|
Japan THE CULTURE OF JAPANESE MANAGEMENT
The culture of Japanese management so famous in the
West is
generally limited to Japan's large corporations. These
flagships of
the Japanese economy provide their workers with excellent
salaries
and working conditions and secure employment. These
companies and
their employees are the business elite of Japan. A career
with such
a company was the dream of many young people in Japan, but
only a
select few attain these jobs. Qualification for employment
is
limited to the men and the few women who graduate from the
top
thirty colleges and universities in Japan.
Placement and advancement of Japanese workers is
heavily based
on educational background. Students who do not gain
admission to
the most highly rated colleges only rarely have the chance
to work
for a large company. Instead, they have to seek positions
in small
and medium-sized firms that can not offer comparable
benefits and
prestige. The quality of one's education and, more
important, the
college attended, play decisive roles in a person's career
(see Higher Education
, ch. 3).
Few Japanese attend graduate school, and graduate
training in
business per se is rare. There are only a few business
school
programs in Japan. Companies provide their own training
and show a
strong preference for young men who can be trained in the
company
way. Interest in a person whose attitudes and work habits
are
shaped outside the company is low. When young men are
preparing to
graduate from college, they begin the search for a
suitable
employer. This process has been very difficult: there are
only a
few positions in the best government ministries, and quite
often
entry into a good firm is determined by competitive
examination.
The situation is becoming less competitive, with a gradual
decrease
in the number of candidates. New workers enter their
companies as
a group on April 1 each year.
One of the prominent features of Japanese management is
the
practice of permanent employment (shushin koyo).
Permanent
employment covers the minority of the work force that work
for the
major companies. Management trainees, traditionally nearly
all of
whom were men, are recruited directly from colleges when
they
graduate in the late winter and, if they survive a
six-month
probationary period with the company, are expected to stay
with the
companies for their entire working careers. Employees are
not
dismissed thereafter on any grounds, except for serious
breaches of
ethics.
Permanent employees are hired as generalists, not as
specialists for specific positions. A new worker is not
hired
because of any special skill or experience; rather, the
individual's intelligence, educational background, and
personal
attitudes and attributes are closely examined. On entering
a
Japanese corporation, the new employee will train from six
to
twelve months in each of the firm's major offices or
divisions.
Thus, within a few years a young employee will know every
facet of
company operations, knowledge which allows companies to be
more
productive.
Another unique aspect of Japanese management is the
system of
promotion and reward. An important criterion is seniority.
Seniority is determined by the year an employee's class
enters the
company. Career progression is highly predictable,
regulated, and
automatic. Compensation for young workers is quite low,
but they
accept low pay with the understanding that their pay will
increase
in regular increments and be quite high by retirement.
Compensation
consists of a wide range of tangible and intangible
benefits,
including housing assistance, inexpensive vacations, good
recreational facilities, and, most important, the
availability of
low-cost loans for such expenses as housing and a new
automobile.
Regular pay is often augmented by generous semiannual
bonuses.
Members of the same graduating class usually start with
similar
salaries, and salary increases and promotions each year
are
generally uniform. The purpose is to maintain harmony and
avoid
stress and jealousy within the group.
Individual evaluation, however, does occur. Early in
workers'
careers, by age thirty, distinctions are made in pay and
job
assignments. During the latter part of workers' careers,
another
weeding takes place, as only the best workers are selected
for
accelerated advancement into upper management. Those
employees who
fail to advance are forced to retire from the company in
their midto -late fifties. Retirement does not necessarily mean a
life of
leisure. Poor pension benefits and modest social security
means
that many people have to continue working after retiring
from a
career. Many management retirees work for the smaller
subsidiaries
of the large companies, with another company, or with the
large
company itself at substantially lower salaries.
A few major corporations in the late 1980s were
experimenting
with variations of permanent employment and automatic
promotion.
Some rewarded harder work and higher production with
higher raises
and more rapid promotions, but most retained the more
traditional
forms of hiring and advancement. A few companies that
experienced
serious reverses laid off workers, but such instances were
rare.
Another aspect of Japanese management is the company
union,
which most regular company employees are obliged to join.
The
worker do not have a separate skill identification outside
of the
company. Despite federations of unions at the national
level, the
union does not exist as an entity separate from, or with
an
adversarial relationship to, the company. The linking of
the
company with the worker puts severe limits on independent
union
action, and the worker does not wish to harm the economic
wellbeing of the company. Strikes are rare and usually brief.
Japanese managerial style and decision making in large
companies emphasizes the flow of information and
initiative from
the bottom up, making top management a facilitator rather
than the
source of authority, while middle management is both the
impetus
for and the shaper of policy. Consensus is stressed as a
way of
arriving at decisions, and close attention is paid to
workers'
well-being. Rather than serve as an important decision
maker, the
ranking officer of a company has the responsibility of
maintaining
harmony so that employees can work together. A Japanese
chief
executive officer is a consensus builder.
Data as of January 1994
|
