emergent approach
Actes du GERPISA n° 26
37
TOYOTA MOTOR MANUFACTURING AUSTRALIA
IN 1995: AN EMERGENT GLOBAL STRATEGY
Takahiro FUJIMOTO
The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the manufacturing operations of Toyota
Motor Manufacturing Australia Ltd., an Australian subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation, from the point of view of “emergent global strategy”. It is based on an exploratory case study.
In the field of strategic management, the notion of “strategy as plan” has been a prevalent idea for many years, in which strategic intent precedes strategic implementation (Andrews, 1980, Hofer and Schendel, 1978, etc.). There has been another concept of strategy concepts, “strategy as pattern”, which assumes the possibility that competitive strategy may be formed even without a prior intention to be competitively rational (Mintzberg and Waters, 1985). Mintzberg and his colleagues call a strategy that was unintended but realized
“emergent strategy”1.
Such arguments for emergent strategies can be applied to global operations. There has been, of course, a mountain of literature on global strategies
1
For a related concept in sociology, «latent function», which refers to when a function turned out to contributed to a system’s survival but was out motivated by prior intention, see
Merton, 1968.
of manufacturing firms in the field of international management. The transnational strategy (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1989), which tries to link international operations with distinctive resources and capabilities by a network of people, materials, money, technology, and knowledge, for example, has attracted much attention. International Motor
Vehicle Program of MIT (Womack, et al., 1990) also advocated a similar global network. The existing works on global strategic management, however, tend to be explained by the “strategy as plan” concept, driven by a prior grand design and deliberate decision making at the headquarters.
Rational
37
TOYOTA MOTOR MANUFACTURING AUSTRALIA
IN 1995: AN EMERGENT GLOBAL STRATEGY
Takahiro FUJIMOTO
The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the manufacturing operations of Toyota
Motor Manufacturing Australia Ltd., an Australian subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation, from the point of view of “emergent global strategy”. It is based on an exploratory case study.
In the field of strategic management, the notion of “strategy as plan” has been a prevalent idea for many years, in which strategic intent precedes strategic implementation (Andrews, 1980, Hofer and Schendel, 1978, etc.). There has been another concept of strategy concepts, “strategy as pattern”, which assumes the possibility that competitive strategy may be formed even without a prior intention to be competitively rational (Mintzberg and Waters, 1985). Mintzberg and his colleagues call a strategy that was unintended but realized
“emergent strategy”1.
Such arguments for emergent strategies can be applied to global operations. There has been, of course, a mountain of literature on global strategies
1
For a related concept in sociology, «latent function», which refers to when a function turned out to contributed to a system’s survival but was out motivated by prior intention, see
Merton, 1968.
of manufacturing firms in the field of international management. The transnational strategy (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1989), which tries to link international operations with distinctive resources and capabilities by a network of people, materials, money, technology, and knowledge, for example, has attracted much attention. International Motor
Vehicle Program of MIT (Womack, et al., 1990) also advocated a similar global network. The existing works on global strategic management, however, tend to be explained by the “strategy as plan” concept, driven by a prior grand design and deliberate decision making at the headquarters.
Rational