Japan's Network Economy

James R. Lincoln holds the Mitsubishi Chair in International Business and Finance at the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author (with Arne Kalleberg) of Culture, Control, and Commitment: A Study of Work Organizations and Work Attitudes in the US and Japan (with Arne Kalleberg, Cambridge University Press, 1990). Michael L. Gerlach is Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Alliance Capitalism: The Social Organization of Japanese Business (1992).

• List of figures; List of tables; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. The structural analysis of the network economy; 2. The origins of Japanese network structures; 3. The evolution of a corporate network: a longitudinal network analysis of 259 large firms; 4. Exchange and control: explaining corporate ties: a longitudinal dyad analysis; 5. Intervention and redistribution: how keiretsu networks shape corporate performance; 6. Japan's next generation industrial architecture; Bibliography; Index.

'Finally, we have an authoritative treatment of how network coordination at the top of the Japanese economy evolved to such prominence and adapted to external change. Lincoln and Gerlach clarify a new balance in the Japanese economy between market forces and inter-firm obligation. I particularly enjoyed their description of cohesive networks fostering a hubris that encouraged risky financial behavior and learned from their extended concluding chapter on the historical context for what is to come in Japan. I put this one on my shelf right next to Regional Advantage and The Second Industrial Divide.' Ronald S. Burt, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago