Japanese research on labour and management: aims and issues
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Editorial Asian Business & Management (2006) 5, 449–451. doi:10.1057/palgrave.abm.9200197
Japanese research on labour and management: aims and issues Japanese academic research in management studies has always tended towards a practical orientation. Nonetheless, in 1991 the Japan Academy of Labour and Management was established with the aims of furthering both theoretical and practical research, both at home and in an international context. At the same time, it expressed its commitment to a critical spirit, as the driving force behind academic progress. Subsequently, though previous national conferences have focused on such areas as Japanese management and issues of employment and labour management, on the whole a characteristic of published reports has been the implicit presence of these founding tenets of the Japan Academy of Labour and Management (JALM) approach. The five papers included in this special issue of Asian Business and Management address, from an analytical perspective, changes currently taking place in the characteristics and systems of Japanese management. The first two writers focus on ‘Japanese-style Americanization’ — the change from person-oriented to task-oriented management resulting from the introduction of a performance-based approach to human resources and labour management. Kuroda discusses the new approaches to these areas that emerged following the publication of Japanese management in the new age (1995) by the Federation of Economic Organizations (now the Japan Business Federation). The Federation maintained that trends such as increasing information technology and globalization necessitated the abandonment of rigid traditional practices such as lifetime employment and seniority-based promotion, and the introduction of more flexible employment and use of labour and promotion. The principle was that human resources and labour management should reflect trends in the marketplace, and the Federation emphasized that their proposals were in response to the current situation; and indeed movement is underway in that direction. However, at the same time, severe problems with the Japanese economy have become apparent, such as a soaring unemployment rate and number of non-regular or casual employees. Ogoshi adds to this debate by maintaining that the so-called Japanese lifetime employment system, a feature of the high-growth period, is, along with
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the approach to wages, definitely in transformation from a typically Japanese seniority-based to a USA-derived performance-based system. However, from a democratic point of view, the loss of lifetime employment also means that workers lose guaranteed employment, while performance-based payment is causing a diminution of collective bargaining and the strength of labour unions. Therefore, Ogoshi criticizes the ongoing changes as tantamount to a conspiracy unilaterally adopted by management, and constituting, democratically speaking, a retrogressive development. Saruta’s contribution shows how, in contrast to the general trend of Japanese
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