Management of Service Businesses in Japan

With the service industry taking up the largest portion of its GDP, Japan has much to share in the area of managing service industry. This book explores and elucidates the unique management styles in non-manufacturing industries or service industries in contemporary Japan, both practically and theoretically through case studies. These specially selected cases are the management of the world No.1 convenience store chain of Seven-Eleven, the sales finance business and auto sales business of Toyota, application of TPS (Toyota Production System) to life insurance company, performance evaluation of local government, BSC (balance scorecard) in local government hospitals, cost and pricing policy of telecommunication company, Japanese-style “hospitality” in the retail industry, service level agreement (SLA) in IT and shared service companies, and ICT (Information & Communication Technology) applied to BPN (Business Process Network) of service industry.

The analyses presented in this book were carefully laid out in regard to the business in general. It will be useful for business practitioners in service industry and beneficial to the scholars, students or general readers interested in this area.

Contents:

• Advanced Service Management in the Service Industries:

  • Profit Sharing that Motivates Inter-Firm Cooperation within a Convenience Store Chain (Yasuhiro Monden and Noriko Hoshi)
  • Profit Management in the Hotel Industry (Akimichi Aoki)
  • Kaizen Activities and Performance Management in the Sales Finance Business (Noriyuki Imai)
  • Performance Management in the Auto Sales Business (Noriyuki Imai)
  • Productivity Improvement of Service Business Based on the Human Resource Development: Application of Toyota Production System to the Insurance Firm (Shino Hiiragi)
  • Enacting Entrepreneurial Process on Family Business — Case of Health Care Business (Dun-Hou Tsai, Anders W Johansson and Shang-Jen Li)

• Advanced Service Management in the Public and Non-Profit Organizations:

  • Performance Management Systems of Japanese Local Governments (Takami Matsuo)
  • Implementation of the Balanced Scorecard in the Japanese Prefectural Hospitals (Naoya Yamaguchi)
  • Pricing Policy and Potential Cost Reduction in Telecommunications (Manabu Takano)

• General Concepts and Techniques Applied to the Service Management:

  • Omotenashi: Japanese Hospitality as the Global Standard (Nobuhiro Ikeda)
  • The Service Level Agreements at Japanese Companies and Its Expansion (Tomoaki Sonoda)
  • Application of Information and Communication Technology to the Service Industry — Focus on Business Process Network (Yoshiyuki Nagasaka and Gunyung Lee)

Readership: Researchers, graduates and undergraduates in business management, MBA, and service management courses; General public interested in the service industry; Professionals in marketing, service management and managerial accounting.
Key Features:

• All papers are written based on concrete case studies, applicable to businesses in general
• Unique treatment of topics such as on the world's No. 1 know-how of the convenience store chain of Seven-Eleven, sales finance and auto sales business of Toyota Motors, and application of Toyota production system to service companies