Contents:
1. First Encounters 2. The Face of Japanese Management 3. Learning to Work 4. Starting a Career 5. Losing Patience 6. Losing Trust? 7. Regaining Confidence 8. Facing the Future

For many western managers the approach taken by successful Japanese organisations and their managers has tended to inspire awe, envy and incomprehension in equal measure. But what is so special about 'Japanese' management? And how 'special' is the response of Japanese managers to global business pressures ?

This textbook addresses these questions. It presents case examples generated from interviews with Japanese managers in Japan, Europe and the USA, contextualising their comments by reference to recent research in the fields of international and intercultural management. The book explains how and why individual managers variously perceive threats or opportunities in the business and career environments currently evolving both inside and outside Japan. It combines vivid images of the expected and the exceptional, the traditional with the new and unfamiliar.
The Changing Face of Japanese Management offers management students with little prior knowledge of Japanese business and society, critical insights into what is happening inside Japanese management today. It also offers clear and immediately transferable insights to management practitioners who are preparing to work or negotiate with Japanese business partners.

First published in 1998, this volume is based upon the files of the Royal Commission on the Electoral System plus extensive interviews with the Commissioners, cabinet ministers, MPs and officials, as well as leaders of the principal pressure groups. It seeks to place this highly important change in context, reviewing both the long-term trends and shorter term considerations which led to the adoption of MMP, as well as the immediate consequences It is an axiom of political science that whatever promises political parties may make about electoral reform, as governments they do not kick away the ladder that brought them to power. This book seeks to discover how and why that axiom was disregarded in New Zealand, and, above all, how a reputedly conservative party was ultimately responsible for the change. It provides an object lesson in both how, and how not to change an electoral system and should be of particular interest in countries with simple plurality electoral systems.

The Japanese economy has made a remarkable recovery from the so-called 'Lost Decade' of the 1990s. This said, demographic trends suggest that Japan will have to show remarkable powers of innovation if it is to continue to prosper in the global economy. For, around the turn of the last century texts published by prominent strategy analysts such as Michael Porter and colleagues were asking whether Japan could continue to compete at all, and in answering this question they not only gained significant global attention, they also appeared to sound the death knell for strategic innovation in Japan. This collection helps put the record straight. It invites authors and editors of previous (Routledge) titles on the topic of 'Innovation in Japan' to reflect on how things have moved on - prominent scholars on Japanese innovation such as Martin Hemmert, Cornelia Storz, and Ruth Taplin, all of whom appear in this collection. It brings together fresh perspectives on Japanese-style innovation, from insiders and from outsiders, from scholars and from practitioners, all of whose combined contributions to this book update our understanding of how patterns of innovation in Japan are evolving and thus provide inspiration and guidance for managers and innovators worldwide.

The Japanese economy has made a remarkable recovery from the so-called 'Lost Decade' of the 1990s. This said, demographic trends suggest that Japan will have to show remarkable powers of innovation if it is to continue to prosper in the global economy. For, around the turn of the last century texts published by prominent strategy analysts such as Michael Porter and colleagues were asking whether Japan could continue to compete at all, and in answering this question they not only gained significant global attention, they also appeared to sound the death knell for strategic innovation in Japan. This collection helps put the record straight. It invites authors and editors of previous (Routledge) titles on the topic of 'Innovation in Japan' to reflect on how things have moved on - prominent scholars on Japanese innovation such as Martin Hemmert, Cornelia Storz, and Ruth Taplin, all of whom appear in this collection. It brings together fresh perspectives on Japanese-style innovation, from insiders and from outsiders, from scholars and from practitioners, all of whose combined contributions to this book update our understanding of how patterns of innovation in Japan are evolving and thus provide inspiration and guidance for managers and innovators worldwide.

Human Resource Management: The Key Concepts is a concise, current and jargon-free guide that covers the main practices and theories that constitute human resource management (HRM). The entries, defined and discussed by an international range of expert contributors, are drawn from following areas:

• Employee Resourcing
• Employee Rewards
• Employee Development
• Employee Relations
• Emerging Issues

Fully cross-referenced and with suggestions for further reading, this book is a valuable reference for students and professionals seeking to understanding more about the what, why and how of HRM across a range of national, industrial and organisational contexts.

Human Resource Management: The Key Concepts is a concise, current and jargon-free guide that covers the main practices and theories that constitute human resource management (HRM). The entries, defined and discussed by an international range of expert contributors, are drawn from following areas:

• Employee Resourcing
• Employee Rewards
• Employee Development
• Employee Relations
• Emerging Issues

Fully cross-referenced and with suggestions for further reading, this book is a valuable reference for students and professionals seeking to understanding more about the what, why and how of HRM across a range of national, industrial and organisational contexts.

