Sisteme economice » Fisa 7-en

The Japanese system (type)

The feeling of belonging to a community is very strong in Japan. From this derives the special role of the enterprise, the special relationship it develops with the worker's family. The manager of the company is a second father to the employee, who, as a rule, has a job for life in that company (the employee offers the company, also for life, the best he has in terms of physical and intellectual qualities). Compensation based on results, as well as seniority, a high degree of unionization within the enterprise, a sense of duty and preference for clear rules, diligence, and recognition of authority are distinctive features of the Japanese socio-economic environment.

Economic development is not viewed in the absence of the state. However, even though present, nothing gives the impression that it hinders the market in any way (for decades, the trend in Japan has been the liberalization of economic life and the reduction of the state's direct influence).

The primordial dimension of the Japanese economy is linked to the "exports-foreign investments" binomial. From this point of view, the Japanese are present everywhere in the world. To reach this situation, Japan has extracted the essence from the H.O.S. theorem (Heckscher – Ohlin – Samuelson) – a theorem stating that each country should focus its attention and produce goods that embody the factors it possesses in abundance and leave the procurement of goods that require the use of scarce factors to imports. The only factor that Japan has in abundance is labor.

The orchestrators of the post-war Japanese economy understood that the chance of success requires the maximum efficient use of the only resource it possesses in abundance. What Japan has offered and continues to offer the world in recent decades is nothing but over-qualified labor condensed, gray matter incorporated into products and services of impeccable quality.

The lesson of Japanese capitalism is not limited to showing us that work is the ultimate solution to all problems. It draws our attention to the fact that the ideal types of economy, whether thought according to the precepts of liberalism or in the collectivist variant, remain markers situated at the extremes, and that, in fact, any economy is built on a "third way," situated between these points.

To remember:

In the book "Organizational Principles of the National Economy. New Microeconomic Bases for the Market Economy" (see the 1994 edition, published by the "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University Press in Iași), Professor Reinhard Blum believes that achieving economic success does not depend on ideological-doctrinal principles but on the physiognomy of social organization, on organizational rules evaluated from a micro perspective: the inspiring source of an effective macroeconomic policy consists of organizational benchmarks validated at the level of the firm, the entrepreneur, or even the family.

From this point of view, the example of Japan is illustrative, because here "the traditional family thinking model creates different premises than (...) the individualistic economic philosophy of the Westerners. Contrary to the hostile image of the state, which only disrupts the freedom to undertake in the market economy (...) economic policy in Japan means the collaboration of the economy with politics in achieving national objectives."