Masami Nomura and Yoshihiko Kamii (eds), Japanese Companies: Theories and Realities (Paperback)

This book challenges Masahiko Aoki's influential J-firm theory, which explains the behavior of Japanese firms in terms of game theory. Demonstrating the theory's methodological and empirical shortcomings, the authors, a group of Japanese economists, offer an alternative theoretical framework for understanding Japanese business culture and present a series of empirical studies of Japanese companies, which focus on skill formation, information sharing, subcontracting and the role of labor unions.