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This paper introduces new models for comparing several social mobility tables that provide various one-degree-of-freedom tests for two mobility tables on substantively meaningful structural components. These components include differences between mobility tables in (1) the strength of off-diagonal associations, (2) the strength of diagonal effects, and (3) the extent of structural mobility. Most of the models in this paper use association models and the Sobel-Hout-Duncan model but are specifically formulated to analyze three-way tables that have either nations or periods as the third dimension. American, British, and Japanese mobility tables are compared. Together, they show that equality of occupational opportunity is larger for the United States than for Great Britain, that Japan's mobility structure is closer to quasi-independence than that of the two other nations, and that Japan's mobility structure became more like that of the United States in 1975 rather than in 1955. These analyses also demonstrate that comparative mobility research based on indexing mobility has strong limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Japan, unlike in most other industrialized societies, the decline in marriage rates has been most pronounced among highly educated women. Theoretical interpretations of this distinctive pattern of change have typically emphasized increasing economic independence for women and reductions in the gains to marriage. In this paper, the authors develop and evaluate an alternative explanation that emphasizes women's continued dependence on men's economic resources and decline in the relative supply of highly educated men. Using data from four rounds of the Japanese National Fertility Survey, the authors decompose the observed decline in marriage rates into changes in the propensity to marry and changes in the educational composition of the marriage market. Results indicate that change in the availability of potential spouses accounts for one-fourth of the decline in marriage among university-educated women and explains a substantial proportion of the growing educational differences in marriage. The conclusion is that the relatively large decline in marriage among highly educated Japanese women likely reflects both increasing economic independence and continued economic dependence on men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The elite coalition that pushes local industrial growth is composed of six actors: local state, business, and party and national state, business, and party. The question of which dominates the coalition reflects current debates about the structure of power in capitalist society. This paper addresses these debates through the detailed study of a growth coalition in a rural industrialization project in southern Japan. It traces the strategies and modes of influence of the six actors, their structure and process, through the 25-year history of the project. Contrary to the "strong state" image of Japan, national big business dominated the growth coalition. The rest of the society, including the state, adjusted around its motion. This resulted in policies which favored economic growth over social needs, giving some of the other actors legitimation problems. Yet, success at rapid growth prevented these from assuming crisis proportions. The findings run counter to state autonomy arguments and suggest closer attention be paid to multiple levels of structure and process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japanese women participate in the labor force at rates similar to women in Western industrial nations, but gender stratification patterns are sharper. Women in Japan are less apt to work as employees, a tendency that increases with age. Likewise, female employees tend to shift from larger to smaller firms across the life Cycle, whereas male employees do not. These aggregate pallets imply that Japanese women are seldom placed in career-track positions in large firms early in their careers. Analyses on labor market entry data from the 1984 "Survey on Work Patterns" substantiate this view. Although Japanese men and women enter large firms at equivalent rates upon leaving school, 22 percent of men and only 7 percent of women enter career ladders. The majority of women enter large firms as clerical workers, three-quarters of whom are in low-level "assistant clerical" positions. Causal processes governing entrance to large firms and career tracks are examined in the paper, with particular attention to the relative returns to different levels and types of education for Japanese men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most societies, there is an ongoing contest over who is the "we," to whom specific moral obligations apply, and who is the "they," to whom they do not. This paper explores and contrasts the most blatant forms of active exclusion, which includes genocide, and indirect exclusion, which is characterized by subtle forms of exclusion through social invisibility. In genocide, the targeted groups are not simply excluded from life integrity rights, but offenses against them are explicitly encouraged, rewarded, and sanctioned by the regime. In indirect exclusion, the exclusion is implicit in cultural and institutional practices and is often unintentional. I examine the difficulties and dilemmas involved in resisting and preventing active exclusion and in challenging the cultural codes that maintain indirect exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human