DISTRIBUTION OF
ENGINEERS AND THEIR ROLES IN THE CHANGING BUSINESS, 1920
Hoshimi Uchida
According to a statistical survey of graduate engineers
from universities and technical colleges, the total number of engineers in
Seventy firms, of which 20 were founded between 1910 and
1920, employed more than 20 engineers, against 20 firms in total in 1910; and
11 firms employed more than 100. Increasing the number of engineers within a
firm would naturally lead to the ordering of engineers by age.
Thirty-six large firms hired engineers in specific
subjects who had graduated almost every year from 1905 until 1919, suggesting
the origin of the “Japanese management” practice of employing freshmen each
year and letting them climb up the ladder of positions.
More than 100 firms had several engineers in top
management with the title “manager” or “chief engineer”; most of them had
graduated during the 1890’s, although few of them had seats on the board with
their capitalist employers.
Recently established steelmaking or shipbuilding
companies had recruited veteran engineers through transfer from related
Zaibatsu firms or through headhunting from public or private concerns.
For the first time in Japanese business history, several
firms erected laboratories during the war. These firms were employing young
physicists and chemists who had graduated from science faculties of the
universities in addition to engineering faculty graduates.
BRANCHES OF MITSUBISHI
GOSHI (LIMITED PARTNERSHIP) DURING WORLD WAR I: ACTIVITIES AND RESULTS
Yasuaki Nagasawa
During World War I, Mitsubishi Goshi
opened branches ill
Before the war, the company had its foreign branches only
in
The London Branch sold the company-made non-ferrous metal
such as copper or Chinese products, and purchased machineries and materials for
the company’s shipyard. The accounts for these transactions were settled by the
foreign exchange in the firm. The purchasing was soon exceeded by selling, so a
trade surplus was accumulated in the branch office. With the purpose of making
use of these surplus funds, the company went into the common exchange business.
On the other hand,
These activities of the foreign branches became a
precondition for further growth of the foreign exchange business of the Bank
Division as well as of the proper business of the Trading Division of
Mitsubishi Goshi. Later the foreign exchange business
of these branches was transferred to Foreign Exchange Division of Mitsubishi
Bank, and their trading business was to Mitsubishi Shoji (Trading) Company.
A CORPORATE DEFENSE
--
Takao Shiba
In l939, managers of Kawasaki Dockyard (
While the military authorities attempted to pressure
managers of O.S.K. and Yamashita into changing their attitudes, powerful
business leaders intervened in this dispute. Under both pressures, managers of
O.S.K. and Yamashita had to give up their plan to influence the company
although managers of
STOCKHOLDERS AND
STOCKHOLDERS’ MEETINGS IN THE MEIJI ERA
Yutaka Kataoka
Many of the modern companies in
In respect that those joint stock companies raised funds
mainly by issuing stocks, the role of stockholders was important. And it is
stockholders’ meetings that ensure the rights of those stockholders who invested
in the companies. It is, however, debated that stockholders’ meetings in these
days are nothing but are held as a matter of form.
The purpose of this paper is to survey the function of
the stockholders’ meetings in the Meiji Era when the modern companies had just
come into existence.
The object of my study in this paper is the stockholders’
meetings for the mergers of railroad companies. It is because the merger was,
and of course is, one of the most important affairs for the companies, and also
for the stockholders concerned. Moreover stocks of a railroad company had
relatively wide distribution in those days.
In this paper mergers are divided into three kinds of
cases. The first is the case where the estimated value of the company which was
merged was lower than the stock price of the company. In the second the former
was equal to the latter, and the third is of an opposite kind to the first.
AN HISTORICAL STUDY OF
THE HINO-TOYOTA TIE-UP
Hiromi Shioji
This article provides an historical analysis of the
relations between the Toyota Motor Company and Hino Motors Limited, relations
which formally began in 1966. Through such analysis, light can be shed on the
general characteristics of tie-ups between vehicle manufacturers.
Three basic areas are covered. First, Hino’s failure in
the small automobile sector is discussed. In the 1950’s Hino was a specialist
manufacturer of large trucks and buses. In 1961, it tried to enter the small
car sector but, faced with severe competition, made an ungraceful exit and was
left with a large investment in small car assembly equipment.
Second, the tie-up with
Finally, the shift in the nature of the tie-up is
considered. In the 1970’s, as Japan’s economy moved from high to low growth,
the domestic demand for large trucks and buses began to stagnate and Hino
suffered as a result. At the same time, needless to say,
In general, this episode points out some of the long-term
factors involved in selection and bargaining between partners in vehicle
manufacturing tie-ups.
THE RIVALRY BETWEEN THE
CARTEL OF
Toshiyuki Shinomiya
In
Under those market structures, plenty of cheap newsprint
began to be imported from Northern1 Europe and
But that commonly accepted understanding as dumping
overlooked the in fluence of exchange fluctuation of
those days. As the concluding remarks, after the
A HISTORICAL ANALYSIS
OF TACTICS ADOPTED BY THE MITSUI HOUSE TO ENCOURAGE LONG-TERM EMPLOYMENT
Akiko Chimoto
The traditional years from the preindustrial
Edo era in Japan to the Meiji era saw changes in employment relationship while
not a few of the current practices can be traced back to the apprentice system
of Edo merchant houses as we recognize prototypes of our long-term employment
in their live-out system and branch family system applied to executive
employees.
The apprenticeship system was essentially educational
system whereby apprenticed children were disciplined until becoming
full-fledged, independent merchants. Then, we have to ask why and how the
merchant houses in the
The Mitsui House apparently deliberated on and did deploy
a succession of flexible stratagems in the face of changes within the House as
well as in society. When the House underwent aggrandizement in the
Apprenticeship in any merchant house was a highly
selective process and quite a few failed to fulfill their term of service and
this competitiveness among the peers was quite a stimulus in the training of skilled
personnel.
As a result of Meiji restoration, the practice of having
personnel changed in such way that the role of employees became stratified and
they received their salary in cash according to the newly-introduced graded
salary system. This new system worked as a good incentive to secure long-term
service because loyalty and ability promised successive promotions with steady
raise in salary.
Daijiro Fujimura
After reviewing administrative structures of multi-unit
enterprises in the mid-nineteenth century
Another and more
important difference is found out in behavior at organization building. In
contrast to American organization builders, Schneider’s executives used data
only for controlling activities, so not for evaluating the performance of
managers, and their range of authority and responsibility remained obscure in
consequence. This discovery of another way of organization building suggests
that creation of the general officers which constitute a major innovation in
developing the decentralized, divisional structure was a result of the American
way of organization building, because strictness in the delegation of authority
to the division managers is assured by clearness of individual responsibility
confined by objective figures. The schema of strategy and structure of A. D. Chandler,
Jr., therefore, should be reconsidered.