Japanese Multinationals in Europe: A Comparison of the Automobile and Pharmaceutical Industries

Abstract

This ambitious work, centering on data about individual firms, examines an area of research on multinational companies that has until now received little attention. First, it performs a full-scale analysis of Japanese corporate operations in Europe, which have a relatively shorter history, and about which far less research has been accumulated, than for American multinational enterprises (AMNEs) in Europe or Japanese multinational enterprises (JMNEs) in the US and Asia. Second, while previous studies of multinationals have focused on manufacturing operations, this study gives virtually the same weight to sales operations (including logistics), R&D locations and European regional headquarters as it does to manufacturing locations. Third, while studies of JMNEs have most often dealt with the internationally competitive automotive and electronics industries, this work takes as its subject the pharmaceutical industry, which got a slow start in international competitiveness, examined in comparison to the automotive industry. Fourth, the author makes location strategies, method of market entry (by merger, acquisition or greenfield investment) and establishment of regional headquarters amid European unification—topics that until now had been studied separately—the three pillars of his study, pursuing his research through an inquiry of their mutual interrelationship.