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This paper investigates the acceptance of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) in Japan, the UK and Germany and speculates on the implications for policy and practice. Three on-line surveys of 3,000 members of the public in total, which were conducted in January 2017 (Japan), March 2018 (UK) and November/December 2018 (Germany) were analysed using Principal Component Analysis and then with an Ordered Logit Model. It finds that acceptance of AVs was higher amongst people with higher expectations of the benefits of AVs, those with less knowledge of AVs, and those with lower perceptions of risk. It also finds frequent drivers and car passengers to be more accepting, but that socio-economic factors were mostly insignificant. Finally, there were significant cultural differences between the levels of acceptance between Japan (broadly positive), the UK (broadly neutral) and Germany (broadly negative). These findings suggest that AV promoters should raise (or at least maintain) expectations of AVs among the public; engage with the public to reverse the negative perception of AVs; address AV-generated fears; not bother targeting people by socio-economic group; target frequent car drivers and passengers with information about what AVs could do for them; and target countries where AVs already enjoy a positive image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the natural monopoly features of infrastructure industries, together with their strategic roles, have been important elements in state intervention. The aim of this paper is to evaluate what relative weight was attached to market failure problems on the one hand and geo-political factors on the other. For the period 1830-1939, how far were geo-political factors stronger than natural monopoly problems in accounting for the scale of intervention in the various countries of the Western World? How far did the policy instruments for security and market failure overlap? Whilst most of the infrastructure sectors are covered - including internal telecommunications, coal, gas, shipping, electricity and water - special attention is devoted to international submarine telegraph tables and railways. The paper concludes by demonstrating strong differences between Britain and USA on the one hand and Continental Europe plus Japan on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japanese firms have a firmly established reputation as influential foreign investors, originating from the surge of foreign direct investment into North America and Europe during the 1980s. This paper examines trends in Japanese corporate behaviour in the United Kingdom, a key investment destination for Japanese firms, over the period 1991 to 2010. Our ‘demographic’ analysis of Japanese firms' investments includes both investment and exit strategies. It is found that Japanese firms have reconfigured their UK presence in response to a rapidly changing market environment, with an enduring proclivity to cluster, notwithstanding government incentives intended to channel investment towards specific regions of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the origins and potential effects of the liberalising reform agenda in Japanese secondary education in the light of experiences in the UK with policies such as local school management and school choice. The analysis is based on extensive interviews conducted with Japanese policy-makers, school heads and Prefectural administrators in 1997 in Tokyo and Osaka. The research was part of a joint Anglo-Japanese study, supported by the Japanese Embassy in London, and the analysis here highlights issues of national perspective which emerged in the collaboration between English and Japanese researchers observing reforms in each other's countries. The paper argues that the reform agenda in Japan has two strands. These involve both a necessary diversification of curriculum and pedagogic practices, and an administrative shift towards deregulation and school competition which may undermine some of the traditional strengths of Japanese secondary schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The serious problem in Japanese education today is the excess of competition. Although that helps the high standard of Japanese education, it also brings about many difficulties for young people. The competition in the school system is, in general, closely related to the competition in society as a whole, especially in the labour market. The structure of the labour market has a strong influence on competition in the school. For example, the British segmented labour market divides the competition by occupation, and it helps the diversified structure of post-compulsory education/training. Meanwhile, in the Japanese labour market, which is characterised by Japanese-style employment, the competition is little divided by occupation, and this helps the unitary structure of competition in the school. Comparing Japan and Britain, this paper will examine the structural causes of the competition in the school system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out to compare the reaction from two cultures (Japan and the United Kingdom) to very similar training programs aimed at the development of organizational change agent skills and to speculate on the implications of, and reasons for, some of the differences in these reactions. It is unfortunately not possible to compare identical programs, as there were slight differences in design in programs run in each country. These differences were in part due to the designers' assumptions about what would be acceptable within each culture. What follows is, therefore, simply an account of personal experiences put forward as the basis for discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Umbilical cord blood unit (CBU) "quantity" continues to grow internationally, while cord blood transplantation (CBT) "quality" remains poorly defined and subject to uncertainty. CBT "quality" is affected by both the product (i.e. CBUs) and CBT processes, with "best practice" varying across countries. To improve overall CBT "quality", we need to better understand the uncertainty associated with CBUs and CBT processes and how staff manage it. In this qualitative study, we conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with individuals working in CBT in UK and Japan. We found that understanding of CBT quality by the cord blood community is underpinned by the quality of the CBU, the expertise and collaboration of scientific and clinical stakeholders, trust in collection and testing processes and international accreditation. Importantly, we found that local and individual experience is used to manage uncertainty within CBT, and we propose that selection guidelines should acknowledge the extent of uncertainty in decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We question why child poverty still prevails even in high-income countries, such as Japan, Sweden and the United Kingdom. We address the intersection between social relations and individual experiences that should be considered when optimising children's capability. The study is therefore aimed at exploring compensatory societal actions taken to optimise children's capability among these affluent countries. In order to do so, we operationalised children's capability by including key societal domains along with statistical indicators and variables from relevant sources. A secondary quantitative method was adopted by drawing upon data sources from 2000 up to almost 2020 from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Bank and the United Nations Children's Fund, with these being complemented by governmental data. Given a lack of currently available and comparable data for those three countries, four key societal domains were explored in an absolute descriptive analysis. It is obvious that child poverty prevailed over the focal 20 years in these three high-income countries. Also, the exploratory data analysis revealed a lack of sufficient supporting social services in each societal domain. This demonstrates that optimising children's capability should not just be about subsidising economic resources, but also supporting all initiatives aimed at addressing the lack of interactions between each domain of children's capability. The study shows how essential it is to consider societal compensatory measures along with supporting the financial circumstances. We therefore argue that optimising children's capability should not only be about subsidising economic resources, but also ensuring adequate social resources and relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the strategic level, international differences have proved important, especially during international collaborations. Since Dore's classic "British Factory: Japanese Factory," comparative values, behavior, and institutional settings have been extensively investigated, though attention has only recently switched to emerging markets such as that of Russia, which was not covered by Hofstede's comparative values study. Harvard's matched comparison of Soviet and U.S. decision making by Lawrence and Vlachoutsicos (around 1988) provided a classic study portraying behavioral differences just prior to transition. Coincidentally, my matched comparisons between the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and Japan involved the same U.S. company investigated by Harvard, aiding comparisons in all five countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes and compares the culture and organization structure of Japanese and British organizations. The article is based on a study of cross-cultural analysis of bureaucracy within a sample of British and Japanese firms. Recognition has been given to the various conflicting schools of bureaucracy, including the incorporation of task-environment variables as well as elements of context in analyses measuring organization structure. Institutional data were collected from structured interviews with chief executives in each organization, and where necessary, with senior managers and department heads. Where possible, the interviews were verified by company manuals and reports, union contracts, brochures, and organization charts. The study seeks to relate systematically variables of context, structure, and individual behavior, employing standardized measurement instruments tested for scaling validity within particular nations. The findings of the analysis reveal that Japanese firms are more formalized, more centralized, and more hierarchically differentiated than British firms.

