Japanese style of Human resource management or the
soft approach to human resource management have been studied rigorously by many
scholars and researchers. Evolution and the current trends of it had been influenced
by the Japanese society, economy and the global economy.
What are the key aspects of Japanese HRM Style
There are two theories on the evolution of Japanese
HRM style.
1.
First theory says
that Japanese management practices have minor influence from history and
culture, and its developed through past 60 years, specially after the world war
2.
2.
The second theory
says that the Japanese management practices are heavily influenced by Japanese
culture and history (Firkola, P.,
2006).
But reality lies in between above two theories. Both
the history and the culture have been playing a major role for evolution of the
Japanese management style. Three major characteristics of Japanese management are
lifetime employment, seniority and enterprise unions.
Lifetime employment: During the past, lifestyle of Japanese farming
villages were mostly around rice-fields. Very little mobility makes them born
and spent their whole life within the same village. It is believed that the
concept of lifetime employment arises due these rural and difficult conditions.
In
the lifetime employment concept, an employee stays with a same company for
their entire lifetime. This is more or less an ethical bond between the company
and the employee rather than a legal agreement. Japanese are looking for a company
to work with rather than looking for a job within a company. During their tenure,
employees received a general training covering the whole process areas of a
company. Regular job rotation (within company) is a common practice and it is
done for the benefit of both the company and the employee (Firkola, P.,
2006).
Seniority: Seniority is defined as the number of years an employee with a same company and its not related to the employee’s age. In this system promotions and salary revision are minimal during the early stage of employee’s career. It is believed that with the time employees develop skills and gained experience, therefore salary revision and promotion are more abundant with the seniority (Harvard Business Publishing, 2019).
Enterprise
Union: Japanese enterprise unions are single
company unions. i.e. they do not spread outside the company. These unions
members are full time employees of the company and is consists of both blue-and
white-collar employers. These union have dual relationship with company. They
are,
1.
involvement during
the collective bargaining process and
2.
the involvement
during discussing the company strategies (Firkola, P.,
2006).
Current Trends
Current trends of the Japanese HRM system can be easily identified by
studying the changes in these core values, i.e. studying the changes in
lifelong employment, studying the changes in Seniority and finally by studying
the changes in enterprise unions.
Changes
to Lifetime Employment:
With the new trends in global economy, new technology and cultural
changes in Japanese companies itself are forced to reduce their labor costs.
Different companies had different strategies in reducing the labor costs, such
as VRS, reduce the number of new recruits, new recruits hired as temporally
employees, etc.
There are both good and bad
with the concept of Lifetime employment, so some Japanese companies and
employees still prefer to be with this concept. Most interestingly concept of
lifetime employment is less popular with the Japanese young generation.
Changes
to Seniority:
Most Japanese companies are in the process of transferring from seniority-based
evaluation system to performance-based evolution. With this new trend arose the
issue of establishing a fair and uniform performance evaluation system within
companies.
Changes
to Enterprise Union:
In the recent past the power of enterprise unions have decreased and
also their role has become undefined. Further, companies refuse to discuss the
salary increments with unions and salary increments become more interrelated
with the company’s market performance. Moreover, this leads to the fact that
seniority-based pay system is no longer in-effect and unions are no longer
discussing the salary increments with the management.
Global market trends, emerging new technology, changes
in Japanese culture have put enormous pressure on Japanese HRM system. With
this, Japanese HRM system is now marching towards a hybrid system, while
preserving good aspects from there old style and absorbing a lot from the
Western world.
References
Beechler, S., Najjar, M., Stucker, K. & Bird, A., 1996. Japanese-style versus
American-style Human Resource Management Overseas: Examining Whether the Data
Support the "Facts", Columbia: s.n.
Drucker, P. F., 1971. What We Can Learn from Japanese Management. [Online]
Available at: https://hbr.org/1971/03/what-we-can-learn-from-japanese-management#
[Accessed 30 03 2019].
Firkola, P., 2006. Japanese Management Practices Past and Present. Volume 35, pp. 115-130.
