전략으로본 일본의 성공과 실패

Can Japan Compete? (Hardcover)
Porter, Michael E. / Basic Books / 2000년 10월

 좀 오래된 논의이다. 잘 쓰기는 했지만 이 책이 다루는 주제에 대해선 Regime Shift와 Japan: the System That Soured - The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Economic Miracle 을 읽을 것을 추천한다.

다음은 내가 아마존에 썼던 리뷰이다. 

Michael Porter become the celebrity in the field of business strategy with his two books, ¡®Competitive Advantage¡¯, ¡®Competitive Strategy¡¯. Takeuchi and Sakakibara secured their name in organizational learning school with their book, ¡®The Knowledge-Creating Company.¡¯ With this book, ¡®the word, ¡®knowledge creation¡¯ has been widely circulated within business schools.
This book poses the question, ¡®Why does Japan stumble?¡¯ it¡¯s the single most popular subject in Japanese studies. Numerous books come to mind on that issue. The approach this book takes is, nonetheless, unique. While others have tackled it in the view of macroeconomics or political economy, authors of this book take the view of microeconomics, or more precisely business strategy. They argue that more-than-decade-long deflation and liquidity trap are not the fundamental problem, but just symptoms. The underlying problem must be hunted for elsewhere: the eroded competitive advantage of Japanese companies. There has been warning signs since 1980s well before bubble bursting:
1. Since 1980s, no new internationally competitive industry has emerged.
2. The profitability, or capital productivity has long been low. Export share has been achieved and maintained partly by sacrificing returns to capital.
3. Japan¡¯s share of world exports peaked in 1986 (10%). But it has fallen since then to below 8%.
Bubble and subsequent financial meltdown certainly is serious trouble. But above reveals much deeper crisis: the loss of competitiveness.
Michael Porter maintains that firms initially gain competitive advantage by altering the basis of competition. They won not just by recognizing new market, or technologies but by moving aggressively to exploit the,. A firm¡¯s local rivalry in home nation plays a critical role in shaping manager¡¯s perceptions about the opportunities that can be exploited. Firms that survive vigorous local competition are often more efficient and innovative. In the 1970s and 80s, Japan set the world standard for operational effectiveness, that is, for improving quality and lowering cost: TQM, JIT system, lean production, cycle time reduction. Japanese companies pushed the productivity frontier well beyond the capabilities of many Western companies. Japanese companies¡¯ competitive advantage was obtained through cut-throat local competition. But starting in the mid- and late 1980s, the gap between Japanese and Western companies began to narrow through so-called restructuring or reengineering. Now Japan¡¯s source of competitiveness has been eroded away. As a result, international competition has ever more vigorously intensified not in the behalf of Japan. Worse, what drove Japan to be competitive now serve as drag on it. Fierce local rivalry degrade into competitive convergence. It means that all the competitors in an industry compete on the same dimension. As rivals imitate one another¡¯s improvements in quality, cycle time, or supplier partnerships, competition becomes a series of unwinnable races down identical paths. This occurs because Japanese firms believe that by mimicking competitors¡¯ technologies and products, they can avoid being in a weak positioning in the market. Because, as a result of mutual benchmarking, Japanese companies cannot but think of competition only in terms of operational effectiveness for their product lineup converges, the have made it almost impossible to be enduringly successful. The more benchmarking, the more they look alike. To avoid such a stalemate, they try to diversify product lineup. But it inflames only to another round of convergence. This kind of local rivalry has finally led to excess costs to over-differentiation for products as well as their components. Such costs have become too high, thus leading to a considerable waste of resources. When they set the best practices, such a cost could be dissipated at the expense of Western competitor¡¯s market share. But now such an advantage rarely exists, if any. Competitive convergence leads to the lack of focus. The lack of focus results in no obvious competitive advantage for they are over-diversified. Authors recommend to compete on strategy: Operational effectiveness is just one of two ways a company pursues superior performance. The other is through strategy, or competing on the basis of a unique positioning involving a distinctive product of service offering. The essence of strategy is to perform differently from rivals. It¡¯s choosing not to do something. They succumb to the temptation to chase easy growth by adding popular features and taking on product lines or services that do not fit their strategy. Or they target new customers to whom the company offers noting unique. But attempting to compete in several ways at once creates confusion and undermines organizational motivation and focus. Profits fall, so more revenue is seen as the answer. In sum, authors argues that the problem of Japan is more in mind-set than in unchangeable circumstances in Japan.

