East-Asian Vertical Specialization System of Corporate R&D : An Essay from the Field Based Research of 20 Japanese Manufacturers

ニホン　キギョウ　ノ　ヒガシアジア　ケンキュウ　カイハツ　スイチョク　ブンギョウ　20シャ　ヘノ　タンサクテキ　フィールド　チョウサ　ニ　モトヅク　シロン

ナカガワ, コウイチ

Nakagawa, Koichi

The Economic Society of Osaka University

オオサカ　ダイガク　ケイザイ　ガッカイ

フィールド調査

研究開発

垂直分業

Japanese company

field based research

research and development

vertical specialization

From the field research of 20 Japanese manufacturers, this paper considers the actual situation of their functional allocation strategy of R&D within East Asia. We can find that Japanese companies adopt vertical specialization system of R&D, in which Japanese sites take charge of upper side of R&D and Asian foreign ones do of lower side. Such a vertical specialization system is adopted because it can afford a company to take advantage of cost competitiveness and resource richness of Asian site. Also we can find that 2 types of vertical system exists: One is pure specialization that can maximize the cost advantage of the internationalization towards emerging East Asian countries, and the other is functionally overlapping approach that promotes the knowledge transfer from Japanese site to East Asian site, while it cannot maximize cost advantage.