This paper explores the association between managing customer firms and firms’ performance based on the survey research of 53 Japanese manufacturing firms. The result indicates that two constructs (Collaboration and Power) affect firms’ performance such as sales and profitability.

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Capital budgeting is one of managerial accounting subjects in which we often see the gap between theory and practice. Above all, it has been discussed in plenty of papers why Japanese companies prefer payback period method despite of its flaws. In this paper, I reviewed how this preference had been materialized and studied its robustness we can see still now in fact-finding surveys by using comparative institutional analysis.

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The purpose of this research is to estimate how performance measures (financial and nonfinancial) are used in Japanese firms. A questionnaire survey was mail-administered with 3,245 decentralized units listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and data has been collected from 307 units. In financial performance measures, sales volume, operating profit and ordinary profit are reported mainly from business units to the group head office. In nonfinancial performance measures, any measures (besides measures about quality) which are reported to the group head office are equal to or less than majority. In most Japanese firms, they use performance measures as a interactive control system (by Simons), and they review goals and plans in the middle of period if necessary.

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This paper investigates why the manufacturing departments have come to the decentralized autonomous organization in Toyota Motor Corporation. In this study, I could bring out two facts. First, it was hoped that the manufacturing departments in Toyota maintained production to meet the market demand and raised productivity without new employment after 1950 crisis. Second,to meet the company’s expectations, Taiichi Ohno and associates structured the Toyota Production System. As a result, manufacturing departments in Toyota have come to the decentralized autonomous organization.

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Management control systems (MCS) are information based systems that are used to influence organizational behaviour. Management accounting system, along with other MCS such associal control system and belief control system, influences the organizational behaviour. This study investigates roles of MCS in Japanese companies with differing organizational cultures. A questionnaire survey was conducted to capture the roles of MCS on organizational members’ motivation and employee satisfaction. It is found that combinations of MCS that affects organizational members’ motivation and organizational performance differ by organizational cultural types. More specifically, organizations with flexible culture are more likely to have social control and belief control, while organizations with control culture are more likely to have accounting control, more important.

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[in Japanese]

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