|
|
Article: The History of J@pan*Inc.
- Article from:
- Japan Inc.
- Article date:
- December 1, 2002
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Japan Inc. Communications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
The term 'Japan Incorporated' was first used in a 1936 Fortune magazine article that said: "The industrial hierarchy of Japan is so compact that you can almost think of its works as the products of a single beautifully integrated and highly diversified corporation ... For a generation ... it has been Japan Incorporated against the world."
In the mid 1960s, consultant and scholar James C. Abegglen used the term in a speech to, as he says, "convey the nature of Japanese corporations as having a common financial and personnel policy yet competing among themselves, like units in Alfred Sloan's General Motors."
The term quickly spread, but much to Abegglen's ...