On the way to the stunning Krka waterfalls in Croatia, from where we staying on the Adriatic coast for our holidays last summer, our tour guide suddenly said “we are now in the Balkan part of Croatia”. The term Balkan …
Read MoreAbout 20 years’ ago I wrote an article proclaiming the death of the Japanese Office Lady (OL). The company I was working at, along with many other Japanese companies at the time, had stopped hiring new graduates into the so-called …
Read MoreI let out a quiet cheer recently when Mitsubishi Materials, a sister company to my old employer Mitsubishi Corporation, started down the road of apologising for using slave labour in WWII. I used to be on the receiving end of …
Read MoreIn a week’s time, Rudlin Consulting will move to Norwich, UK. One of the reasons behind this choice of location is to be near the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Culture. I am keen to …
Read MoreI was reading the last chapter of a book (The 1990s and beyond (pdf)) I wrote which was published in 2000 about the history of Mitsubishi Corporation in London, and was reminded that I had come up with a …
Read MoreThe question of whether having more women managers would help Japanese companies to globalise was raised, but not discussed in depth due to time constraints, at a dinner I attended, hosted by a delegation to the UK from Japan Women’s …
Read MoreAs well as the train business in the UK, the other case study that Takashi Kawamura, former President of Hitachi gives as a model of globalization is the data storage business, which was turned into a “solution” business rather than …
Read MoreThe Hitachi group of companies, estimated to be the second biggest company in Japan in terms of employees after Toyota, and 4th in terms of revenue, has turned itself around considerably since 2009, when it chalked up “the largest loss …
Read MoreThe former President of Microsoft Japan, Makoto Naruke, wrote a best seller entitled “90% of Japanese don’t need to speak English” provocatively asserting that learning English was a waste of time and money, no graduate from an international school has …
Read MoreWe use cookies to personalize content and ads, to provide social media features, and to analyze our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising, and analytics partners.