judgment of wrongdoing underlies all social control processes. Substantively, we argue that a universal model of how humans make such judgments must allow for assessing both deeds of the actor being judged and role-related social obligations governing what the actor should have done. Structurally, such a model can incorporate cross-cultural differences in terms of differential weights placed on these factors. The model was tested in sample surveys of Yokohama and Kanazawa, Japan, using responses to experimentally varied hypothetical vignettes. It was predicted that the Japanese would replicate previous findings for American respondents (in Detroit), but would at the same time differ significantly in their weighting of deed-related versus role-related variations in vignettes as determinants of an actor's responsibility. The bulk of results originally obtained in Detroit were in fact replicated in both Yokohama and Kanazawa. Predicted cultural differences were also confirmed in comparisons of each Japanese survey with the prior American one; Japanese placed greater emphasis on an actor's role position and an act's social context, relative to an American emphasis on aspects of an actor's deed per se. Further practical implications of these cultural differences for our legal system are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of comparative family policy research have raised concerns about potential negative outcomes of generous family policies, an issue known as the "welfare state paradox." They suspect that such policies will make employers reluctant to hire or promote women into highauthority jobs, because women are more likely than men to use those policies and take time off. Few studies, however, have directly tested this employer-side mechanism. In this article, we argue that due to employer heterogeneity, as well as different modes of policy intervention such as mandate-based and incentive-based approaches, generous family policies may not always lead to employer discrimination. Adopting a quasi-experimental research design that classifies employers based on their differential receptivity to family policy changes, we compare their hiring and promotion of women before and after two major family policy reforms in Japan, one in 1992 and another in 2005. Our analysis using panel data of large Japanese firms finds little evidence of policy-induced discrimination against women. Instead, we find that employers who voluntarily provided generous leave benefits prior to government mandates or incentives actually hired and promoted more women after the legal changes, and employers who provided generous benefits in response to government incentives also increased opportunities for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing data from 12 industrial societies, investigates differences in the labor force behavior, occupational distribution, and attainment patterns of ever- and never-married women. Finds little support for the dual-career theory, which attributes womens' concentration in low-paying employment to gender differences in marital and childrearing responsibilities. (CMG)

Prominent accounts of the transition to capitalism have a far too limited understanding of pre-capitalist agrarian economies’ potential for dynamism. Recent research shows that conditions earlier accounts identify as triggers for a transition to capitalism could be present without a transition occurring. I expand on implications of these cases of “missing transitions” for theorizing the dynamics of pre-capitalist agrarian economies. I present a theoretical framework that shows how phenomena previously associated with the transition to capitalism—such as flexible property rights in land and labor, extensive markets, and accumulation of industrial and mercantile wealth—emerged in pre-capitalist societies without leading to capitalist development. I illustrate the analytic upshot of this framework by considering the case study of Japan in the Tokugawa era (1603 to 1868). For historical sociologists, early modern Japan has long been seen as an anomalous case, puzzlingly mixing developments thought to represent early signs of capitalism with evidence of the durable survival of the feudal social order. In light of a more accurate account of the forces for and limits of dynamism in pre-capitalist agrarian economies, Tokugawa-era Japan is no longer a puzzling anomaly. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study uses a sample of Japanese university scientists in life and materials sciences to examine how academic entrepreneurship has affected the norms and behaviors of academic scientists regarding sharing scientific resources. Results indicate that high levels of academic entrepreneurship in a scientific field are associated with less reliance on the gift-giving form of sharing (i.e., generalized exchange) traditionally recommended by scientific communities, and with a greater emphasis on direct benefits for givers (i.e., direct exchange), as well as a lower overall frequency of sharing. We observe these shifts in sharing behavior even among individual scientists who are not themselves entrepreneurially active; this suggests a general shift in scientific norms contingent on institutional contexts. These findings reflect contradictions inherent in current science policies that simultaneously encourage open science as well as commercial application of research results, and they suggest that the increasing emphasis on commercial activity may fundamentally change the normative structure of science. