Ulrike Schaede is Professor of Japanese Business at the University of California, San Diego, School of Global Policy and Strategy. She is the Director of JFIT (Japan Forum for Innovation and Technology) where she organizes a weekly “Japan Zoominar” on current issues on Japan. Schaede works on Japan’s changing corporate strategies, including business culture, change management, employment practices, the rise of private equity, corporate governance, and manufacturing and innovation under the digital transformation. She has written extensively on Japanese business organization, and is the author of The Business Reinvention of Japan: How to Make Sense of the New Japan (Stanford University Press, 2020) as well as Choose and Focus: Japanese Business Strategies for the 21st Century (Cornell UP, 2008). She holds a PhD in Japan Studies and Economics from Marburg University, Germany, and has been invited to visiting professor and scholar positions at UC Berkeley, Harvard Business School, Stanford University in the U.S., as well as Hitotsubashi University and the research institutes of The Bank of Japan, various Ministries, and the Development Bank of Japan. All told, Schaede has spent over nine years of research in Tokyo and is an advisor to two startup incubators in Japan. Her website can be found here.
Award Information
This project investigates the concepts and mechanisms of economic policy and regulation in postwar Japan by analyzing the role of the Ministry of Finance (MOF) from an interdisciplinary approach. If successful, it will result into a new framework that explains: (1) changes in regulatory structure and economic policy during fast economic growth; (2) differences across countries, especially the U.S., and the difficulties that result in bilateral and multilateral relations; and~alternative solutions to these difficulties based on a better understanding and acceptance of different economic systems that need to co-exist. The study will explain different forces and factors in Japan, such as the "Old Boy" network, and try to build a bridge between Western theory and Japanese reality in economic policy.