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The global advance of Japanese firms has posed a problem: new international business skills are required on a massive scale. The solution has been to send potential international executives to American business schools. Now there are doubts about the consequences.

A typical Japanese CEO is very different from a Western equivalent. The promotional structure is based on seniority and length of service. Evaluation of performance is constant through the 20‐30 years a person may work for a company before gaining senior management level. The Japanese government and financial institutions retain control and influence over business by sending retired senior officials into very senior positions in lower ranked companies. Key attributes of Japanese CEOs are interpersonal skills, general management skills and marketing or financial abilities.

The attributes and qualifications required by a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in Japan are described. The “life‐long employment” practice, whereby promotion occurs only in strict seniority order, still prevails. However, the Japanese are beginning to recognise some of the advantages of the Western approach of employing managers from other companies in order to gain the required expertise. Within this cultural background, the question of training for CEOs is discussed and the changing nature of training themes is noted.

As Japanese firms become more involved in foreign operations, they need more personnel skilled in international business. Firms try to obtain such skilled personnel mainly by sending their employees to the United States for MBA degrees. Foreign‐trained Japanese businessmen are currently estimated to be more than 10,000 in number.

The transferability of the Japanese management system to the American business environment has recently provided a focal point of argument among Americans. This signifies a drastic change of trend not only for members of American business and management science, who have been accustomed to thinking that they are leading the business of the world, in every sense, but also for their Japanese counterparts who have been following American business and theory. The introduction of Japanese style management is one thing but its practical application is quite another matter; as an old Japanese proverb says, “You carve the statue of Buddha but do not put the spirit in it” (Hotoke tsukutte Tamashii irezu). Without understanding the minds of Japanese businessmen working in Japanese businesses it is of no use, and may even be dangerous, to argue about the transferability and workability of the Japanese type of management in the US.

Many Japanese companies still retain seniority‐oriented promotion as the basis of their personnel management. One of its most significant characteristics is that rank and age co‐vary — the older the employee, the higher he is expected to be promoted in the company. Up to the age of 35 the Genten principle applies, involving slow but steady promotion, where junior managers are allowed to make mistakes as a necessary part of training. After the age of 35, the Tokuten principle applies. The manager enters a system where only merit and abilities allow further promotion. In order to be successful a Japanese manager is typically forced to alter his behaviour from that of a conformist to a self‐actualiser as his position goes up the promotional ladder. In the American business organisation, the single, over‐riding principle for promotion is the Tokuten principle — the US businessman has only to prove his merit to be promoted. Many American companies as well as the US‐Japanese joint ventures operating in the US claim that they are to adopt the life‐long employment and seniority‐oriented promotion system in their companies. However, the general trend in the Japanese business community is clearly moving towards the merit‐oriented system with increasingly less emphasis on life‐long employment. Typical Japanese career development and current changes in the promotion system are discussed.

To what extent CEO profiles may be held responsible for differences in company performance in two countries is only partially answered by data retrieved from a questionnaire sent to 1,081 CEOs in Japan and 893 in America. Within the Japanese group, engineering managers seem to fill a fairly generalised role, while the US group shows non‐engineering types to be the more generalist. The specialist oriented management style of the US companies is effective in a market situation which calls for rapid technological progress, while the generalist oriented style of the Japanese is particularly effective where the integrated efforts of marketing, production and finance are required to stimulate consumers' satiated demand. The correlation needs further study.

Japanese companies encourage a one‐to‐one apprenticeship style training, in which social activities form an integral part, loyalty being slowly nurtured through the junior manager's relationship with his immediate supervisor. Examples of staff development within automobile, steel and food companies show that once the subordinate has outgrown the apprenticeship role, the one‐to‐one bond diffuses to a generalised, company‐directed loyalty. The training is so company‐specific that it does not produce malleable human capital, a problem which may need to be faced as Japanese companies continue to reduce the workforce in response to the post‐1970s oil crisis recession.

Looks at the long recession the Japanese economy suffered in the 1990s and its ramifications on the employment situation in Japanese corporations. Describes, in general, the current trends in human resource management in corporate Japan which have long‐term implications for management development. In particular, focuses its attention on those white‐collar employees in older age groups who find themselves “trapped” in a “career plateau”. Sees their plight as part of the necessary historic process in a move towards a new corporate society in Japan.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.