The market as a social field

The Architecture of Markets: An Economic Sociology of Twenty-First-Century Capitalist Societies (Paperback)
Neil Fligstein / Princeton Univ Pr / 2002년 10월

경제사회학의 기초를 시장 자체에 놓으려는 시도이다. 저자는 시장에서의 행위를 다른 사회적 행위와 다르게 볼 이유가 없다는 전제에서 시작한다. 저자는 부르디외의 필드 개념을 원용하고 잇다.자세한 것은 아래에 내가 영어로 쓴 리뷰를 보라

다음은 내가 아마존에 썼던 리뷰이다 

Over past decades, what has bestowed the identity on economic sociology is the shared hostility to neoclassical economics. But besides it, unfortunately, they have agreed on nothing. And worse, economists simply pass over their arguments. They are no more than fusses about nothing. The reason is simple: there are no potent enough alternatives in sociological camp. Fligstein argues that this is because sociological approaches lack a organizing frame to explain economic processes as generic social processes. To make it effective, there should be a simple and powerful enough theoretical frame. Offering such an approach is what Fligstein intends with this book.
Economic action takes place in the market. Fligstein holds that there is no reason to treat the market differently. Social action takes place in organized social space, or field in Bourdieu¡¯s term. Fields is the space where one try to dominate others. But the domination in that space is systemized and routinized. It defines local relations between actors. Once in place, the interactions in fields become ¡®games¡¯ where groups in filed who have more power use the acceptable rules to reproduce their power: the domination system is institutionalized. This process makes action in fields inherently political. Studying field is about opening of new social space, how it becomes and remains stable (become a field), and the forces that transform fields.
Fligstein replaces profit-maximizing actor with one who takes care of the survival of their firm. Managers and owners are trying enhance the survival of the firm by reducing the uncertainties they face in the market. Managing uncertain environment is a sizable task. It¡¯s about the search for stable and predictable interactions with competitors, suppliers, and workers. Relationship between seller and buyer is fleeting. Stability in the market lies in the relationship between sellers, then. Relationships between them delineate the market as a field. The social relations are oriented toward maintaining the advantage of largest seller firms in the face of their challengers. They define how the market works and how competition is structured. Although the firms compete, they have produced an equilibrium whereby they survive by following the accepted tactics of competition. As forms of social relation, market systems involve both shared understanding and concrete social relations. The shared understandings structure the interactions between competitors but also allow actors to make sense of their competitors actions. There are four types of rules relevant to producing social structure in markets: property rights, governance structures, rules of exchange, and conception of control. These categories are the essential analytic tools in Fligstein¡¯s approach. They enable researcher to dissect empirically. But definition and details are intricate to propose here. I¡¯ll skip it.
Part I of this book sketch out the theoretical outline of Fligstein¡¯s approach. Part II support it with case studies of labor market, corporate governance, and globalization. On the whole, this book is readable and persuasive. Points are clear, lines are easy to follow. In my opinion, it¡¯s a breakthrough in economic sociology.

두 일본의 정치경제학

Japan, the System That Soured (Paperback)
Richard Katz / M E Sharpe Inc / 1998년 5월

세계의 병자로 불리던 헤이세이 불황 시절 일본에 대한 논의를 결산하는 책이라 할 수 있다. 왜 10년이 넘도록 문제를 해결하지 못하는가? 그 해답은 거의 대부분 정치경제에서 찾는다. 이에 관해선 Pempel의 Regime SHift에서 정치학적 접근을 하고 있다면 이 책에선 경제적면을 더 부각시키면서 효율적인 수출부문과 비효율적인 내수부문이란 두개의 일본을 조화시키던 정치경제 시스템이 불황의 원인이자 지속된 이유라고 설명한다. 더 자세한 것은 내가 영어로 쓴 아래 리뷰를 보라

다음은 내가 아마존에 썼던 리뷰이다 

Over more than a decade, Japan has baffled not only its citizens but also foreigners with its inability to sort the mess out. They call it the Heisei depression. What¡¯s the problem of Japan? It¡¯s been a daunting question. There have been numerous explanations. Those could be grouped into three camps in my view:
1. the problem is the financial macroeconomics not the fundamental disease of Japanese economy. Once the bad loans are cleared up, Japanese economy would be on the right track as before. (Posen at IIE: Cargill and his colleagues)
2. Japan is on the bad point at its long-term cycle. Each economy has its own long-term cycle of investment, determined by the level of sunk capital. In this view, ascendance of Japan and Germany over the States in ¡®70s and 80s could be attributed to this dynamic of cycle. In other words, the US was in a bad point at the time. Now Japan is on its own bad point. (Robert Brenner)
3. Depression or liquidity trap must be serious problems. But those are not the cause but the symptom of deep-seated malady. So-called Japanese miracle was propelled socioeconomic regime of ¡¯55 system, in Pempel¡¯s words. It was the key to Japan¡¯s epic story. But now it¡¯s the curse to Japanese economy. The vested interests of the regime¡¯s alliance, or iron triangle, has hamstrung the overall competitiveness of economy. (Pempel, Tilton, Porter, Bai Gao, Brookings Institute, OECD, and The Economist)
Richard Katz is on the side of the third camp. His argument is like this: Infamous industrial policy fostered various industries with policy pair of promotion/protection. But not all sectors succeeded in world market. Those sectors should be liquidated to free resources up to competitive sectors in the view of rational policy makers. But such massive exit or restructuring is not of political rationale. The first oil shock exacerbated things around exit options. Such an attempt would be political suicide. So Japanese government prop them up. But uncompetitive sectors have taxed out competitive sectors and consumers with artificially high prices far above international market prices. It has resulted in weakening competitiveness and aggregate demand in economy-wide. To make up for weak domestic demand, export-drive set in motion. Up to mid-1980s, competitive Japan like electronics, automobile industry could feed up uncompetitive Japan like petrochemicals, steel, service sector at the expense of overseas competitors¡¯ market share. But overdependence on overseas market invited super-strong yen in 1985. So export-drive hurts its very condition. There was 2 consequences: Competitive sectors responded with FDI, so-called the problem of ¡®hollowing out¡¯;s Now overseas market couldn¡¯t make up for the feeble domestic demand. So there should be alternative demand in domestic side. Government boosted the demand with pouring down money. Buddle swelled. At last bubble busted. The problem of Japan is not financial mess but the political economy of two Japans. It has weakened the competitiveness and aggregate domestic demand. Deregulation is the answer. But it¡¯s near impossible for political reasons. So the problem lies not in economic side but in political side.
Katz follows the mainstream line of Japanese studies. So His account of Japanese political economy is not that unheard-of. but he articulates the points with simple and clear economic modeling. The picture he draws up is amazingly lucid and plain. His work could be counted as the constellation of a decade¡¯s debates.

