In this paper, I test the common assumption that Japanese firms strive to appropriate knowledge from the global scientific community while sharing little in return. I found no support for this conventional perspective in the flat panel display industry. U.S. firms shared no more knowledge with their global scientific community than Japanese firms. Similarly, Japanese firms appropriated no more knowledge from the global community than their U.S. counterparts.

Using a survey database of Japanese and Korean firms, we compare the styles of two Asian business systems, with a Japanese rather than an American mirror. There are substantial differences in the two country styles. We introduce two sources of convergence, firm size as measured by sales, and globalization as measured by export ratio, and find that both of these factors reduce the difference, with globalization the more significant of the two.

We used structured questionnaires and interviews to explore cultural factors affecting adaptation to fluid workgroups and teams in Taiwan and Australia, proxying for Chinese and Anglo-American societies. Consistent with collectivist, high power distance culture, we find members of Taiwanese organizations to have more difficulty adapting to fluid teams with changing membership and leadership. The results have implications for the implementation of flexible organization structures and interaction patterns in different countries.