Japanese Enterprise as Private Sector Bureaucracy

Abstract

I am going to discuss here a problem related to the question of Japanese ‘uniqueness’, namely why American and British enterprises are different from Japanese enterprises. The idea that Western enterprises are of the company-law type, while Japanese enterprises are of the community type, was first articulated by Ronald Dore. Why, then, does this difference in type exist? Dore does not really answer this question of ‘why?’¹, but what I propose to deal with here is just one half of this question: in other words, why Japanese enterprises are of the community type. In university textbooks the argument usually goes along the following lines: let us consider capitalists setting up enterprises. Where their own capital alone has not been sufficient, they persuade other rich individuals to provide money. In exchange for the money thus provided share certificates are handed over as deeds, and those who hold these become shareholders. In this way capitalists have been able to found companies. It is thus the capitalists, or the shareholders, who become the members of the company. This is, in effect, the company law type company, under which the company is a collective of shareholders. These shareholders use their own money to employ workers. They buy raw materials as well, and equip the company with the necessary machinery. The workers are not, therefore, members of the company; they are merely employed by the shareholders (who are members of the company), and come to the company just to work. In my own house we have a gardener, who comes once a week to cut the grass. He comes only once a week because on my income I can only hire him once a week, but if I had enough money I might well get him to come every day.