survey X show the coefficient of determination of 0.9840 with a surprisingly neat straight line, demonstrating a direct relationship wherein the lukewarm feeling ratio drops as the effective temperature rises.

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Historically, Japanese firms have been leading the optical disk industry in technological development and market development; however, Taiwanese and Korean firms are quickly catching up and have surpassed Japanese firms in terms of production volume. This paper focuses on the optical disk industry in Taiwan and analyzes the factors that have enabled Taiwanese firms to quickly catch up to Japanese firms. Our analysis show that cooperation with Japanese firms and international specialization have been the prerequisites of business activities in Taiwanese firms. This suggests that symbiotic relationships as well as competitive rivalries exist between firms in developed countries and those in developing countries that are quickly catching up.

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