Japan's Lifetime Employment Concept

The concept of lifetime employment is a striking example of the Japanese habit of developing new, but tradition-based, customs to suit the needs of the moment and discarding them when they no longer serve a purpose. Although the idea of a promise of permanent employment strikes foreigners as either an excellent example of social justice or a ludicrous imposition on businesses, it is poorly understood in the West. The idea is of recent origin and was a practical means of facilitating the various surges of industrialization and industrial change in Japan throughout the twentieth century. In Japanese fashion, however, the concept had roots in the past and was developed as a complement to a whole set of Japanese concepts (such as the emphasis on group membership and family) that enabled its rapid rise to the status of a widely accepted facet of the social order. But since the downward slide of the nation's economy began in the early 1990s this "custom"--which only applied to a portion of Japanese workers--has come under attack and is gradually being dismantled since it now works counter to the interests of those who instituted it and to the interests of the nation as a whole.

Since the Japanese "bubble economy of overvalued equities and real estate" collapsed and sent the nation into "the slump that just will not quit" the Western press has adopted an almost gloating tone toward the economic system before which "the entire world stood in awe" until the late 1980s (Porter &

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t reflects the concept of "family occupations," a very common tradition in Japan for centuries that "is by no means uncommon even in today's industrial world" (Hendry, 1995, p. 154). The influence of this tradition on large Japanese industrial firms makes sense when it is understood that one of their chief characteristics is that "they tend to take over much more of their employees' lives than companies elsewhere are wont to do" (Hendry, p. 150). Large firms recruit white-collar workers directly from universities, and people most often enter firms with which they already have some connection (a relative or family friend). Training courses center around the development of company loyalty, and this loyalty is seen as being far more important than even the particular tasks for which the employee is trained since Japanese firms switch functions fairly often and depend on extreme flexibility among their workers. In addition, pay is based entirely on seniority. In part this is "a mechanism to defer wage payment by underpaying younger workers," but it also develops the employee's personal stake in the company and increases willingness to undertake new tasks or undergo job rotation since it "detach[es] remunerative rewards from one'

Category: Foreign - J