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Resumo

PurposeThe economic downturn in Japan in the 1990s and the Asian economic crash of 1997 led to widespread restructuring of corporate organizations in Japan. This paper aims to use ethnographic fieldwork, in‐depth interviews and historical documents to examine how this played out inside one company, Toyota, when management implemented a restructuring plan to improve the profitability of one of its group companies during the period of 1996 to 1999. It also aims to discuss the restructuring policies within the framework of how Toyota responded to the economic crisis during a time of deregulation and liberal market reforms resulting from the decade of economic malaise that began in the early 1990s. A hallmark of the current debate on analyzing Japanese organizations is to what extent Japan is converging on the American model of capitalism.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on fieldwork drawn from three years as a participant observer where the author worked as a production engineer together with interviews with those he worked alongside and documentary analysis.FindingsThe paper argues that the company responded to the economic crisis of the 1990s by implementing liberal market reforms but changes in the 1990s and during the Asian crash reveal that Toyota used liberal market policies as restructuring 'tools' within the context of the unique institutions of Japanese welfare corporatism.Originality/valueThe strength of this paper is that it provides an insider's perspective on restructuring in a Toyota company. Conceptually the paper improves our understanding of how institutional structures contribute to shaping the restructuring in Japanese organizations.

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