Thursday 10 December 2009
6:00pm – 8:00pm
Conflict and Change: Foreign Ownership and the Japanese Firm
Daiwa Foundation Japan House
Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
By George Olcott
Published by Cambridge University Press
What happens to the traditional work practices of Japanese firms when they are taken over by European and American firms? How do the employees react? What lessons can be learned from examples of successful and unsuccessful acquisitions? Ten years ago, such questions would never have been asked, simply because the incidence of take-overs of Japanese firms by foreign companies was virtually non-existent. However, in the past decade, a number of major Japanese companies have come under the control of foreign firms. Conflict and Change focuses on five Japanese companies acquired by foreign firms in the last ten years (including Nissan, Chugai Pharmaceutical and Shinsei Bank) to show how take-overs by foreign companies have changed HR and organisational practices traditionally associated with Japanese firms.
About the contributors
George Olcott (Author)
George Olcott is Senior Fellow at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. Before this he held a number of senior management roles in Japan with SG Warburg. During this time, he became involved in the take-over of a wholly Japanese firm, experiencing at first-hand the impact of introducing significant organisational change. He joined the Board of Nippon Sheet Glass, one of the world’s largest flat glass manufacturers, which acquired Pilkington plc in 2006.
Professor Ronald Dore (Chair)
Professor Ronald Dore learned Japanese during the Second World War and has spent most of his life studying Japanese society and economy. Much of his writing has been concerned with what comparison with Japan can reveal about third world development, and about the problems of education, industrial relations and corporate governance in OECD countries. He has taught at London, University of British Columbia, Sussex, Harvard and MIT in departments of sociology, history and political science. Two collections of his writings have been published, [i]Social Evolution, Economic Development, Culture,Change: What it means to take Japan seriously [/i](Edward Elgar, 2001) and [i]Collected Writings of Ronald Dore[/i] (Routledge-Curzon 2002) and he has written two more recent books in Japanese: [i]働くということ- グローバル化と労働の新しい意味[/i] (中公新書, 2006)、[i]誰のための会社にするか[/i] (岩波新書, 2007)