Internationalization of Japanese companies in the 21st century: a case study

• Autor(a) principal: Richard, Léo Jacques Christian
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional do FGV (FGV Repositório Digital)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10438/25952
• topic: Japanese multinationals; Internationalization; Business strategy; Shrinking population; Declining industries; Multinacionais japonesas; Internacionalização; Estratégia empresarial; Redução da população; Indústrias em declínio; Administração de empresas; Empresas multinacionais - Japão - Estudo de casos; Globalização; Planejamento empresarial - Japão; Crescimento demográfico; Japão - População

Japan is the world’s third-largest economy, enjoys state-of-the-art infrastructure, one of the most qualified labor workforce, a strong education system and it concentrates innovative technologies and unique know-how. Yet, Japan seems to be forgotten in the globalized economy, and academic literature has shifted to the wonders of the Chinese and South Korean economy. But Japan is experiencing challenges unique to the 21st century that need to be studied. One of the issues is that Japan has a demographic challenge: its population is not only aging fast, but it is also the first country in the world to experience a shrinking population. Japanese businesses, which thrived during the 70s and the 80s are invited to review their business model, and they need to globalize themselves, not only by exporting products as they did in the pre-bubble era, but also by localizing their businesses and working with foreign-based subsidiaries. The shrinking population problem is only one part of the equation: Japan’s recent trade agreements means that foreign competitors are coming to the Japanese market. Hence, not only Japanese companies need to deal with a systemic decline in the size of its domestic market on which their overall revenue largely depends on, but they might have a smaller share of this declining domestic market. The main findings from this study is that Japanese companies seem to be aware of the shrinking population and its potential consequence on the domestic market. However, business actors in Japan believe that this is still a long-term problem and some of them even think that the demographic situation in Japan might be even useful for their companies as they will be the first in the world to address this demographic challenge amongst advanced countries. Hence, Japanese companies will be forced to consolidate, with better profitability levels, which can be leveraged through increased productivity (especially with automation). The need for internationalization seems to be mainly coming from a competitive challenge by foreign companies in their domestic markets and the need to find some revenue growth to improve profitability. This study interviews business executives from Fujitsu, business leaders from the Japanese business ecosystem and the study of two use cases, by analyzing its financial and public reports.