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This paper analyzes Japanese manufacturing firms' export behavior and their performance. In a slow growth era, leading firms' and minor firms' export ratio tended to be less than that of follower (medium market share) firms in the same industry; there appears to be an inverted-U shape between export ratio and relative size of firms. An affiliation with a large industrial group has no positive relationship with export ratio, while other firm-specific factors do not show consistent relationships with it in the years 1971 to 1985. Exports and firm performance do not have a positive relationship. Competitive environment in the domestic market is related to the export strategy of Japanese firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been considerable emphasis on the strategic importance of process and product innovation in the management literature. What actually constitutes process and product innovation, however, is a confused issue in the current literature. Are product and process innovations separate, or are they on a continuum? The importance of addressing this issue is that research over the past few decades has attributed Japan's increasing competitiveness to its propensity to process innovate. This paper uses a consumer-based approach to distinguish between process and product innovation using a model based on choice theory. An empirical illustration of the model is also presented. The model is then used to emphasize the need to pursue an integrated strategy of process and product innovation in response to consumer wants. The model also helps managers decide on the appropriate mix of process innovation relative to product innovation for R&D resource allocation purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the day of the week effect in the Japanese stock returns. Low Tuesday and high Wednesday returns are observed. Most of the positive returns arise during the nontrading period. The Monday effect is also observed in the week whose previous week is closed by Friday trading. Low Tuesday returns appear to be related to low Monday returns in the U.S. The weekly pattern is more pronounced for the returns of smaller firms. A reverse size effect is observed during the trading period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a great deal of interest recently in the Japanese approach to manufacturing, growing out of a concern for finding ways to reduce inventories and increase productivity. At this project's inception, its objective was to assess whether the kanban system could perform well in the manufacturing environments found in this country. Based on observations from managers visiting Japan, the project was enlarged to also assess which factors in a production environment have the biggest impact on performance—regardless of the system in use. Guided by a panel of production and inventory managers from diverse plant environments, a comprehensive list of factors thought most important to manufacturing effectiveness was constructed. The panel established low and high values for each one. These settings were considered representative of the range experienced in U.S. plant environments. The factor settings allowed a variety of representative plants to be tested with a large scale simulator. Results show that kanban, when implemented in certain environmental settings, does indeed perform exceptionally well. However, so do the more traditional systems used in the United States. Conversely, there are other plant environments in which all systems perform much worse. This suggests that the factors themselves are the keys to major improvement. Simultaneously reducing setup times and lot sizes is found to be the single most effective way to cut inventory levels and improve customer service. Shop factors of particular importance are yield rates and worker flexibility. Degree of product standardization and the product structure are also high impact factors. Less crucial than earlier believed, at least over the factor settings simulated, are inventory record inaccuracy, equipment failures, and vendor reliability. Such results suggest that the selection of a production/inventory system can be of less importance than the improvement of the manufacturing environment itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]