Archive for the ‘Japan Market’ Category

Introduction

In the information and telecommunications sector, the Japanese government eliminated regulations that restricted market entry by foreign-owned entities.  This prompted a number of leading foreign telecommunications carriers to enter the Japanese market.  The ensuing transformation has sometimes been called the “telecommunications big bang,” after the similar expression used in reference to the financial service sector (JETRO, 2000).

Telecommunications is a major service and cost component of offshore processing and the transformation of this industry sector is key to the delivery of effective offshore services.

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Principal trends in finance sector

The three principles of the Japanese big bang and deregulation were:

• To create a free market under market principles;
• A transparent and credible market; and
• An international and innovative market (adapted from JETRO).

The impact of these measures and the inflow of finance sector multinationals can be seen in Table 2.2 (adapted from JETRO, 2000).

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Background to the issues facing Japan: Competing on operational effectiveness

How can Japan’s apparent competitive success on the one hand be reconciled with its low profitability, limited array of competitive industries, and inability to sustain competitiveness on the other? The answer seems to lie in making the distinction between approaches to competition.

In the 1970s and 80s, the Japanese set the world standard for operational effectiveness – that is, for improving quality and lowering cost in ways that were widely applicable to many fields. Japanese companies taught the world an array of approaches, such as total quality management, just-in-time inventory management, lean production, and cycle time reduction that improve productivity in nearly every company in every industry (Furstenburg, 1974).

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