Extreme Toyota: Radical Contradictions That Drive Success at the World's Best Manufacturer

Appendix B. Literature Review

With the assistance of Monitor Group, our literature review of the publications about Toyota (1980 to 2007) identified a total of 48 English books and 382 Japanese books that were related to the central theme of this book—Toyota's management of both the "soft" side and the "hard" side of the company.

Of the 48 English books on Toyota, 12 were published during the 1980s, 17 during the 1990s, 9 from 2001 to 2005, and 10 from 2006 to 2007 (in Table B.1). Half of these focused on the Toyota Production System.

The Japanese books on Toyota covered a wider range of topics, including human resource management and innovation issues, and only 25.4 percent focused on the Toyota Production System. The rising number of publications in recent years reflects an increasing interest on Toyota in Japan. From 2001 to 2007, a total of 209 books were published, more than the 173 published from 1980 to 2000.

Table 11.1. Number of Books in English and Japanese about Toyota (1980 to 2007)

Period	English Books	Japanese Books
1980–1985	3(2)	44(10)
1986–1990	9(6)	50(12)
1991–1995	5(2)	35(8)
1996–2000	12(6)	44(8)
2001–2005	9(3)	125(34)
2006–2007	10(5)	84(25)
Total	48(24)	382(97)

NOTE

Numbers in parenthesis reflect the number of books that focus on the Toyota Production System.

Literature Review Methodology

The keyword "Toyota" was used to search for book titles registered in the Library of Congress (United States), the British Library (U.K.), and the libraries of five Japanese universities (Hitotsubashi ...