Dr. Rolf D. Schlunze published Spatial Diffusion of Japanese Firms in West Germany and West Berlin from 1955 to 1989 in Geographical Review of Japan, 65 (Ser.B)/ 1, 32-52, 1992 (refereed) was supervised by Professor Gerhard O. Braun (FU Berlin). It was my award winning article that laid the foundation for further empirical research on locational adjustment and decision making of Japanese affiliated firms in Germany. Japanese Investment in Germany: a spatial perspective was published 1997 in the book series Wirtschaftsgeographie for excellent thesis reviewed by leading German EG professors. My supervisor at University of Tokyo late Professor Takashi Yamaguchi encouraged me that investigate Japanese overseas investment within the particular urban systems. The Spatial Structure of Japanese Business Activities in Europe, Journal of Economic and Social Geography (TSEG) 92/ 2, (2001) 217-230, (refereed), also published in Japanese language entitled ヨーロッパにおける日系企業の立地 in, 世界経済評論 (47/4, 44-54, 2003/04), was an ambitious side project analyzing the entire list of 2000 Japanese affiliated companies in the EU. This kind of database analysis I applied later on Japanese FDI in Eastern Europe and published research work entitled 中央・東ヨーロッパ変化と直接投資 published with 追手門経営論集 9/1 in the year 2003.
After achieving a doctoral degree from University of Tokyo an excellent research proposals submitted to the European Commission (EC) was rewarded with a Marie-Curie Grant. I surveyed Japanese affiliate companies in Europe supervised by Professor Peter Dicken famous by his textbook Global Shift discussing the interplay between transnational corporations, states, and technologies. Projects about the locational adjustment of Japanese production and R&D systems were based at The University of Manchester and Sheffield University. In between I was invited to participate in the Japanese MNE Study Group (JMNESG) by late Professor Tetsuo ABO, a famous expert on Japanese overseas production management at the Institute of Social Science at The University of Tokyo. The EC selected me as one of the first social scientist to do research at this international platform for empirical social science research. I became interested in comparative research on management systems and conduct comparative studies on Japanese management in Europe and European management in Japan. Locational Adjustment of Japanese Management in Europe was published in Asian Business Management, a leading IB journal in 2002 (refereed); and in Japanese 「ヨーロッパにおける日系製造企業の経営システムの現地適応」published in 経済地理学年 (49/4 (2003) 271-288; refereed). Using the framework of the Japanese MNE Study Group (JMNESG) I compared the Locational Adjustment of Japanese Management in Europe published with Asian Business Management (2002) with the Managerial Embeddedness of European Manufacturing Firms in Japan published in Japanese Journal of Human Geography 56/5 in 2004. Profs Kumon and Abo encouraged me to contribute with new topics to JMNESG publishing my research on Corporate Social Responsibility challenges of Japanese manufacturing Firms in Poland entitled ポーランドとスロバキアにおける日系製造企業の挑戦－現地社会への企業活動埋め込みの実態. These research projects above laid a solid foundation to my comparative studies on Japanese and European management.
As an educator based at Ritsumeikan University and sponsored by the DAAD I led a delegation of young researchers interviewing Japanese managers about cultural competence development in three German city locations. The result of the contextual management appraisal, an early Three Level Model, was published entitled Courses for Horses – Value of Location for Japanese Managers’ Intercultural Competence Overseas in Ritsumeikan Business Journal 4, 1-16, 2010/03 showing that cultural competence development can be affected by organization and location. I published my own conceptualizations about acculturation and locational adjustment of individual managers first with 異文化経営 entitled 異文化シナジーを創出するハイブリッドマネジャー invited by Professor Emiko Magoshi in Transcultural Management Review, 7, 30-46, 2011/01 in Japanese language (refereed), and second in English with the our book entitled Spaces of International Economy and Management: Launching New Perspectives on Management and Geography (Schlunze, Rolf D., Nathaniel O. Agola, William W. Baber, editors). The book contained chapters with new approaches on various management issues and was received as a pioneer work in the field of Management Geography by IB scholars and economic geographers around the world. During my sabbatical at Humboldt University Berlin I was encouraged deepen my analysis and publish work on bi-lingual or Hybrid-Manager in Japan: Weg zum interkulturellen Erfolg. [Hybrid Manager in Japan: Path to Intercultural Success] in: David Chiavacci und Iris Wieczorek (Hrsg.), Japan 2016 – Politik, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, München, IUDICIUM Verlag (VSJF), 166-190 (refereed).
My ambition to map cultural synergy lead to several papers such as Preferences and Intercultural Networking for Globalizing Practices of Successful Leaders in the Intercultural Workplace with Ji and Baber in Claes-Göran Alvstam, Harald Dolles, Patrik Ström (eds.) Asian Inward and Outward FDI: New Challenges in the Global Economy, Palgrave Macmillan, 115-136, 2014. The joint project with my former PhD student Weiwei Ji and my colleague Masaki Mori led to a publication entitled “Does Chinese managers’ guanxi networking matter to their managerial success? A multiple-case study from Japan”, Ritsumeikan Business Journal, 9, 47-63, 2015(a) (refereed) that earned me several invited lectures at leading universities such as SWUFE, China in corporation with CIBS University of Gothenburg, Sweden, 10 April 2015; guest lecture at Jena University, Germany, 25.05.2016; and guest lecture at International Conference on the 90th Anniversary of Southeast Asian Studies and Overseas Chinese Studies, Jinan University, China, 16.07.2017. The panel survey method I developed in this course was published entitled 日本における中国人ハイブリッド企業家の文化変容とguanxiネットワーキング：パネル調査よりin: 異文化経営研究 (12, 21-38, 2015; refereed).
The contextual management appraisal that investigates acculturation, preferences and networking was previously applied to comparative analysis on international management expatriated to Germany and Japan. I published the joint database analysis of these research projects in the chapter Performance Analysis of Boundary Spanners in Multinational Enterprises Through the Lens of Management Geography in my book with Atsushi Taira entitled Management Geography – Asian Perspectives Focusing on Japan and Surrounding Regions Management Geography (International Perspectives in Geography 19, Springer Nature, 2022). As far as I know, we published for the first time in the world a book entitled Management Geography. This publication in 2022 with Springer Nature received global recognition and contributed to the theoretical, methodological, and empirical advancement of Management Geography. Further, the research project proposed will draw attention to our research group which disseminates research results also via the Online journal ManGeo Working Paper Series – ISSN 2436-3855. 49. With TANG Xinyu (MA) I was Observing problems for sustainable IHRM – Nurturing intercultural teams at a Japan-based MNE and a SME that were published ManGeo Working Paper#02. Recently, a JSPS project led to the publication entitled Shaping spaces of innovation communities – The role of promoters in German-Japanese networks in ManGeo Working Paper#03. The research activities proposed here will contribute to build an outstanding reputation of the Research Laboratory ManGeo at Ritsumeikan University OIC in particular, and promote Management Geography as a research agenda to geographers and IB scholars in general. ManGeo joint research projects benefit researchers joining ManGeo research group through theory and method developments and cooperating managers through practical implications.
