The Japanese Advantage?: Competitive IT Strategies Past, Present and Future

This text discusses how Japanese companies use information technology and how it contributes to their competitiveness. Nine case studies are featured in the book, each one illustrating a different aspect of IT strategy. The book argues that while Japanese management have proved highly skilled in exploiting product and process technology, IT is a different case. It shows how Japanese organizations apply, view, invest in and implement IT and suggests what organizations, both Western and Japanese, could learn from this experience with IT. It describes ways in which Western companies could exploit the weaknesses in Japanese IT strategies, and at the same time suggests ways in which the Japanese companies, especially their European divisions, might sharpen their edges.