The purpose of this article is as follows. First, this article explains the long-term Japanese management of two foreign pharmaceutical enterprises that had invested in Japan after the World War II. Then, it clarifies a feature of Japanese management of foreign pharmaceutical enterprise through comparing these two cases. This time, the following enterprises were chosen as case studies. The first is Merck & Co. (USA) which invested in Japan by establishing a joint-venture enterprise. The second is Schering AG (Germany) which ran Japanese business without any relationship to large Japanese pharmaceutical enterprises. And, this article discusses that paying attention to the point how foreign pharmaceutical enterprises had used "Social Capital" in Japan. Specifically, this article analyses how these two enterprises established relations with outside factors, especially medical doctors that had deeply involved the pharmaceutical business, and utilized resources, for example information and relationships between medical doctors, that were embedded in social network of medical doctors. So, this article considers and compares the cases from a specific viewpoint, therefore it discusses in terms of a comparative business history. The facts found out from these two cases are as follows. First, foreign pharmaceutical enterprises built trust relationships with medical doctors based on providing and sharing scientific information. And so, these enterprises were able to use resources embedded in social network of medical doctors by those relationships. In doing so, they introduced new drugs to Japanese market continuously and smoothly. In other words, they have achieved the continuous growth by creating "Capability of take advantage of Social Capital" in Japan. Second, in order to use Social Capital, it was essential to improve the basic ability of Japanese subsidiary. So, foreign enterprises transferred their possessed knowledge to the Japanese subsidiary. Last, the continuous growth, caused as a result of the continuous utilizing of many Social Capitals, was influenced by the entry strategy to Japan and enterprise strategy of foreign pharmaceutical enterprises.
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