Japanese Personnel Management and Flexibility Today
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Japanese Personnel Management and Flexibility Today Kenichi Kuroda School of Business Administrations, Meiji University, 1-1 Kanda-surugadai, Chiyoda, Tokyo 101-8301, Japan. E-mail: [email protected]
In 1995, the Japanese Employers Association (JEA) presented its new policy for personnel and labour management, emphasizing the changes in Japanese personnel and labour management. A characteristic of the JEA’s new policy was the increasing flexibility (flexibilization) of employment, wages, promotion and labour–management relations across all fields of business. The need for flexibilization is attributed to progress in information technology, globalization and fundamental changes in employment and work. In response to these drastic changes, the JEA proposed ‘new Japanese management’, involving such things as an increase in types of contract, promotion, etc., based on performance, variable working hours and flexitime. These proposals have not been completely realized, but movement towards flexibilization in personnel and labour management has occurred. However, over the same period, various serious problems have developed in the Japanese economy, including higher unemployment and resultant destabilization in employment, and loss of the will to work among younger people. These problems compound the difficulty of introducing a performancebased employment system, and raise the need for a different programme of reform, one that does not consist solely of placing more burdens on the workforce. Asian Business & Management (2006) 5, 453–468. doi:10.1057/palgrave.abm.9200196 Keywords: flexibilization; ‘ability-based’ approach; ‘performance-based’ approach; atypical employment; pay for performance
Introduction In 1995, following the collapse of the bubble economy and on the brink of a new century, Nikkeiren (Japan Federation of Employers’ Associations, now known as Keidanren, the Japan Business Federation) published a report entitled Japanese-style Management in a New Era (Nikkeiren, 1995). Amidst rampant globalization and in the aftermath of the bubble economy, this report clarified the internal and external workings of personnel and labour strategies Received 26 November 2005; revised 10 February 2006; accepted 24 February 2006
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for the new century, while at the same time declaring the extinction of Japanese employment practices. Ten years on, which of the aims advocated by Nikkeiren have been accomplished and how has this affected companies and workers? If we consider phenomena that have emerged in recent years — such as the confusion over the introduction of performance-based systems, the rapid rise in unstable employment as exemplified by freeters (job-hopping part-time workers) and dispatch labour, the social problem of young people seeking to evade all this that has become known as NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training) or the actualization of economic differentials in society — we face a myriad of predicaments. While these may not
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