This article explores the history of liquid crystal display (LCD) TV industry from its beginning stage of late 1980s to its popularizing stage of 2000s. Our purpose to consider the industry is examining following phenomena empirically. Although Japanese electronics firms had innovated on an electronic product, their market share fall behind as the product's market become expanding globally. Track of Japanese LCD TV industry is one of the typical cases of this pattern.

Previous research has explained these phenomena stem mainly from the change of circumstances surrounding structure of electronic products and business model of electronic industry after 2000s.

On the other hand, based on both primary and secondary sources, we emphasize on enterprises' organizational capabilities which was proposed by Alfred D. Chandler between Japanese firms and Korean and Chinese firms. This article shows Korean and Chinese electronics firms rapidly improve their organizational capabilities and had come to catch up with these of the Japanese firms during the 1990s, which became the omen to bring Japanese firms about decline in 2000s.

Organizational capabilities of Japanese firms, which was once appreciated by researchers, certainly connected with its competitive advantage even in “the Japan's lost decade” 1990s, and made LCD TV commercialize fastest in the world. But especially in terms of Development, Marketing, and Branding capabilities, Korean firms were catching up with Japanese firms. And in terms of Production capabilities, Chinese firms came to catch up with Japanese firms. Finally, it is in the mid-2000s that they got ahead of Japanese enterprise's capabilities.

This study examines the philosophy upon which Tamagawa Seiki Co., Ltd. is based, and analyzes the management reforms implemented by the company since the 1990s.

In 1938, Hiroichi Hagimoto established Tamagawa Seiki for the main purpose of stimulating regional revitalization in the south of Nagano Prefecture, which had suffered heavily in the 1930s because of the effects of the Great Depression. Since then, the basic philosophy of this company has been to focus on its regional community; this philosophy has contributed to regional industrial development.

After World WarⅡ, Tamagawa Seiki focused extensively on the design of products and on research and development. Further, it actively promoted and organized cooperative factories to contribute to regional development. However, the company faced two management crises between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s. During the management reforms that were implemented in the aftermath of these crises, the top management resolved not to move its factories overseas and, instead, to continue domestic development and production.

The reforms comprised the following measures. (1) The company adopted an original strategy called Tanzakuka that involves identifying core competencies and concentrating on these competencies. (2) The production engineering department was instrumental in enabling the company to produce selected “Tanzaku” products in-house through a mass production system. (3) Upon further expansion of production in the 2000s, Tamagawa Seiki acquired some bankrupt cooperative factories as wholly owned subsidiaries, and established new factories in those areas from which leading companies had withdrawn. Because of these reforms, Tamagawa Seiki realized fresh corporate growth and contributed to the revitalization of the regional economy.