戰時期 鍾紡그룹의 多角化 戰略과 平壤製鐵所

Abstract

Kanegahutibouseki led Japan’s textile spinning industry after its founding in 1887 and launched diversification strategies for building the Pyongyang Steel Mill in compliance with a government policy at the end of 1943. This paper provides an empirical review of the diversification strategies and the wartime characteristics of organizational behavior responding to the strategies. After December 1942, the spinning company pushed ahead with a plan to build a steel mill based on Korean-produced iron ore and anthracite in Pyongyang by engaging Kanegahutijitugyou, one of its planned business units, for the construction work. However, as the Japanese War Ministry’s special steel-making plan was announced in March 1943, it was inevitable to drastically expand and revise the plan for construction of the steel mill under the government policy. After that, the construction of the steel mill in Pyongyang was being done with active support from the military and technical assistance of Nihonnkoukann (Nippon Steel Corporation), but the progress was very slow and tough due to an unexpected shortage of materials and the unreasonable government policy. Moreover, the careless management of the steel mill led to system-wide munitional diversification and wasteful investments and accordingly caused a dramatic expansion of investment scale in the Korean Peninsula. The military’s pressure to relocate the headquarters organization to Korea and their persistent intervention in management made the organization of management bulky and weakened the company’s control over the work site. From the findings above, the diversification strategies for steel mill construction in Pyongyang that Kanegahutibouseki deemed as a managerial entity of nonessential wartime industry implemented in Korea under Japan’s colonial rule indicate an empirical improvement and theoretical expansion of the wartime corporation theory based on Nihonnkoukann’s vertical integration model which had been proposed by Nagasima Osamu. In other words, those strategies suggest an theoretical expansion of the wartime corporation theory represented by Kanebo Group’s diversification model as opposed to the vertical integration model which reflected differences between corporate-level business styles (operations and organizations) and industrial control policies.