This study is a cross-cultural examination of interactivity on U.S., U.K., Japanese, and South Korean corporate Web sites. Each Web site was content-analyzed for use of various interactivity functions. Using cultural difference criteria of high versus low context, power distance, and individualism-collectivism, this study compares three dimensions of interactivity on the Web sites of each country's top 50 advertisers. Twenty-five interactivity functions/indicators, classified into three interactivity dimensions, were used in the final data analysis to test three research hypotheses, Our findings indicate that Western Web sites tend to emphasize consumer-message (HI) and consumer-marketer interactivity (H2), whereas Eastern Web sites highlight consumer-consumer interactivity (H3). Implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article follows the evolution of biopharmaceutical firms as they bore great uncertainty and risks in their endeavours to commercialise new therapies – through the regenerative medicine industry in the United States, Britain and Japan. Despite its beginnings in the 1970s, regenerative medicines have yet to become a widely accepted form of medicine. A large part of the problem lay with the lack of 'fit' with the broader health context. This article illustrates how the trajectory of the sector was shaped, not only by the nature of the technology, but also by the complex contexts in which firms were embedded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise in international markets of new, productive Japanese car manufacturers provoked intense world competition, which created serious doubts about the economic sustainability of an industry mostly dominated until the 1970s by European and North-American multinational companies. Ultimately, this crisis provoked a deep transformation of the industry, with consequences that had a permanent impact on European companies in the sector. American and later European manufacturers were successful in lobbying governments to provide protection. Using a rich source of data from the UK, I show that the ‘new trade policy’, voluntary export restraint (VER), placed on Japanese exports of new cars from 1977 to December 1999, was binding. This case study illustrates the strategies used by Japanese manufacturers to gain access to the European market through the UK market via strategic alliances and later through transplant production, against which continental European nation states were unable to fully insulate themselves. It is also shown that the policy had a profound effect on the nature of Japanese products, as Japanese firms responded to the quantity restraints by radically altering the product characteristics of their automobiles and shifting towards larger autos and new goods, to maximise their profits subject to the binding constraint. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reflects on the contributions of the U.S. and Great Britain to Japanese and German corporate governance (CG) after World War II. Although different forms of CG have developed around the world in response to market forces and national culture, serious doubts have been cast on the ability of national governments to influence CG through legal changes. If governments can influence CG significantly, therefore, the most propitious circumstances were likely to occur under military occupation,, when an occupying government is free from any local electoral pressure, and citizens are demoralized and helpless in defeat. It seems appropriate therefore to reflect on the immediate post-World War Two period as potentially a miniature controlled laboratory of social experiment when occupying American and British military governments were in very strong position to reform CG in Japan and Germany in their own images. However, it turns out that, although many of their regulatory changes were subsequently modified and even reversed by domestic governments later restored to power, in some subtle ways, these changes did lay a basis for rapid post-war economic recoveries in Germany and Japan,

