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This article provides an overview of Japanese labor studies conducted since the 2000s; it particularly focuses on studies dealing with women's work and non-standard employment. By reviewing these studies, the article aims to show how the Japanese employment system creates and maintains economic disparities between men and women and between different employment statuses. First, a review of the literature on women's labor indicates that the Japanese employment system is discriminatory toward women. Specifically, the article finds that Japan's long-term employment and seniority-based systems are preventing women from developing their careers. Next, the article reviews research on non-standard employment with a focus on disparities between standard and non-standard workers and explains how differences in human resource development policies have created and maintained large discrepancies between employment statuses. Therefore, the study concludes that the established Japanese employment system causes large disparities between men and women, and in employment statuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors re-examine developments in two key elements of the Japanese employment system, seniority-based wages and lifetime employment, using recent microdata from the Basic Survey on Wage Structure. In contrast with previous studies, the authors find evidence that these practices are eroding. For seniority wages, for example, they find that the age-wage profile has become flatter in recent years, especially for employees in the middle and final phase of their careers. And for lifetime employment, a clear downward trend has developed since the early 2000s in the share of lifetime employees among younger, university-educated workers. The findings suggest that a growing share of educated younger workers choose to leave indefinite-contract jobs due to the poor prospects for seniority-based wage progression, while older workers choose to stay in their present job despite stagnating wages, because it may be more difficult for them to find alternative employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the development of the quality circle in Japan with reference to such traditions as permanent employment, nenko (seniority- based compensation), enterprise unionism, and management paternalism. Quality circles are examined as tools for motivating employees, reducing labor turnover, effecting employee "career expansion," and allowing employee participation in job redesign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wage inequality declined in the 1990s, while it increased in the 2000s for full-time male workers in Japan. We find that a decreased return to firm-specific human capital, which has been neglected in previous empirical analyses of inequality, is a key factor preventing a rise in wage inequality during the prolonged period of economic stagnation, known as Japan's lost decades. We also find that, while changes in returns to general and specific human capital contributed to narrowing wage inequality in the 1990s and widening wage inequality in the 2000s, a significant fraction of the increase in wage inequality in the 2000s is attributable to composition effects arising from an increased share of educated and experienced workers, among whom wages are more dispersed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of companies in Japan have implemented performance-related reward systems (PRRS) due to the demerits in seniority-based reward systems, economic slowdown, increasing global competition, and an aging workforce. This study focuses on reward systems and preferences in foreign subsidiaries in Japan, an area that has been overlooked. In contrast to the convergence view that best practices are universally applicable, interviews conducted in 60 Nordic subsidiaries show that PRRS have faced considerable resistance, while seniority-based reward systems have proved robust, especially in older subsidiaries. Implications for practice and suggestions for future studies are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Harmony is one of the most fundamental Japanese values. It is derived from Confucianism and encompasses a state of mind, an action process and outcomes of the action. This article draws on research data and discusses Japanese nurses' perceptions of harmony as reflected in their everyday practice. The most important virtues for these nurses were reported as politeness and respect for other persons. The outcome from the nurses' harmonious practice, it is claimed, benefited patients and created peaceful, harmonious relationships for all. Because of the unique link between harmony and the location of interaction, the ideal 'workplace harmony' threatened some nurses' professional decision making. These nurses confused harmony with conformity by superficial agreement. The Japanese seniority system could be a major factor contributing to this problem. Ethics education that includes traditional values and concepts in Japanese culture is strongly urged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines whether the employment systems of Japan are converging or diverging. In the classical Japanese employment system of the 1970s, managerial principles such as lifetime employment remained institutionalized in the sense that they were assumed to be stable, enduring, reproducible and sustainable over long periods of time without continuing justification (Oliver 1992). The Japanese industrial relations system was characterized as a tightly coupled system in which lifetime employment, seniority-plus-merit pay and enterprise unions coexisted as mutually reinforcing elements. Consequently, any deviation from established norms elicited potentially costly social sanctions. Moreover, homogeneity of behaviour and consensus were at a much higher premium in a co-ordinated market economy of the Japanese sort than in a liberal market economy. It is not surprising, therefore, that most studies that purport to examine whether lifetime employment is coming to an end conclude negatively, having found no evidence of an enormous crisis-inducing external shock that disrupted the system abruptly and fundamentally. However, the evidence gathered, with the benefit of hindsight from the 1990s experience, is a gradual change in the institutions of Japanese industrial relations well beyond a point of return to the 1970s equilibrium. The pace of change has been slow, but the nature of the modification has been considerable. For instance, lifetime employment was about job security and income guarantee, but each has been eroded slowly.

