"This book is an excellent book on business ethics and will be an invaluable resource for all readers who are keen to learn about the business ethics and key characteristics of a successful company. It focuses on the case study of a global company, Johnson & Johnson (J&J), which oversees more than 250 operating units throughout the world. Through extensive interviews with top executives at J&J's headquarters, including Masami Atarashi and Mitsuo Hirose and attending workshops, Prof Hiroo Takahashi acquired an in-depth understanding of the management style of J&J, grasped the company's ethics and the code of business conduct which is shared by J&J's members throughout the world"--
"This book is essentially a case study of food giant Nestle. the largest food company in the world which was born in the town of Vevey, Switzerland over hundreds of years ago. Prof Takahashi's interest in Nestle was sparked 50 years ago when he visited Nestle during a trip to Switzerland. He took painstaking efforts to research and discover the secrets of Nestle's success over the last few decades. In this book, Prof Takahashi expounds what has made Nestle a world-reigning global corporation despite its small domestic Swiss market through examining its corporate strategy and R&D, and illustrates how Nestle became the most representative and symbolic company among today's successful Swiss companies. Nestle has been in nearly 189 countries, a number that is almost the same as the number of UN member countries. Since food products are so closely related to our daily lives, any place where people live can be Nestle's market. Switzerland is not blessed with large farmland to grow agricultural products. So, they almost solely depended on livestock for their food supplies. Getting milk by raising cows and making the best use of it was necessary to sustain their living. Cows can also be used as food, such as beef steak. In Switzerland, cows have supplied milk to make a variety of daily products. Milk is highly nutritious and so it is most suitable as a source of nutrients for infants. The establishment of the company Nestle is nonetheless unrelated to milk. Milk is now commercialized as a variety of processed goods, and the founder of Nestle, Henri Nestle is pioneer in commercializing these processed goods"--
The Challenge for Japanese Multinationals is about strategic issues of modern management from the view of global business practice. In the 2010 issue of Fortune Magazine's top 500 Multi-National Corporations, the USA ranked number one with 139 companies. This was followed with 71 companies in Japan and 149 in the EU. With the maturing of the domestic market, Japanese MNCs - not only in manufacturing industries but in non-manufacturing industries as well, will continue to globalize, with overseas expansion accelerating in emerging countries such as BRICs.
