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Alliance Capitalism : The Social Organization of Japanese

Business
Michael Gerlach
Published in print: 1997 Published Online: May Publisher: University of California Press
2012 DOI: 10.1525/
ISBN: 9780520208896 eISBN: 9780520919105 california/9780520208896.001.0001
Item type: book

Business practices in Japan inspire fierce and even acrimonious debate,

especially when they are compared to American ones. This book
attempts to explain the remarkable economic success of Japan in the
postwar perioda success it is crucial for us to understand in a time
marked by controversial trade imbalances and concerns over competitive
industrial performance. It focuses on what it calls the intercorporate
alliance, the innovative and increasingly pervasive practice of bringing
together a cluster of affiliated companies that extends across a broad
range of markets. The best known of these alliances are the keiretsu,
or enterprise groups, which include both diversified families of firms
located around major banks and trading companies, and vertical families
of suppliers and distributors linked to prominent manufacturers in
the automobile, electronics, and other industries. In providing a key
link between isolated local firms and extended international markets,
the intercorporate alliance has had profound effects on the industrial
and social organization of Japanese businesses. The book casts its
net widely. It not only provides a rigorous analysis of intercorporate
capitalism in Japan, making useful distinctions between Japanese and
American practices, but also develops a broad theoretical context for
understanding Japan's business networks. Addressing economists,
sociologists, and other social scientists, the book argues that the
intercorporate alliance is as much a result of overlapping political,
economic, and social forces as are such traditional Western economic
institutions as the public corporation and the stock market.

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Alliance Capitalism and the Japanese Economy
Michael L. Gerlach

in Alliance Capitalism: The Social Organization of Japanese Business

Published in print: 1997 Published Online: May Publisher: University of California Press
2012 DOI: 10.1525/
ISBN: 9780520208896 eISBN: 9780520919105 california/9780520208896.003.0008
Item type: chapter

This concluding chapter summarizes the arguments developed in this

book concerning alliance capitalism and the Japanese economy. It
discusses the belief that intercorporate alliances have set the framework
within which other institutional characteristics of Japanese market
capitalism operate and describes the three broad characteristics of the
Japanese economy. These include a high-degree of resilience, impressive
rates of long-term corporate investment, and a market structure with
substantial barriers to entry to newcomers. The chapter also considers
the implications of Japan's economic system for its relationships with its
major trading partners.

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