The article analyzes the Chinese-western scholarly interaction. China has signified its willingness to strengthen ties with western universities and maintain or increase the flow of scholarly exchange. Chinese leaders are confident that their scholars will absorb from the West techniques that will be useful for a modern, independent China. An examination of China's academic exchange with Great Britain, France and West Germany was undertaken, and the exchange policies and programs of the U.S. Canada and Japan in relation to China was reviewed.

The article discusses the strategic assessment of Japanese rise in the cotton textile industry as threat to Lancashire, Great Britain. In 1910-13, Great Britain's exports of cotton piece goods averaged 6,665 million yards or three times the combined exports of the six largest exporters namely, Italy, France, the United States, Germany, Belgium and Japan. The growth of the Japanese cotton industry was maintained during the replacement and replenishment boom of 1918-20. Recognizing the seriousness of the devastating resurgence of Japanese competition, Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Manchester, Great Britain in August 1930 set up a permanent service to monitor Japan's progress and disseminate information about it to the chamber's affiliates. The line of approach to the problem of Japanese competition was to bring the Japanese in the form of representatives of the cotton trade rather than the government in the first instance to the negotiating table, to reach agreement with them on prices and market shares.

This article examines the labor management and the practice of industrial relations in Great Britain, U.S. and Japan. This article draws on the work of Alfred Chandler and his intellectual predecessors and followers in economics, business history, and industrial relations. Such an approach emphasizes markets and firms in a historical context. The Chandler thesis is essentially an argument about the relationship between markets and technologies, firm strategies, and corporate structures. British firms, in particular the family-owned firms that predominated in the British economy, were more conservative. Intent on maintaining family control, they paid less attention to recruiting and training a professional management hierarchy and to developing organizational structures. The nature of British markets has been offered as an alternative explanation. In Britain, the markets were smaller and less dynamic than in the U.S., and therefore, offered fewer opportunities for growth and organizational innovation. In the case of Japan, a number of large enterprises emerged in the late 19th century and early 20th century to take advantage of domestic markets. At the same time a few of these firms developed overseas markets, especially in East and South-east Asia. The Chandler thesis holds that both markets and organizational arrangements are important driving forces explaining the behavior and performance of the corporate economy.

This article evaluates and compares the management practices, functions and policies of British and Japanese factories. Several of the matters discussed here concern policies and practices of the companies as a whole so that the exact matching of the factories does not matter very much. The author has tried to select for his analysis matched pairs of factories, such as, Taga corresponding with Liverpool; Bradford with Furusato. The comparison is made by considering the two companies: Great Britain-based English Electric Co. Ltd. and Japan-based Hitachi Ltd. The big discrepancy between the ratios of turnover to value added in the two firms, reportedly, is largely due to the fact that Hitachi buys a larger proportion of parts and sub-assemblies which English Electric make in its own factories. The Japanese firm is seen as an organic community which admits selected recruits to life membership. The paradigm of employment in the British firm is the contract, specific in its obligations and limited in time by a specified period of notice. The author analyzes that English Electric is much more like a federation of semi-autonomous product divisions; Hitachi more like a centralized empire. The uniformity of pay systems and the standardization of personnel and training policies in Hitachi contrast with great diversity between English Electric factories.