上位の批判的レビュー
5つ星のうち3.0In hindsight everything is 20/20 but ESSENCE
2024年1月31日に日本でレビュー済み
I remember that the book was highly acclaimed among certain business circles in Tokyo around when the collapse of Bubble-Economy coincided with the 50th anniversary of Japan's unconditional surrender in WWII. Then, I was not interested.
Below, at the risk of committing a Monday-morning-quarterbacking, is my review after reading it now.
-They discuss the subject, in detail, through the prism of business/management academic thinking in a prototypical format, seen in such vehicles as XX Business Review; a) fact-finding, b) problem-identification, c) analysis, d) remedies/recommended plan of actions. Thus, readers can learn the standard academic approach in this field in addition to pertinent terminology and analytical concepts.
A beautifully composed scholarly work, different from ubiquitous business-related literatures littered with buzzwords and cliches mixing up various strategical/tactical/operational issues into casual management ideas targeting innocent readers marketed by the same and similar publishers.
-Ample collection of empirical data/information and reference to some renowned sources, writings and books, regarding ill-fated, most infamous, major military operations during the last War would certainly be beneficial and recommendable to novice readers, in particular, among younger generations.
With all due respect, however, I felt concerned about the following;
1) Most of the weakness/errors identified, both organizational and tactical, regarding the Imperial Japanese Militaries in addition to the factual information in Chapter 1 had already been extensively discussed and well established prior to its first publication in 1984 by a number of historians/military experts/former officers, etc., including, among others, a bright Naval Academy-educated captain, who struggled to make any sense out of his imminent death on the deck of Battleship Yamato, an epitome of the leadership's inability to foresee a technological/strategic paradigm shift, heading to a nonsensical suicide mission in Okinawan Sea that is in essence an outright write-off of two precious assets still left in an empire on the brink, specifically by far the most expensive non-performing asset and thousands of promising young minds, for nothing.
2) It is no surprise that plentiful of 'kata-kana' technical terms and concepts presented with graphs/matrix, such as 'Grand Design', 'Contingency Plan', 'Incrementalism', 'Integration' etc., might have reflected as eye-opening and even mesmerizing to those earnest Japanese business people who were at loss after witnessing an epic fall of their economy along with much celebrated Japanese Management Theories.
Rather than detecting new problems or dissecting/probing underlying causes, however, these tools were used as instruments for the purpose of defining/categorizing pre-discovered symptoms within the conceptual framework of contemporary business/management studies, and then navigating readers to a set of textbook recipe for success according to the theories of U.S. origin, represented by 'Organizational Learning', 'Drawing Grand Design', 'Long-term Strategic Thinking', 'Matching Organization and Strategy', etc., such academic norms as we can find in classics by Alfred D Chandler, Jay W Lorsch and the others.
Plausible/Comprehensive an image as it might project, this synthetic flow seems a bit overstretching and too ambitious exercise. Assuming that A and B are independently valid on each premise, incorporating A into B to suit them to a premeditated proposition does not necessarily constitute persuasive/coherent arguments. It is tempting and yet tends to be methodologically compromising as well as conflated. Ironically, this approach seems exactly as deductive as how the authors claim that the Imperial Army were liable to be.
3) In highlighting the limitations of Japanese Military Organizations in terms of strategic time horizon, flexibility/responsiveness in operational management, transparency/fairness in personnel appraisal system, considerations to logistics/resources management, etc., the authors, diligent students of modern social sciences, naturally contrast them with American Militaries and, by extension, American corporations, the good guys. A snap-shot comparison on manifested symptoms with little reference to the difference in historical context of two parties, however, seems rather misleading in exploring root causes of diseases.
