Research Project

A Comparative Study on the application
of Amoeba management and the Inamori
management philosophy in China and
Japan

Project leader:Shaojie Dou

竇 少杰

Project members

Project leader
Shaojie DouAssistant Professor at the College of Business Administration, Ritsumeikan University
Project member
Takeshi SaitoAssociate Professor at the College of Business Administration, University of Nagasaki

Research project summary (Objectives/goals (results))

Amoeba management and the Inamori management philosophy are philosophies grown and harvested from the ‘soil’ of Japanese society, and inside corporate environments at Kyocera and Japan Airlines. This ‘soil’ inside corporate environments is unique from company to company, and is formed based on the culture promoted at the company. While deeply tied to corporate climate, customs and culture, this soil does still have a degree of universality to it.

Further, while the ‘soil’ of a corporation is formed from the various rules found inside it, each consisting of various contents, the area in which we are particularly interested is in relation to employment and labor rules. Why do Chinese enterprises fail in effectively implementing Amoeba management and the Inamori management philosophy where Japanese companies such as Kyocera and Japan Airlines succeed? We believe the reason for this lies in rules pertaining to human resource management and performance management, that is, this failure is caused by differences in the ‘soil’ between China and Japan.

In this research project we hope to apply a case study research method to clarify the state of implementation, and the distinctive features of, the Amoeba management and Inamori management philosophies implemented at Japanese and Chinese companies by considering the state of implementation of such at the Kyocera Group in Japan, the Kyocera Group’s manufacturing subsidiary in China, and local Chinese companies, while also examining the form of human resource and labor management practices put in place at these companies through field studies.


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