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines how organizational environments affect labor market processes in Japan. I hypothesize that labor market inequality is generated through workers being "positioned" in either domestic or in foreign firms. I apply the concept of social versus economic exchange to distinguish the nature of transactions between domestic and foreign firms. I argue that foreign firms operate under an institutional context that is conducive to the economic mode of exchange, which has enormous consequences for their personnel practices and reward systems. Using a dataset of Japanese workers collected in 2000, I examine the extent to which employment practices in foreign firms deviate from the benchmark features observed in the Japanese labor market. My results confirm that employment in foreign firms significantly affects career outcomes. The high-commitment culture commonly associated with the Japanese workforce is an outcome of the organizational environment. I find little evidence of Japanese employment practices (e.g., seniority and lifetime employment) operating within foreign firms. I also find that workers in foreign firms trust their employers less and have a higher propensity to quit their jobs. My findings suggest that workers in domestic and foreign firms are subject to vastly different sets of institutional constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from a 1978 study of wives with pre-school-age children, we show that extended residence fits nicely with certain elements of modern Japanese society, offering tangible benefits for both young couples and their parents. Specifically, the incompatibility of the mother role and wage work is greatly reduced by the child care and housework aid parents provide. Consequently, wives in extended households have more children and are more likely to be employed. Moreover, very few respondents living with parents wish a more separate residence. Extended residence is not an anachronism. Rather, it offers an appealing alternative to some of the most modern segments of contemporary Japanese society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on the research conducted by Terry L. Besser comparing the commitment to work in the U.S. and Japan. It was argued that U.S. manufacturing employees are more committed than are Japanese workers in terms of work attitudes, even though the Japanese display more committed behaviors. The Japanese advantage in behavioral commitment allegedly stems largely from social pressures rather than individual loyalty to, identification with or involvement in the organization. Besser argues that low rates of absenteeism do not necessarily indicate a highly committed work force. Surely absenteeism in Japanese-managed plants is held low by peer pressures and other factors unrelated to commitment attitudes of individuals. At the same time, many of the normative and team-based controls for which Japanese organizations are famous could not function without a high degree of individual acceptance and compliance. Behavioral commitment in the Japanese workplace has both structural and attitudinal sources. Despite initial appearances from survey data, most evidence does not support the conclusion that U.S. manufacturing workers feel greater personal loyalty to their firms than do Japanese workers or that structural controls wholly explain the Japanese advantage in behavioral commitment.

I review research comparing the commitment to work of American and Japanese workers. Because Japanese workers demonstrate high levels of committed behaviors (e.g., low absenteeism and turnover), this research concludes that Japanese workers are more committed than are American workers. However, this research dismisses the finding that American workers express a commitment to work that is greater than (or at least similar to) Japanese workers. I argue that this incongruity between expressed commitment and committed behaviors has several explanations: Greater duality exists in the Japanese labor market. Differences in cultural contexts make behavioral indicators dubious measures of commitment. Japanese organizations may elicit committed behaviors from their workers without producing personal feelings of commitment. The relationship between attitudes and behavior may be less direct than is often assumed. Continuing to distrust the validity of survey results regarding the commitment of Japanese workers avoids confronting these alternative explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the organization of keiretsu networks in the Japanese economy using data on the top 50 financial firms and 200 industrial corporations. Control relations between pairs of firms are modeled as a function of bilateral exchange relations and other firm- and dyad-level covariates in accordance with resource dependence and transaction cost theory. Firms with financial and commercial connections develop quasi-administrative ties through cross-shareholding and director transfers. Keiretsu networks have two sides: (1) horizontal relationships of mutual support and defense among large, established firms as indicated by reciprocity of control and exchange, homophily among "big-six" affiliates, and symmetry in the effects of purchase/supply transactions on control; (2) vertical structures of asymmetric exchange and control between financial firms and industrial firms, large firms and small firms, and "big-six" firms versus independent companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]