Why Japanese companies do so many different things: The internal logic of the world’s strangest corporations https://davidoks.blog/p/why-jap…

Why Japanese companies do so many different things: The internal logic of the world’s strangest corporations https://davidoks.blog/p/why-japanese-companies-do-so-many TL;DR > you have a firm that has lots of lifetime employees who can’t be fired, and whose skills are tailored to what your firm needs rather than to a particular occupational category transferable to any employer > the system only makes sense if the company is also insulated from outside pressure > the Japan-style company, run by its employees and largely indifferent to the interests of shareholders, exists simply to continue existing > And that basic impulse toward survival is why Japanese companies are so insistent on diversification. If you’ve made a commitment to keep people employed for life, then you need to create jobs for them if their current jobs stop making sense > If you’re not very worried about profitability, and have lots of well-trained generalist employees, then it makes perfect sense to reinvest your company’s earnings by expanding into new industries

Source: David Ha (X) | 2026-06-04