Skip Navigation


Enterprise and Society Advance Access originally published online on January 4, 2006
Enterprise and Society 2006 7(1):128-163; doi:10.1093/es/khj004
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
7/1/128    most recent
khj004v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Ibata-Arens, K.
Right arrow Articles by Obayashi, H.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Escaping the Japanese Pyramid: The Association of Small and Medium Sized Enterprise Entrepreneurs (SME Doyukai), 1947–1999

Kathryn Ibata-Arens and Hiromichi Obayashi

KATHRYN IBATA-ARENS is an assistant professor of political science at DePaul University and Abe Fellow, Faculty of Commerce, Doshisha University. Contact information: Department of Political Science, DePaul University, Suite 2200, 990 West Fullerton Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614-2458, USA. E-mail: kibataar{at}depaul.edu.
HIROMICHI OBAYASHI is a professor of economics at Kanagawa University, Japan. Contact information: 3-27-1 Rokkakubashi, Kanagawa-ku, Yokohama-shi, Kanagawa 221-8686, Japan. E-mail: oobayh01{at}kanagawa-u.ac.jp.

In Japanese society the pinnacle of economic and political power resides in Tokyo conglomerates and elite ministries: the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and the Ministry of Finance. Until now, the story of this power arrangement has been told from the perspective of national bureaucrats and big business executives. The image projected to the outside world has been of cooperative, trust-based relational contracting with big business at the top "taking care" of its suppliers and subsidiaries below. The story from the bottom, however, is one of technology expropriation (of patentable technology) and monopsony squeeze (unilateral cost-down demands, for example). Firms unwilling to toe the line have been wholly excluded from access to the benefits reserved for those at the top of the pyramid, where one finds lucrative main bank financing, government support, and copious technological information.

This article offers a historical narrative of the political struggle by independent-minded entrepreneurs in postwar Japan. Central to the struggle has been the challenge of building broad-based coalitions to avoid becoming embedded in these hierarchies while at the same time trying to obtain alternative sources of finance and technological know-how. The most successful example of such efforts is the Association of Small and Medium Size Enterprise Entrepreneurs (SME Doyukai). The SME Doyukai has somehow managed to remain completely independent from the state, while most other small business associations have not. This independence has not been free, and the association has gone through a number of institutional dilemmas as a result. We analyze these dilemmas over time and offer comparative lessons.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.