Toyota Motor Co. is a Japanese company that was founded in 1933 and it was not always know as "Toyota". It was a division of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works. Toyota only became an independent company later to be known as Toyota Motor Co. in 1937. Toyota was dedicated to the manufacturing of automobiles within Japan and its market was also located within Japan. It remained like this till the 1958 when Toyota put up their very first international production plant in Brazil and continued to expand the launching of production plants and its market to various countries around the world to become the 8th biggest company revenue wise according to CNNMoney's Global 500.
One of the main reasons for Toyota's Cultural diffusion was not only to earn more profit from its sales but also to contribute to the economies of the many countries that they have made their products available through local production, procurement, and employment. Toyota strongly believed in the local employment and also highly prioritized long-term local employment where they would hire locals and train them to be Toyota employees. 
Toyota has also introduced a traditional Japanese philosophy into other cultures called "Kaizen". Kaizen meaning "change for the best", is used by Toyota to incorporate all members of the work force in the production process of the vehicles and that improvements are made to the process over time. This was unheard of in most of the Western world and once introduced by Toyota has even been adopted by Detroit's Big Three; Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors.
Sources:
http://www.toyoland.com/history.html
http://www.toyota-global.com/sustainability/sustainability_report/highlights_in_fy2009_economic_aspects/global_expansion.html
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2013/snapshots/6752.html
http://www.gembutsu.com/system_files/library/21.bmp
This is an incredibly fascinating post Andres. Where did you hear about this concept of Kaizen??? Would you be willing to help explain it in class?
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