William Ouchi

William Ouchi

William G. Ouchi (born 1943) is an American professor and author in the field of business management.

Bill Ouchi was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. He earned a B.A. from Williams College (1965), an MBA from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Chicago. He was a Stanford business school professor for 8 years and has been a faculty member of the Anderson School of Management at University of California, Los Angeles for many years.

Ouchi first came to prominence for his studies of the differences between Japanese and American companies and management styles. His first book in 1981 summarized his observations. Theory Z: How American Management Can Meet the Japanese Challenge and was a New York Times best-seller for over five months. It currently ranks as the seventh most widely held book of the 12 million titles held in 4000 U.S. libraries. His second book, The M Form Society: How American Teamwork Can Recapture the Competitive Edge, examined various techniques implementing that approach.

Ouchi also came up with his three approaches to control in an organization's management:

• Market control
• Bureaucratic control
• Clan control