When Japanese firms restructured their operations in the 1990s, Japanese employees were not fired and were often transferred together in groups inside firms or to related outside firms. Undergoing similar business restructuring from the late 1980s on, American firms fired low-performing white-collar employees, and excess middle-performing white-collar employees were fired if they could not locate other jobs in the firms by using 'job-bid' systems (systems that identify openings and allow individuals at their own choosing to 'bid' for those openings). American unionized blue-collar workers were laid off based on seniority rules. Although similar job-bid systems were introduced into Japanese firms in the 1990s, they were used only for certain white-collar jobs. In the United States, job-bid systems commonly were used for both blue- and white-collar employees. Overall, the Japanese employment system was characterized by management control and stable employment in contrast to the active role played by individual choice in an environment of unstable employment in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In exploring why and to what extent the Japanese model of participatory employment relations has changed at the turn of the century, this article criticizes prevalent paradigms of political economy, specifically the paradigms of the neoliberals and the institutionalists, instead proposing a theoretical alternative, that of agents' reflexivity in international competition. Contrary to the institutionalist arguments for the path-dependent persistence of a national model, the concepts of lifetime employment and seniority in Japan have changed from being sources of competitiveness to objects and conditions for reform. Additionally, in contrast to the neoliberals' expectations based on the universal relevance of liberal markets, the Japanese adjustments do not converge towards the American liberal market model, but instead generate new divergences inspired but not determined by foreign competitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated to what extent the organizational context for managerial career progress perceived by managers, consisting of (1) the quality of the environment for career progress, (2) performance-based promotion practices and (3) in-house training opportunities, is different in Chinese and Japanese corporations. Also, the effects of corporate size, managers' age, management level and educational level on the perceived career progress environment were examined. MANCOVA results indicated that Japanese managers working for Japanese corporations in Japan enjoy more favourable career progress environment in all three aspects (Wilks' λ=.80, F=24.70, p<.0005 ) than Chinese managers in Chinese state-owned corporations (CSOCs) and Sino-foreign joint venture corporations (SFJVCs) in China. However, no meaningful differences were found between CSOCs and SFJVCs with respect to the organizational context for managerial career progress. Regarding the influence of environmental factors, corporate size had a positive effect on all three aspects of the context for career progress. Management level and performance-based promotion practices were found to have positive effects on the perceived quality of career progress environment, particularly in SFJVCs. However, educational level and age had negative effects on the quality of context factors of career progress in SFJVCs. These results are discussed with reference to differences in corporate culture and HRM practices among the three types of organizations, especially SFJVCs, involving the treatment of employees' age and educational level; in other words, seniority-based HRM practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reveals changes in Japan's lifetime employment system and seniority-based wage system. Move towards multiple wage systems; Growth in work-based elements in wages; Decline in the concept of the age-based living wage.

This paper analyses how performance appraisal has affected the wages of employees in a unionized Japanese firm over time, using firm-level wage and performance appraisal data. Data show that the wage and performance-appraisal systems have been shifting to a performance basis, and away from the heavy reliance on age and seniority characteristic of the old systems. In the process, wage differentials among employees are becoming wider, particularly among those 37 to 41 years old and those 49 to 55 years old. Management introduced the new wage system through a process of concessionary bargaining. Surprisingly, employees, rather than the enterprise union, were able to convince management to modify their initial plans during bargaining over the new wage system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seniority and experience are more important in Japanese than American labor markets. This article examines the way that these factors are reflected in patterns of age and sex segregation in the occupational structures of the two countries. Occupational age segregation is greater in Japan than in the United States: There are larger age differences among the incumbents of major occupational groups in Japan, and managerial and administrative occupations in particular are dominated by older males. In contrast, occupational sex segregation is slightly lower in Japan than in the United States. This non intuitive result is due to the greater apparent integration of Japanese women into low-status white-collar and blue-collar occupational groups, resulting from particular labor market processes in those groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article develops a model in which firms adopt wage structures which reward workers for seniority. It examines and compares relevant data on seniority pay and quit rates in Great Britain and Japan. The wage is made a positive function of seniority as a means of reducing labor turnover and thereby the training costs incurred by the employer in providing firm-specific skills. An outline of the model is presented. The article shows that seniority is rewarded in both countries but to a greater extent in Japan, and that labor turnover is lower in Japan.

• The existing scholarly consensus regards Korean management as essentially similar to Japanese management. The postulated similarity between the two managerial systems is misleading, if not wrong. • In Korea promotion depends far less on seniority than it does in Japan. Whereas it is difficult to find upper level managers in their 40's in Japan, they are common in Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Japanese lifetime-employment system gives the average Japanese worker stronger job security than the average American worker.' However, lifetime- employment guarantees apply only to the core, "regular" work force. Peripheral workers, including temporary, day. and part-time workers, are more vulnerable to contract termination. These workers are predominantly female and are widely believed to serve as a buffer for the regular work force. Moreover, Japanese women are disproportionately represented among those groups not covered by the lifetime employment system and so are more vulnerable to contract termination. Temporary employees are workers employed for a period of not less than a month but not more than a year and day laborers are workers employed on a daily basis for a period of less than a month. Women, in turn, accounted for 79 percent of temporary workers and 75 percent of day laborers in manufacturing. Analysts have argued that Japanese companies were harmed by their inability to shed excess labor during the severe recession following the first oil price shock in the mid-1970s.

The article argues a harmonious and cooperative working relation between Japanese labor and management is key to explaining the country's technological innovation and economic competitiveness compared to Europe and the U.S. Influential factors cited are lifelong worker commitments to an employer, a Buddhist and Shintoist philosophical heritage, pay based on seniority, and family piety practices carried over into the workplace.

Evaluates the decision-making process of the Japanese people. Authority of executives and the president; Basis for the reward system; Importance of seniority for promotion and salary increments; Criteria for recruitment and selection of employees.

Examines the pattern of lifetime commitment in Japanese industry. Shift from seniority to job classification; Substitution of mechanization and automation for human labor; Degree of interfirm mobility; Influence of the social relationships of the work groups on the quitting rates; Strategies to compensate for the labor shortage; Types of employee recruitment processes.

The article presents an update on research efforts related to management as of October 1981. Researcher Arye Globerson is conducting a ten-year study of the integration of management development and organization development. Another researcher, Nan Weiner, is participating in an investigation of the human resource factors affecting the adoption of the Kanban System of Japan in different manufacturing settings. Researcher Michael E. Gordon is completing a study on seniority as a factor in staffing decisions.

The article focuses on the challenges that the aging society posed to Japan and how to turn those challenges into opportunity. It mentions that with the aging society of Japan, the country faces increase cost of social welfare, contribute to problems in geopolitics, and possibility of conflict between older people and the youth on employment. It states that the challenges could be addressed through reconsideration of seniority in employment and change of mindset of Japanese.