Children often find themselves tangled in a web of unwarranted worry and fear over misleading information they receive from their peers. School-yard mishaps and uncomfortable social dilemmas can create an uneasy environment for children, especially when adult interaction is lacking. Go through what has the makings for a difficult day with Leigha, a fourth grader who appears to be a little light in the wallet when she forgets her lunch money Leigha navigates the day, consumed by rumors and misleading information, dreading the showdown at the cash register. Will it be a detention, a writing assignment or worse? This exciting story opens the door for adult/child interaction and discussion in a variety of settings. Colorfully illustrated by Lauren Gulino, this book has a great deal of appeal for use in the classroom, waiting room or the living room. There are even multiple grade level follow-up activities associated with the book. For more information on ordering and other book related opportunities, send an e-mail to mailto: [email protected] Enjoy

In his breathtaking debut, The View From Here, Brian Keith Jackson took us inside the heart of black family life in the rural South. Now, in a novel that resonates with pure emotion, he sends photographer Jeremy Bishop back to Elsewhere, Louisiana, for the funeral that marks the end of his father's life -- and the true beginning of his own.

His grandmother, Mama B, called him Patience. Jeremy was, she said, the most agreeable child. He would have liked to tell her that, even while growing up, his hidden wants festered deep inside him. His mother died just hours after his birth, and he was raised by Mama B and his Aunt Jess after his father disappeared. Even after his dad returned one day with his new family, Jeremy kept his distance. But it is a decade later, and Jeremy, now a successful New York photographer, gets a phone call from Louisiana. It is time for Jeremy Bishop to journey the long way home to help bury his father. In the graveyard where his father's body will be laid to rest; in a stranger's appearance at the wake; in a suicide; a murder; and finally inside a cardboard box that had belonged to his father, Jeremy will find himself in ways he never imagined. Conjuring Jeremy's youth in flashbacks as textured as the denim patch on his grandmother's rocking chair, Jackson weaves together past and present in a novel at once astonishing and universally human.

Set in an environment of casual prejudice and commonplace poverty, this remarkable novel opens with one of Anna's rambling, poignant letters - missives she can never mail - to Ida Mae Ramsey, her best friend since they sat together dangling their legs near the soft waters of the creek, where Ida Mae spiked Anna's lemonade. Desperate to escape the trap of marriage and children and find an independent life, Ida Mae packed up and headed north, flitting from job to job, city to city, her infrequent letters arriving with no return address. Anna stayed home and married Joseph Henry Thomas, her beloved J.T., raising her five boys and stepping softly around her husband's vast silences. Now Anna is pregnant again - a girl this time, she is sure - a girl J.T. says they can't afford to keep. As spring swells inexorably toward summer, Anna misses Ida Mae's comfort and support almost more than she can bear. With remarkable insight and compassion, The View from Here illuminates the universal, unspoken bonds - so strong, yet so easily damaged - that pulse through families, and the twisted skeins of memory and desire that linger only in our most secret hearts.

The New Zealand upper house, the Legislative Council (which bore a marked resemblance to its Canadian counterpart the Federal Senate) was abolished in 1950 in an action which represents one of the most clear-cut examples of pragmatic politics in New Zealand history. It was abolished by the essentially conservative National party (fundamentally committed to the bicameral principle), while the Labour party (formally committed to abolition) at first obstructed and then merely stood on the sidelines. New Zealand thus became the only democratic country in the world without either an upper house or a formal written constitution of any consequence. The author attempts both to explain this unusual development and to assess its consequences. The generally accepted view that the Legislative Council failed in 1892 is challenged, and the causes of the decline and failure are traced back to circumstances surrounding its original establishment in 1854. Subsequently, developments since 1950 are examined in the light of abolition. The author concludes that abolition represented the right policy undertaken for the wrong reasons and that ultimately it has made a greater contribution to constitutional change in the twenty years since 1950 than the chamber itself made in the last fifty years of its existence. The New Zealand Legislative Council, an analytical historical study of an institution, throws valuable light on the strengths and weaknesses of the bicameral principle and the consequences of abolishing a second chamber of Parliament. The book should prove useful to Political Science and History courses dealing with Commonwealth Parliamentary government, comparative institutions and constitutional law. It should also appeal to all those interested in the question of bicameral representation.