Victoria Miroshnik

Strategic human resource management of Japanese multinationals – A case study of Japanese multinational companies in the UK

We have analysed the human resources management system in Japanese automobile companies, Toyota and Nissan, in their overseas production plants in the UK and have tried to analyse differences if any between their original human resources management system in Japan and in their foreign operations. We found out that these companies, as far as their internal operations are concerned, have tried to implement their original practices in spite of cultural differences. However, in the case of production management system they are not completely successful because of organisational differences in their foreign locations. We have analysed the effects of these novel practices on the industrial scene in the UK in general.

Corporate Governance System of Japanese Multinational Companies: A Quantitative Evaluation

The purpose of this book is to study an unexplored area of corporate governance. The authors examine whether the corporate governance system can be affected by organizational culture, leader culture, and the operations management system in general. In addition, they study how a specific corporate governance system can affect the organizational culture and operations management system and create a different type of leader culture. This is an in-depth study of Japanese multinational companies and a comparison of their corporate governance system at home (in Japan) and in host countries like Britain, India, and Thailand. The authors conducted a series of in-depth interviews with the senior executives of major Japanese multinational companies to construct quantitative models for Japan, Thailand and India, and to analyze the aforementioned propositions.

Dynamics of Information and Resource Management

This chapter deals with two very important aspects of management science. The first is how to take into account of new information about the economy in the input-output tables (I-O in short) which describes the core of the economy. Input-output tables are the integral part of any traditional planning model (Leontief, 1936; Stone, 1961; Johansen, 1968; Bacharach, 1970; Allen & Gossling, 1975) of an economy. Although nowadays input-output tables are not in use in the developed countries after the immense interests on that subject during the 1960s and 1970s, the applications of input-output tables or their more enlarged version Social Accounting Matrix are widespread for the planning and policy management of the developing countries. However, at the same time statistical services of the developing countries are not strong enough to produce sufficient data to revise and update input-output tables with regular survey data, when new information about the economy are flowing in continuously. The delays in the production of input-output tables can seriously undermine the effective estimation of policy models for these countries. Thus there are needs for appropriate and practically feasible updating techniques for the input-output matrix, which can manage the flows of vital information about the economy without imposing excessive demands on the statistical services.

Anticipations and Time-Varying Modeling in Adaptive Control System

There is a large volume of literatures on the effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policies and on lags in the effects of monetary policies (Friedman & Schwartz, 1963; Meyer, 1967; Tobin, 1970; Hamburger, 1971). Although lengths of lags are important in determining the role of monetary-fiscal policies, the relationship between money and income varies over time due to changes in the lag structure. Mountford and Uhlig (2008), Gali (2007), Perotti (2005), Poole (1975), Warburton (1971) and Meyer (1967) attempted to analyse the empirical variability of the lag structure by analysing the turning points in general business activity. Ljungqvist and Sargent (2004), Sargent and Wallace (1973) and Lucas (1972) have drawn attention to the role of time-dependant response coefficients to changes in stabilization policies and the role anticipation plays in the conduct of monetary-fiscal policy.

Energy System Modeling

The purpose of this chapter is to describe an integrated management model for the energy sector of a country. Energy poses a problem for the world not only for the future, when probably most of the easily accessible sources of petroleum and natural gas would be exhausted, but for today as well. For future industrial growth, future planning, regarding the expansion of the capacity to produce all kinds of energy products and in particular electricity, should be considered. Nuclear power, and fast-breeder reactors in particular, can provide long-run answers to the problem. The development planning for hydroelectricity or any other non-nuclear source of energy should be evaluated in conjunction with the possible net benefit and cost of developing alternative sources of energy. Coal, manufactured gas from coal and manufactured petroleum from coal are the feasible alternatives. Solar energy could be a feasible alternative, but it has to be developed further, along the lines of solar reflectors in outer space as designed in 1987 by the Soviet Union, to make it cost effective. Nuclear power has the advantage of producing massive amounts of electricity; but it depends on natural resources like uranium. Thus, breeder reactors provide the solution as depend on manufactured plutonium from the reactors.

Optimal Control Problem

Pontryagin (1962) and his associates developed the maximum principle for solving continuous-time control problems. Basically, the maximum (or minimum) principle provides a set of local necessary conditions for optimality. According to this method, variables analogous to the Lagrange multipliers should be introduced. These variables, usually denoted by p, are often called the co-state or adjoint-system variables. A scalar-value function H, which generally is a function of x, p, u (state, co-state, control vector) and t, named Hamiltonian function of the problem, is also considered.

National Economic Management with Stochastic Optimal Control: Simulations over History

Optimal control techniques are popular tools for shaping quantitative economic policies. The works of Kendrick and Taylor (1970), Pindyck (1973), Buchanan (1968), Erickson (1973) and Norton (1969), among others, give the demonstration of a deterministic control solution for an econometric model. The example of a stochastic control solution is not so widespread, which is mainly due to serious computational problems even for a moderate-size model. The works of Holbrook (1974) and Fisher (1975) are excellent examples of a stochastic control solution.

Control System Modeling for Investment Planning

One of the very old debates in the areas of investment planning for development concerns the allocation of resources between the agricultural and the industrial sectors. The traditional argument, as an offshoot from the Mahalanobis-Feldman model (Mahalanobis, 1953; Feldman, 1929, 1964) was that for the better rate of growth of the national economy more should be invested in the capital-goods-producing sectors. Our purpose here is to examine that argument by applying stochastic optimal control techniques in a two-sector, macro-econometric model for India. The two sectors are the modern industrial sector and the traditional agricultural sector. We will try to examine what should be the appropriate allocation of investment between these two sectors over the first 20 years of planning (from 1951 to 1971) in order to attain the target rate of growth of the national economy (this is a much-revised version of Basu & Lazaridis, 1980 using the method elaborated in Basu & Lazaridis, 1983, 1984, 1986).

Management of Oil Field Development

In view of the recent international developments in the Middle East there is a revival of interest in the effect of oil prices on the supply, extraction and discovery process of the oil fields (Guseo, Dalla Valle, & Guidolin, 2007; Owen, Inderwildi, & King, 2010; Rehrl & Friedrich, 2006). Although recent literatures have incorporated both economic and engineering approaches, we have not seen any major analysis regarding future discoveries of oil fields and their estimation methods. The purpose of this chapter is to incorporate economic, geological and engineering information in the analysis of forecasting future discoveries of oil fields, for the specific case of the continental shelf of the UK’s North Sea.

Optimal Planning with Exhaustible Resource

For a large number of countries, exhaustible natural resources are very essential inputs for domestic productions. These are also very important parts of the export earnings and import needs. From planning perspectives it is important to relate domestic investment planning to the external sector. The external sector imposes a constraint on the economy in the form of balance of payments, and in most cases the country concerned has very little influence on the terms of trade. However, it can regulate the volumes of exports and imports.