“As for the future, your task is not to foresee, but to enable it”(Saint-Exupery, Antoine de, The Wisdom of the Sands; 1984)

Modern society has experienced, so far, three basic periods, namely, the agricultural period, the industrial period, and the age of information. The agricultural period was the first when people stopped gathering wild fruits but stayed together at one place and planted crops and raised animals. This way of life lasted until the Industrial Period during which machines were invented to do the work which before people had had to do by hand.

The industrial period has lasted about two hundred years and we can still see a lot of it around us: factories producing steel, clothing, cars, and other items. But if we look inside the factories we see that some jobs are now being done by robots, and in the offices paperwork is being done by computers. These are clear signs that we have entered a new age, the Age of Information. In this new age, people will make their living by applying information and knowledge to solve problems.

In 1969 Alvin Tolfler, (Future Shock, New York: Random House, 1970) coined the term “future shock” to describe the “shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.” At that time scientists had not yet landed on the moon. Electronic calculators were just beginning to become manageably small. Today, thanks to the age of information, change is shattering. The world is changing rapidly, and Ghana is changing rapidly: new economic challenges are surging, new market opportunities are appearing continuously, and new political and social structures are replacing old and ineffective arrangements.

It is in this environment of ever accelerating progress that Japan Motors must plan and implement strategies. Thanks to its mix of dynamic management practices in planning, organizing, leading and controlling, and its vision, the Company is able to appreciate and comprehend these changes and to adjust to the vicissitude and the inherent Darwinism of the business environment. In this respect Japan Motors has lately spent over one quarter of a million U.S. Dollars on computer hardware, consisting of state-of-the-art fibre-optic cable highway for local area network, new computers and new servers, and an equally state-of-the-art Automate computer system – the delight of over 650 motor-firm users around the world, programmed to handle inventory control, workshop service and accounts. But this investment, impressive as it is on its own would not accomplish much unless the human resource using the technology was also enhanced.

Japan Motors considers the human resource as human beings having, unlike technological resource, personality, citizenship, control over whether they work, how much and how well, and thus requiring motivation, participation, satisfaction, incentives and rewards, leadership, status and function. The Company has therefore invested in a Human Resource Management Consultancy which has initiated systematic training programmes, sourced locally as well as overseas for workshop staff, stores and parts personnel, and sales staff. With superior human resource and enhanced technology firmly in hand, the Company is assured of the staff at all our branches, and in our associate companies who will apply their expertise, flexibility and imagination to provide satisfaction for our customers. Rooted in nearly ninety years of vested interest in Ghana, passed on from father to the children and to the children’s children, Japan Motors Trading Company Ltd. Approaches tomorrow’s Ghanaian market with enthusiasm, openness and responsibility.

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