The purpose of this book is to study an unexplored area of corporate governance. The authors examine whether the corporate governance system can be affected by organizational culture, leader culture, and the operations management system in general. In addition, they study how a specific corporate governance system can affect the organizational culture and operations management system and create a different type of leader culture. This is an in-depth study of Japanese multinational companies and a comparison of their corporate governance system at home (in Japan) and in host countries like Britain, India, and Thailand.The authors conducted a series of in-depth interviews with the senior executives of major Japanese multinational companies to construct quantitative models for Japan, Thailand and India, and to analyze the aforementioned propositions.

This book examines possibly the greatest challenge facing Japanese multinationals as they continue to expand their foreign direct investment: how to integrate local managers into the management process of overseas subsidiaries as well as in that of the parent companies themselves. In the majority of Japanese subsidiaries, management control has remained in the hands of Japanese managers at extremely high cost, but now Japanese firms are being forced to consider integrating local nationals into the management process of their companies, a process which may yield significant competitive advantage.

This book investigates the experience of Japanese women who have immigrated to Australia through marriage to a local partner. Based on long-term participant observations gathered with a Japanese ethnic association in Sydney, and on in-depth interviews with the association’s members, it examines the ways in which the women remould themselves in Australia by constructing gendered selves that reflect their unique migratory circumstances through cross-border marriage. In turn, the book argues that the women tend to embrace expressions of Japanese femininity that they once viewed negatively, and that this is due to their lack of social skills and access to the cultural capital of mainstream Australian society. Re-molding the self through conventional Japanese notions of gender ironically provides them with a convincing identity: that of minority migrant women. Nevertheless, by analyzing these women’s engagement with a Japanese ethnic association in a suburb of Sydney, the book also reveals a nuanced sense of ambivalence; a tension between the women’s Japanese community and their lives in Australia. Accordingly, the book provides a fresh perspective on interdisciplinary issues of gender and migration in a globalized world, and engages with a wide range of academic disciplines including: sociology of migration; sociology of culture; cultural anthropology; cultural studies; Japanese studies; Asian studies; gender studies; family studies; migration studies and qualitative methodologies.

This study of Australian business institutions and practices places the rise of big business in Australia in a comparative context through a study of its 100 largest firms in the first six and a half decades of the 20th century. Unlike many of the wealthy economies of the northern hemisphere, Australia's lists of the 100 largest firms were dominated up to World War II by those from the resource and service industries. The high levels of foreign direct investment in the resources and manufacturing industries is also highlighted. Other chapters employ 21st-century theories of the firm to explore business behaviour in more depth.

In the global business environment, new organizational forms come and go but in today's multinational corporations the headquarters-subsidiary link remains the primary channel by which the firm is managed. It facilitates strategy, control and coordination, and smoothes the progress of inter-unit product, personnel, factor and knowledge flows of every kind. Using data from CEOs of a large sample of Australian subsidiaries of foreign firms, this book brings new insights into the nature of this vital corporate relationship.