Introduction

The viability of the community firm depends not just on the internal consistency of its institutions, and supporting ideology, but on its ability to respond to changing environments, and produce goods or services at profit. It assumes the community firm is compatible with competitiveness, or enhances it. But companies can fail for a variety of reasons not directly related to employment relations or community, such as management failure, technology shifts or disruptive technology (Christensen, 1997). And if there is no enterprise, there is no community.

As we progressed in Part 1, we broadened our focus from employment practices to corporate governance and management reforms in response to intensified global competition (in both product and financial markets), market maturation, rapid changes in technology, and legal reforms to accounting and governance practices. There are limitations to how far these can be explored through large-scale surveys, however. Competitive conditions differ widely by industry, and so do managers' responses. To present a ‘grounded’ picture of the community company features and developments we described in Part 1, as well as to deepen our understanding of the links between the changing competitive environment, managers' responses, and changes to the community firm, we turn in Part 2 to a detailed case study. We have chosen Hitachi Ltd, the largest of Japan's general electric manufacturers, with production operations ranging from chips and fridges to nuclear power stations.