The mechanism of developmental state

Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Paperback) - States and Industrial Transformation
Peter B. Evans / Princeton Univ Pr / 1995년 3월

 지금은 한물 갔지만 developmental state에 관한 논의에서 고전에 속하는 저서이다.

다음은 내가 아마존에 썼던 리뷰이다 

This book is regarded as de facto classic in the tradition of developmental state. The strategy of developmental state is the denial of extant hierarchy of comparative advantage. To achieve high growth rate, there should be high return sectors. But such sectors, in general, have no relation with developing countries. Then, should developing countries rest with agriculture or labor-intensive industries? Not necessarily. Such sectors tend to be low value-added, in other words, with low growth prospect. If you don¡¯t have it, then make it! It¡¯s the strategy of developmental state. But it¡¯s no more than what to do. There was not satisfactory conceptualization on how East Asian developmental state put that strategy into practice. Amsden¡¯s ¡®Asia¡¯s Next Giant¡¯ (reciprocity) and Evans¡¯ this book marked some conceptual leapfrogging.
In the tradition of developmental state, state intervention is pinpointed as a necessary factor to rapid industrialization in East Asian countries. This book elaborates what states did to promote the industrial transformation (or, in Porter¡¯s word, achieve competitive advantage). Evans argues that ¡®embedded autonomy¡¯ (networking between bureaucrats and business) was the key to the developmental state¡¯s effectiveness. What define the developmental state are ¡®the state autonomy¡¯ (or strong state in the jargon of political science) and ¡®the state capacity¡¯. The state autonomy refers to the insulation of the bureaucracy from particularistic interests of, for example, the labor, the landlord, civil society, or the business. But ¡® a state that was only autonomous would lack both sources of intelligence and the ability¡¯ to implement its strategy. But the state that is only embedded is ready for capture. ¡®Only when embeddedness and autonomy are joined together can a state be called developmental.¡¯ Evans takes real world example, to support his conception, from history of IT sector in South Korea. IT sectors of India and Brazil are taken together. But latters are mobilized to contrast Korea¡¯s against them.  

Hodgepodge of conflicting positions

Knowledge and Social Capital (Paperback)
Eric L. Lesser / Butterworth-Heinemann / 2000년 2월

 대학원 수업에 교재였다. 이 책은 지식경제에 관한 것이 아니라 social capital에 관한 논문모음이다. social capital에 관한 개념 소개 논문이 1부에 있고 2부는 실제 그 개념이 어떻게 적용되는지에 관한 논문들이다. 그러나 social capital이란 개념 자체가 혼란스러운 개념이기 때문에 책 전체의 입장 역시 혼란스럽다. 초보자를 위한 책은 아니다. social capital에 관한 학습을 한 사람이 보는 것이 좋다

다음은 내가 아마존에 썼던 리뷰이다. 

I read articles on this book for those are assigned in a graduate class. But far from the title implies, The class has no relationship with knowledge economy which is the buzzword in the business community. But this book was used to make us to be familiar with the concept of ¡®social capital.¡¯ Indeed this book tells less about knowledge but much more about social capital. Part I of this book contains introductory articles on the conception of the social capital and Part II lists real world application of the concept. 5 Articles of Part I voices cacophony, however. Reading through the articles only gives confusion to us. Nonetheless, it¡¯s inevitable and intentional for there is no consensus about the very basic conception. So editor deliberately put those conflicting perspectives in one volume. In turn, this way of editing reveals the fact that this book is not suitable to beginners. If you are already known to the word, social capital, reading through competing perspective doesn¡¯t baffle your nerves. But if you haven¡¯t heard the word at all, this book should not be recommended. Overall, the quality of articles is good enough. Indeed those are well-known ones. But if you want to see what the word, social capital at all, this is not your choice. If so, I recommend Nan Lin¡¯s ¡®Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action¡¯. This book does not only overview the various conflicting positions comprehensively, but also systematically define the concept from the network approach. In fact, Nan Lin is a eminent figure in the social network theory.