Japanese Management: 50 Years of Evolution of the Concept

This paper presents the debate about Japanese management in a chronological order and puts forward a new definition of the concept. As a result of literature review, we distinguished four major periods of the debate i.e. the birth of Japanese management concept (1950’s -1960’s), the peak of popularity (1970’s – 1980’s), critics and appropriation period (1990’s) and the period of dispersion (since 2000’s). The main conclusion from the review is that the current debate about the Japanese management is extremely dispersed and requires new unifying definition. We therefore put forward new, more flexible definition of Japanese management as a dynamic, multilevel and contingent concept.