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Japan presents an interesting case study of how culture can influence competitive advantage. Some scholars have argued that the culture of modern Japan lowers the costs of doing business relative to the costs in most Western nations. Japan’s emphasis on group affiliation, loyalty, reciprocal obligations, honesty, and education all boost the competitiveness of Japanese companies. The emphasis on group affiliation and loyalty encourage individuals to identify strongly with the companies in which they work. This tends to foster an ethic of hard work and cooperation between management and labour “for the good of the company.” Similarly, reciprocal obligation and honesty help foster an atmosphere of trust between companies and their suppliers. This encourages them to enter into long-term relationships with each other to work on inventory reduction, quality control, and design - all of which have been lacking in West, where the relationship between a company and its suppliers tends to be a short-term one structured around competitive bidding rather than one based on long-term mutual commitments. In addition, the availability of a pool of highly skilled labor, particularly engineers, has helped Japanese enterprises develop cost-reducing, process innovations that have boosted their productivity. Thus, cultural factors may help explain the success enjoyed by many Japanese businesses in the global market place. Most notably,it has been argued that the rise of Japan as an economic power during the second half of the twentieth century may be in part attributed to the economic consequences of its culture.

It also has been argued that the Japanese culture is less supportive of entrepreneurial activity than, say American society. In many ways entrepreneurial activity is a product of an individualistic mind-set, not a classic characteristic of the Japanese. This may explain why American enterprises, rather than Japanese corporations, dominate industries where entrepreneurship and innovation are highly valued, such as computer software and biotechnology. Of course, obvious and significant exceptions to this generalization exist. Masayoshi Son recognized the potential of software far faster than any of Japan’s corporate giants; set up his company, Soft bank, in 1981; and over the past 30 years has built it into Japan’s top software distributor. Similarly, dynamic entrepreneurial individuals established major Japanese companies such as Sony and  Matsushita. But these examples maybe the exceptions that prove the rule, for as yet there has been no surge in entrepreneurial high-technology enterprises in Japan equivalent to what has occurred in the United States.