Generalized as a result of the Japan Revitalization Strategy and the Act for Overcoming Population Decline and Vitalizing Local Economy, the use of performance measures have expanded in Japanese local governments. However, few studies have examined the effect of performance measures on budgets for programs. In this study, we quantitatively investigate the impact. Our study develops hypotheses that strategic priorities by performance measures increase budgets and that the effect continues for an extended period. For demonstration, we use the Propensity Score Matching and the Difference-in-Differences analysis. The current findings indicate that performance measures can increase budgets despite political context and incrementalism. Our results also reveal that the effect of performance measures does not continue perpetually. It may be necessary to set additional performance measures, cascaded into target years.

Resilience in organizations has become a more important issue in management studies as companies and their members have been threatened by a growing number of life-threatening events including natural disasters and pandemic diseases as well as by economic and technological changes in business environments in recent years. Organizational resilience refers to the ability of an organization to bounce back from setback. The benefits of organizational resilience take a long time to manifest themselves. It is only possible to recognize resilience of and at an organization after it has managed to weather and overcome adversities. Thus, in this research, organizational survival is used as a proxy or indicator of organizational resilience. Organizational culture may not only improve economic performance, but it may also enhance organizational survival and resilience. Based on evidence from US and Japanese companies, I find that not only culturally strong companies but also change-oriented ones were long-lived and resilient, as they weathered and survived storms of tumultuous events over the observation period from the early 1990s to around the first decade of the twenty-first century. Culturally sound organizations are resilient enough to live long.

To execute business strategy under an uncertain environment, several management control systems (MCS) need to be used as a package (e.g., Simons, 1995). Even if the MCS are designed as a package, organizations could not adapt to the changing environment without empowering frontline employees. This study is to aim to examine the effect of budgetary control system, belief system, and employee’s perception of empowerment on individual kaizen behavior quantitatively and qualitatively selecting a business hotel company as a research site. First, this study verifies a three-way interaction based on questionnaire survey data. The results show that when the degree of perception of empowerment is higher, the synergetic effect is more significant. Second, this study conducts qualitative research to confirm the validity of quantitative results. The contribution of the paper is to extend the knowledge of MCS as a package concerning the question of ‘why the results of synergetic effect of control systems differ?’ by demonstrating the impact of the employee’s perception of empowerment on the synergetic effect.

Toyota’s long-term refusal to seriously develop battery EVs has allowed Tesla and other companies to outpace it, causing problems with the company’s dynamic managerial capability. Toyota has subsequently changed its stance, adopting an “omnidirectional strategy” and shifting to a policy that focuses on battery EVs, while beginning to pursue competitors, using appropriate product and cost strategies. Toyota’s range and battery costs are believed to be about two years behind those of Tesla.

Toyota has always had excellent management capabilities, including sound operations management and a well-structured management-control system. If Toyota can demonstrate its dynamic managerial capabilities by adopting appropriate product and cost strategies, it will eventually be able to offer cars that achieve the same performance as those made by Tesla and other automakers at a similar price. When such products compete on the same playing field, Toyota’s carefully cultivated reliability and durability could surpass those of Tesla. However, Tesla is rapidly improving its Ordinary Capabilities, so one cannot be too optimistic.

In contrast with American and European automobile companies, which suffered under the COVID-19 pandemic, Toyota Motor Corporation endured with no significant negative impact. However, in the “wars” caused by the arrival of the age of CASE—namely connected cars (C), autonomous vehicles (A), share driving (S), and electric vehicles (E) —Toyota’s record is not encouraging.

This paper evaluates Toyota’s strategy for electric vehicles (EV), focusing on the following questions based on the theories of dynamic managerial capabilities (DMC) and dynamic platform strategy: (1) Is Toyota’s speed of new entry into the EV business enough? (2) If Toyota’s speed of entry is insufficient, what are the reasons? (3) Is Toyota adequately prepared for the “EV wars” with IT giants including GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon)?

The results were that Toyota’s speed of new entry and preparation for GAFA are not enough because of insufficiency of dynamic managerial capabilities (DMC), though the company excelled with respect to strategic changes executed immediately after the emergence of the era of CASE. The reasons for failing to introduce additional drastic changes were: (1) retention of a mindset that is based on its past success. (2) A lack of a sense of social responsibility for global warming. (3) A lack of a sense of caution for GAFA.