Japan Business and Economics Series Knowledge Works

The book describes why in the past twenty-five years Japanese productivity, that is, the amount of output per worker, has been growing more rapidly than productivity in the United States. This book offers a close-up look at a factory in Japan that is typical of what the author calls `Knowledge Works'. Like so many Japanese factories, this one - the Yanagicho works of the Toshiba Corporation - is highly productive, efficient, and flexible. While the factory is ordinary looking on the outside, its workers are anything but ordinary as they strive to improve the way they work and the quality of the products they produce. The key to this is the continuous creation and application of knowledge throughout the factory, from workers on the shop floor, to research and development engineers, to top management. The author explains how Japanese culture and religion prepare workers for their role in this process of creating and disseminating knowledge.