Imperial Militaries, essentially a most indoctrinated political-military entity at core since the mid-1920s, were free from any effective oversight shielded by the Emperor's 'Tousuiken', or Supreme Commanding Rights. Accordingly they, in particular those elite staff officers at General Headquarters who crafted/choreographed disastrous strategies/tactical operations, were rarely held accountable for the consequences during and even after the War. Being prisoners of the glorified institutional legacy, those technocrats saw little incentives but keep investing in outdated strategies/tactics set out to by their superiors 30-40 years earlier and serving to the tribal agendas in order to advance their own careers in a tightly-knitted 'group-thinking' bureaucracy.
As typical of unchecked bureaucracies, one of the main goals, particularly after the traumatic Disarmament Period, had been to keep its primacy within the country's power structure, which necessitated perpetual wars to justify their ballooning budgets and growing number of generals/higher-ranking officer corps, no matter whether each operation was necessary/effective or how many soldiers lives be expended. Some argue that intra-military rivalry between Army and Navy for larger budgets contributed much to triggering and expanding conflicts in China, paving a way to the fatal strategic blunders; Army's marching into French-occupied northern Indo-China in 1940 and ultimately, Navy's Pearl Harbor in the following year.
On the other hand, U.S. Militaries were, by definition, under the leadership of democratically-elected President as Commander-In-Chief, and therefore, were subjected to more public scrutiny. They, relatively young as joint forces, had yet to earn public trust. In addition, majority of American citizens had remained, prior to Pearl Harbor, skeptical about their involvements in overseas conflicts beyond the sphere of influence defined by Monroe Doctrine, which is proven in the plight of Wilsonianism after WWI. They witnessed how harshly WWI veterans were treated by the Governments in Washington during Great Depression, most notably in the crash of The Bonus Army protest in 1932. A blunt description by Smedley Butler, the most decorated marine, 'War is a Racket', still lingered in their minds.
These contextual constraints seem to have played major roles in compelling them and FDR to pursue more cost-conscious, specifically in containing soldiers casualty figures/result-oriented options in both strategic formulation and organizational designing, guiding both political and military leaders to more restrained/rational tactical planning and execution. A rapidly aggravating situation in Europe also compelled them to remain more circumspect and prudent than otherwise.
By the same token, I am curious to know to what extent the authors could apply the same yardsticks in accurately diagnosing the demise of German Militaries during the same period. They were reputed to be organized with modern scientific minds, rigid chain of command, legendary sense of strict compliance/discipline, and keen eyes on efficient logistics/operation management under a clear grand design, the key success factors according to the authors, albeit for nefarious purposes. Did victorious Red Army have more advanced, American-style, thinking in areas of organizational design/strategic formulation? How about People's Liberation Army vs Imperial Army for that matter?
4) Thanks to the unfair time advantage, we now know that with progression of Cold War much-appraised U.S. militaries have lost their edge and become increasingly more comparable to the Japanese peers during WWII, characterized by blind hubris, doubling down of failed pretext with no reverse gear, denial of reality, messianic sense of mission, etc., evident in such asymmetrical wars as in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and more. They lately admitted that a significant portion of their gigantic budgets remain unaccounted for over the years.
These growing maladies coincide with ever-increasing influences of Military-Industrial-Complex, which was first warned against by President Eisenhower in 1961 and has continued to grow and dominate every spectrum of the Establishment encompassing Media and Acamedia to play a similar function as did the Emperor's Tousuiken. They never allow any political/military leaders to acknowledge/respond in a timely manner, much less to consider a sunk-cost approach, of which they had managed to learn for a brief period after the Vietnam debacle, to inconvenient defeats/failures at either battle or strategic fronts. Their priority lies in preserving self-serving narratives to keep enjoying lucrative captive markets. It is symbolically interesting that Robert S McNamara, one of 'the Best and the Brightest' who as a young Business-School graduate played an instrumental role in an 'efficient' Strategic Bombing Campaign during WWII and later turned around ailing Ford Motor Company by introducing 'scientific management system', eventually led the country to the deep quagmire in Vietnam as Defense Secretary in the 1960s.
