Japanese corporations, scientific research and globalization

Abstract

In an age of ‘stateless corporations’ do Japanese companies remain dependent upon the national science system in their home country? They do. Japanese companies produce scientific papers in the international literature, including papers reporting basic scientific research, but they publish relatively few papers from their foreign affiliates. The papers are produced by laboratories located in Japan, and these are staffed predominantly by Japanese. In producing their scientific research they collaborate relatively more with domestic institutions and cite Japanese scientific work heavily. These few facts describing the published scientific output of Japanese companies document the integration of Japanese corporations into the Japanese science system and hence their dependence upon that system. The implications of this result are twofold. First, any weakness in publicly funded Japanese research could well affect Japanese corporate research in the long term, because they are enmeshed in this system. Second, when combined with the fact that the companies contribute to the scientific literature, this result throws into doubt the idea that these companies are now ‘free riders’ on world science. They not only contribute to our scientific knowledge, but in doing so their science draws most heavily on Japanese, not foreign sources.