Global Alliances in the Motor Vehicle Industry

Rating:
Summary: Poorly connected - shallow analysis
Review: This "book" actually reads like a series of case studies on the auto industry compiled from notes the author has collected over the years. As a result, each chapter often repeats material covered in previous chapters. The analysis is often shallow and limited to macroeconomic statistical factors. Given that the author is a management scientist, the fact that statistics are emphasized is hardly surprising. The decline of Japan's economy, for example, is pegged to falling domestic demand and a rising Yen relative to the US dollar. The rise of SE Asian competitors, such as China, is almost completely ignored. The sheer number of products with MADE IN CHINA stamped on them is enough evidence to demonstrate that Japan's economic woes are more complex than one is led to believe in the book. In an analysis of Japan's "liquidity crisis," the author explains that Japan's situation was -

highly unusual in an "advanced" industrial nation.

Notice the quotation marks. This indicates to me that Japan is considered by some to be advanced, but not by the author. Is she suggesting then, like many 19th century eugenists, that only Northern European countries and their former colonies are "advanced." That is disturbing, to say the least.