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In the continuing endeavour to work towards ever better management, the engineering manager has a crucial role to play. The history of the engineer is reviewed and his/her possible present role in management is considered. Management objectives are outlined and defined and the specific role of the engineer emphasised. The best managers are leaders, in particular effective leaders of teams, and this is a management task well within the grasp of the engineer. The engineer′s specific training and initial experience give him/her special qualifications in this area. Indeed, there seems to be no reason why the engineer should not climb the management ladder right to the top, especially these days when technology is continually growing in importance. The demands made on the effective chief executive are outlined. It would seem that engineering management has come of age and that with the appropriate management training the engineer should be well capable of filling a senior management role.

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of supervision style and decision‐making on role stress (role conflict, role ambiguity, role overload) and satisfaction of senior foreign managers working in international joint ventures (IJVs) in China.

This paper is a quantitative study using an international mail survey among Sino‐Foreign joint ventures. The final sample size was comprised of 82 Japanese and Taiwanese senior managers working in IJVs in China. Regression analysis was used to assess the relationship among these variables.

Regression results demonstrated that a tighter supervision style by Japanese managers positively influences role conflict and role overload. Surprisingly, centralized decision‐making by Japanese managers also positively effects role ambiguity in Japanese managers, but centralized decision‐making by Taiwanese managers negatively effects role ambiguity in Taiwanese managers.

While the sample size is relatively small, the findings in this study suggest that the effects of supervision style and decision‐making are different between the Japanese and Taiwanese groups. It is suggested that further research of management styles among eastern and western managers is required.

This study contributes to international business literature and provides insights to expatriates by investigating the relationships among supervision style, decision‐making, role stress, and satisfaction. It also provides some evidence that the impact of decision‐making on role ambiguity is different between national groups, which have been given limited attention in previous literature.

Management in the English‐speaking world depends on exhortation, yet without top management's full commitment and support, productivity programmes will not work. To continue to compete on the international market there is a need to manage and utilise resources more effectively; an analysis of Japanese management, allowing that cultures do not “travel well”, suggests the need for a more people‐orientated management style; building on human potential available at all levels of the company; encouraging managers to delegate readily; building effective work teams; emphasising quality of product; providing greater job security; and developing an open information system.

This paper aims to identify problems caused by cultural differences between Japan and China that face supply chain managers by applying Japanese-style supply management practices within supply networks in China and present solutions to this problem.

A single, longitudinal case study conducting two waves of data collection (i.e. interviews and observation) plus the collection of much archival data was performed. It goes beyond the dyad by examining supply management of a Japanese company’s supply chain up to three tiers in China.

The four supply cultural differences between Japan and China, which caused the cultural clashes between JVCo and some of its suppliers were revealed and a model of adaptation of Japanese supply management to the Chinese business system was developed. Adaptation involves creating new supply management practices out of selective adaptation, innovation and change of existing Japanese and Chinese supply management practices rooted in different Japanese, Chinese and Western cultures. A list of organisational factors affecting the adaptation has also been provided.

Due to the adoption of a single case study method, caution should be given to generalising the findings to all Japanese firms.

The Japanese, Chinese and Western managers were provided with insights on how to mitigate the problems caused by cultural differences within supply relationships in China and some innovative ideas on how managers from all three cultures could blend the elements of the three cultures to form a hybrid culture and reduce cultural clashes.

This is one of the few attempts to study the transfer of Japanese supply management practice to China. Organizational theory (i.e. transfer of organizational practice and hybridization) is applied and provides a robust framework to explain the supply management practice. This study also answers the call for a global supplier relationship management paradigm.

This article examines how cultural values influence managerial styles. Differences between Western and Asian cultures are discussed. Managerial practices in companies in Hong Kong that are run by both local Chinese and by Western management are discussed, and compared with American and Japanese style of management. The relative importance of cultural values and the level of industrialisation in the society is considered, and the influence of the level of technology on management style, with particular reference to changes that have taken place in management of Hong Kong enterprises as they have developed, is also discussed. The general conclusion appears to be that the management style is a function of the level of industrialisation, but is tempered by cultural characteristics.

A stratified random sample of respondents was identified from databases compiled by associate researchers located in each of five countries, namely Singapore, Malaysia Taiwan, Indonesia and Japan. The aim of the study was to establish which dimensions of management skill are important to regional customers; to compare British management skills on these dimensions with those of major trading nations active in the region and to prioritise key areas for improvement if Britain is to become a valued member of the region. The major conclusion of this study was that British managers were generally perceived, amongst managers in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan and Japan, to be inferior to Japanese and US managers and, in most areas, inferior to German managers. British managers were ranked fourth above Australian and Taiwanese managers, who were ranked as the weakest amongst the countries being investigated on a number of skills.

This is a study that aims to explore a new conception of marketing management based on the analyses of the demand side in Japanese high‐tech industries. Currently, due to the rapid development of technologies, conventional marketing and management methodologies sometimes cannot explain why emerging technologies and new usage diffuse epidemically among consumers in a short time.

As a major example of successful technological development, this study focuses on a collaborative structure between Japanese high‐tech manufacturers and two types of consumer communities, “otaku” and “kogal.” The paper explores a hypothesis that each of the two consumer communities gives a different type of feedback to the manufacturers, and thus Japanese manufacturers can develop and improve their products very efficiently.

Japanese management has been understood as “kaizen,” – a management way to improve the efficiency of the supply side. However, today's Japanese high‐tech companies focus relatively on the demand side and have found interesting dynamics of consumer behaviors which can make one technology more valuable and useful in the daily lives. The paper also shows a comparative framework from the viewpoint of the user‐collaboration to contrast the basic difference of management styles among the USA, Europe, and Japan, and suggests that each company in each region can use other region's collaboration dynamics to develop its products, or build a technological standard more efficiently.

The hypothesis and framework in this paper can be expected to fill a vacuum in studies on Japanese management after the 1990s, as a successor to “kaizen” methodology.

Linking informational network and organizational change theories with the multi‐faceted transformations taking place in global competition, in particular the economic recession in the Asia‐Pacific and information technological progress, the paper focuses on two major issues: first, the task facing Japanese companies in accommodating themselves to new trends pushed ahead primarily by changes emerging in the info‐communications industries. It is demonstrated that major challenges are facing Japanese‐style organization and management practices along with the advent of informational network industrialization. Essentially, Japanese business networks are forced to transform their organizational structure in conjunction with open networking and management practices. Second, the paper focusses on the impact of the economic slump in Asia on the strategies and management of Japanese production networks in the region. It is argued that impending domestic restructuring will extend in much the same way to the Asian production networks, while integrating these into new types of international production complexes.

The contribution that the function of management makes to economic growth and development is very difficult to assess. Similarly, the role of education in the improvement of management is not beyond debate, unless it is defined so broadly as to include all the other possible avenues in addition to formal systematic education.

Advances the argument that Western management must increasingly decode the organizational and cultural features of Japanese‐style management – if managerial conflict is to be reduced in joint ventures, subsidiaries, mergers, and relocations – and if Western management is to consider alternatives to its current approaches to quality production. Analyses total quality control (TQC) management as representative of the successful approach to Japanese management. TQC, built around culturally indigenous views of amal (interdependency), muri (excess), muda (waste), and mura (unevenness), contrasts with partial quality measures utilized in Western organizations. Key Japanese features are elimination and/or restructuring of quality control departments and specialists, designation of quality control to the production line, reduction of lot size, utilization of “U‐shaped lines” and a “just‐in‐time” modus operandi.