Business Talk By Sony Chief Morita Leads Off Second Annual Series

Noting that the United States has 16 times more lawyers per capita than Japan, a leading Japanese businessman last night said that suspicion and excessive emphasis on cautious decisions id hampering business performance in this country.

Akio Morita, the chief executive officer of Sony Corporation told a crowd of more than 100 at the Institute of Politics (IOP) Forum that "in Japan, everybody trusts each other," while "in this country, the only person you can trust is your lawyer."

Furthermore, Morita said that American businessmen faced large personal penalties for mistakes, and consequently take fewer risks and avoid experimentation. The Japanese system, which insures job protection for executives, encourages greater innovation, he added.

Morita's speech led off the second annual summer series of discussions sponsored jointly by the Institute of Politics and the Summer School Jane Markham, program coordinator of the IOP Forum, said this week that the "tremendous response" to last year's experiment encouraged the organization to schedule the series again.

The highlight of the series will be a debate between Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has established himself in the past year as one of the leading national spokesmen for such a proposal.

In other IOP news, the Institute yesterday announced the receipt of a grant of $225,000 for a three-year study aimed at identifying the ways in which the media affects policy-making in the federal government.

The project, sponsored by the Revson Foundation, will be run by Jonathan Moore, director of the IOP and Richard E. Neustadt '42, Littauer Professor of Public Administration. Using examples such as the Iranian hostage crisis. Three Mile Island and SALT negotiations, the study will examine foreign policy decision-making within the executive branch, the use of confidentiality by government officials and the press, and the impact of the press in shaping the public opinion.