Impact of technological leadership on American and Japanese corporate turnaround strategies

Abstract

Strategies for technological leadership have assumed a preeminent role for global competitiveness in the 1990s. The United States' share of world manufacturing trade has fallen headlong by fifty percent over the past two decades as the Japanese share has advanced from nine to fourteen percent. To sustain growth from 1985, Japanese “technopolis” strategy has pioneered the development of nineteen new cities dedicated to innovative high tech corporations primarily related to electronics manufacturing. Japanese corporations have also increasingly mastered selective superior production, marketing, human resources, and financial strategies, as well as being supported by government subsidies and global marketing intelligence. Consequently, U.S. corporations must revitalize select strategic efforts to recapture global competitiveness for different levels of technological leadership. This research examined questionnaire responses of sixty-five American electronics firms and sixty-five Japanese electronics firms' subsidiaries in the U.S. The results support the superiority of certain high tech firms' turnaround strategies that are different from successful turnaround strategies for low tech American and Japanese corporations.