5) For all the advanced theories in business/management fields and plentiful of narratives on 'excellent companies', American corporations have never been reputed for long-term perspectives, but instead have always been under criticism for its myopic orientation dictated by the shareholders' interests specifically focused on current bottom-lines and share prices. In the past decades, few companies have shown their strengths in terms of organizational/strategic thinking in face of tough competitions from Japan, and more recently from China.
As a result, de-industrialization and hollowing of domestic economy, once controversial issues among business journalism, are now fait accompli. Only a limited number of corporations privileged with size and resources have benefited and thrived in deregulated and financialized environments through consolidation, restructuring, and outsourcing to foreign countries, thereby eliminating competition/slashing overheads/maximizing profit margins, also aided by geopolitical power of their own governments in establishing rules/infrastructures of 'globalization' and 'privatization' in overseas markets to their advantage.
Periodic financial crises, unavoidable by-product of debt-driven economy, in the past decades were only rescued by their designated archrivals, namely Japan in the 1980-90s and China in the 2000s. Unfortunately, they would not be able to locate any white knight available in the coming crisis because they successfully incapacitated the former and antagonized the latter completely for their own hegemonical aspirations.
6) It is more remarkable to see the transitions of the Japanese companies and the environments since the book's first publication in 1984 when Japanese economy was on a long-term upward trajectory and their management systems were discussed with much fanfare in the U.S. business academic communities, exemplified by a book ostensibly titled 'Theory Z'. Flights to Tokyo were packed with top executives from both Wall Street and Main Street calling on Japanese institutions to solicit for emergency funds while in Washington politicians were busy hammering Japanese cars and consumer electrical products into pieces in front of local workforces frustrated with 'unfair' trade practices of the overseas competition.
Then came Plaza Accord in 1985 which reversed the course of the whole economy. The Bubble-Economy caused by easy money policy with an intention of financing the dual deficits of U.S. economy and its inevitable crash in early 1990s followed by the tight monetary policies coupled with austerity measures during the aftermath were beyond what any ingenuities of independent companies could cope with.
Subsequent series of capitulations to U.S. pressures, during the post-Cold War environment, at policy-making level in trade/structural impediments negotiations, deregulation, privatizations in public sectors in the name of 'reforms' by successive administrations did not do much good to Japanese companies. As of today, scattered with 'too-big-to-fail' legacy companies on life support, our economy has been, in average, the least-growing with by far the highest Debt/GDP ratio among major developed countries for decades, which is only sustained by decade-long 'unprecedented' lax monetary policy, intentionally harming its own currency, with no viable option otherwise.
No wonder economists in other countries sarcastically call it, 'the Second Economic Miracle of Japan'. The honorable title, 'the Greatest Threat to US Economy', once bestowed upon us in the 1980-90s has been in possession of China for long now. This time again, no one directly responsible for the major policy blunders including, among others, those masterminding mandarins and politically-appointed economic advisors, has been held accountable for their mismanagement and incompetence in creating the 'Lost Decades'.
7) Learning from failure is easier to be said than done. Anyone is free to extract whatever message he/she chooses. Given that all the suggestions in Chapter 3 were correct, however, I wonder why the Japanese companies and its economy as a whole have had to embrace such successive defeats for several decades since this book was first published and widely read among earnest individuals in corporate community? What hindered those at the helm from adopting necessary measures? If some prescient leaders had indeed implemented prescribed remedies, why did they not work out? Were the organizational issues discussed here just one of the variables among many others or even truism? Weren't there any other more significant and/or systemic problems inherent in this society which have survived the national disaster 80 years ago and/or the other sets of solution available from a broader perspective?
-The book title was apparently from Graham T Allison's 'Essence of Decision', an essential in decision-making studies, which analyzed decision-making process of both JFK's and Kremlin's during Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Whether this book is up to the audacious title, I am not certain. I am only reminded of Alexis de Tocqueville's words quoted at the top of Allison's book that is concerning men of letters vs practitioners writing history; the former are always inclined to find general causes, while the latter to imagine that everything is attributable to particular incidents. Both are to be presumed equally deceived.