Book reviews

reading for new doctoral students, to give them a taste of how things were and to enlighten them as to how far back the problems we see as current go. Perhaps it is time to ditch some of the ‘classic’ IT cases which are used to support virtually any new theory and go back a few years to reinterpret the pioneering days with the same models; it would probably be just as valid. If nothing else, this is a very readable book which conveys some of the excitement of the early days of doing something very different.

Philip Powell Warwick Business School

University of Warwick, UK

Reference Kidder, T (1981) The Soul of a New Machine Little, Brown, New York

The Japanese Advantage? Competitive IT Strategies Past, Present and Future Brian Hunt and David Targett Butterworth-Heinemann Oxford (1995) 246 pp f25.00

At a recent small gathering of UK informa- tion systems (IS) academics, the topic of just how little we know about the practice and process of IS in Japan arose. We are all aware of the strength of Japanese industry, but the causes underlying this remain elusive. Hence, this is a timely book which seeks to assess whether the ‘Japanese Advantage’ is in some way due to their use of technology and, more specifically, to their competitive information technology (IT) strategies.

Hunt and Targett have carried out 10 case studies (section two of the book) on a selection of well-known Japanese companies who operate in the UK, including Hitachi, JVC, Nissan, Sony and Toshiba. In addition to the cases, we are given a first section (three chapters) which sets the scene and a third section which attempts to draw together and weigh the evidence.

The first chapter very briefly reviews competition between Japan and the West. This is a useful though very conventional

introduction. Incidentally, here a strange hierarchy of sources emerges for the first time: if you are a major guru or an industrialist you are given a first name (Michael Porter, Paul Kennedy), if you are not quite as well known to a management audience but from somewhere impressive, you only get a surname and a location (McFarlan from Harvard Business School), while everyone else merely has a last name.

Chapter two reviews the literature on the strategic role of IT, giving us the change in the role of IT, the strategic grid, the Index matrix and the five levels of IT-induced business transformation. These are well presented but it is here that one might start to feel a little uneasy. What is offered is fine if you believe in rational, planned approaches to strategic IS and observable outcomes, but what about Ciborra and Jelassi (1994) and others’ recent views on the real processes in developing successful systems? We are told nothing of bricolage, serendipity etc as alternatives.

Chapter three is a bit of a let-down. It discusses Japanese culture and management, but it would by very surprising if this was new to readers. We are treated to a brief history of Japan (isolation and insularity) - land area, climate etc, to issues such as harmony and conformity, lifetime employ- ment, promotion by seniority, consensual decision taking and risk aversion.

Chapters four to 13 present the 10 cases. The structure of the book is such that the discussion of these is left to the final section, so that each case is a description of the company background, the business impact of IT and the process of managing IT. The first case is interesting, as is the second and maybe the third, but the emphasis on description rather than analysis leaves one wondering about the thrust after a number of these chapters. In the 130 pages of cases there are some very interesting vignettes but also some repetition. Perhaps the authors do not intend the book to be read in this way. Indeed, if the reader were to dip into the cases or read them after section three, it might feel better, but as it is they dominate

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the rest of the text. There is also come variability in the level of detail of some of the descriptions. One nice thing about these cases is to marvel at the acronyms of the systems described, which shows that the West does not have a monopoly on silly acronyms.

Section three, the heart of the text, is where we are told what all the cases show. However, first we are treated to a reprise of some of section one; here is the strategic grid (‘to refresh the memory’) (p 201) and the other frameworks too. Chapter 14 points to the mismatch between Japanese practice and performance but suggests a number of possible causes of success - culture, management practices, aversion to conflict rather than risk and IT expenditure seen as a cost. Answering the question about what is different about Japan, the response unfortunately seems to be not a lot. The Japanese are seen to be good at managing IT for automating business processes, good at consensual decision taking and good at rotating people through different jobs. However, decision making is slow, senior managers are not supportive of creative use of IT and ‘some Japanese companies do not give IT the same high place on the management agenda as their more proactive Japanese and Western counterparts’. Use of the three frameworks does not tell us much; the cases represent most aspects of most dimensions, but this may say more about the frameworks than about the cases. The conclusion is that the Japanese are efficient, thorough, but conservative users of IT.

The penultimate chapter tooks at head office control. A theme running through the cases is the lack of autonomy of European subsidiaries of Japanese companies, though there is some local control of finances, and of the identification of new IT systems. Again, placing the companies on a grid of strategic direction and head office control does not reveal much - some organizations are placed in each quadrant. Perhaps Japanese companies are no more homo- geneous than Western ones.

The final chapter ‘Eclipsing the sun?’ concludes the book. It presents arguments

Book reviews

for a Japanese ‘win’ - the existence of learning organizations, the experience of having to catch up, financial strength, the educational system and national pressures for success; and for a Western ‘win’ - which are not Western strengths but Japanese weaknesses - a lack of radicalism, a life- cycle in everything so failure some time is inevitable, emergence of the other Asian Tigers, and the same educational system. So we come to the page which weighs the balance by summarizing the previous arguments. And the conclusion? ‘. . it may seem unlikely that Japan can win. If pressed this is where we would lay our bets. However we would do so with some trepidation.’

Published in conjunction with Manage- ment Today, this text is not really intended for the academic reader, though it might be useful on MBA courses to give a more inter- national flavour; it will find much greater favour with practitioners, but whether, in the end, it is prescriptive enough for this audience is debatable. It is clear we do need to know more about what is happening in Japan and this book starts to fill the gap. Where it, perhaps, falls down is in the balance of description versus analysis and, maybe, also in the fact that after the analysis we’re not much better informed because Japanese firms seem as disparate as Western ones. This in itself is a useful finding and the authors cannot be blamed for it since it follows from their analysis, though it is an anticlimax for anyone looking for ‘the answer’. The final three chapters are definitely worth a read and may stimulate interest in the cases which might be best read after section three. This book is a good step in the right direction.

Philip Powell Information Systems Research Unit

Warwick Business School, UK

Reference Ciborra, C and Jelassi, T (eds) (1994) The Grass Roots of IT and Strategy in Strategic Information Systems: A European Perspective Wiley, Chicester

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