Convergence, Competition, Evolution

Although several companies from the United States, Japan, and Europe, are highly benefiting from IT use and development, this chapter observes that the path that these companies and their competitive environments are somehow experiencing convergence as it is realized that a firm's geographical base is seemingly unrelated to how the firm's IT practices. Unlike the firms in the United States and in Europe that utilize more customized software to strengthen their competitive value, IT users in Japan utilize semicustomization or packaged software which they heavily customize with their own...

Although several companies from the United States, Japan, and Europe, are highly benefiting from IT use and development, this chapter observes that the path that these companies and their competitive environments are somehow experiencing convergence as it is realized that a firm's geographical base is seemingly unrelated to how the firm's IT practices. Unlike the firms in the United States and in Europe that utilize more customized software to strengthen their competitive value, IT users in Japan utilize semicustomization or packaged software which they heavily customize with their own proprietary systems. This chapter attempts to analyze the dynamics of IT use in Japan, how this has evolved, and how IT strategies in Japan may have been affected by such evolutions.