Japanese Management and Labour in Transition explores the changing face of Japanese industrial relations. Part one of the work outlines recent trends in Japanese labour markets, labour law and corporate strategy, and explores the responses of both management and labour to pressure posed by these trends. Part two analyses the interaction between the state, management and labour, considering both the macro and the micro levels. This compilation of up-to-date research by leading Japanese scholars challenges the traditional view of 'lifetime' employment and focuses on the growing economic pressures that Japanese management and labour currently face.

Japanese labour market practices have attracted considerable attention in the West for two reasons. Firstly, innovative human resource management (HRM) is responsible for the development of competitive industrial sectors. Secondly, inner flexibility of the labour market has produced low unemployment and wage flexibility. This study, originally published in 2000, provides a thorough investigation of the distinctive features of Japanese internal labour markets (ILM) and occupational labour markets (OLM), closely analyses important changes in ILM and considers future developments. It combines a mixture both of descriptive and of theoretical and econometric work and builds on the authors' wel- known previous research in this area. Also contains a detailed case study and the econometric analysis of HRM policies used by a large Japanese firm. Although the focus is on Japanese ILM, international comparisons are made throughout, mainly with reference to Europe and the United States.

This book reappraises the Japanese employment system, characterized by such practices as the periodic recruiting of new graduates, lifetime employment and seniority-based wages, which were praised as sources of high productivity and flexibility for Japanese firms during the period of high economic growth from the middle of the 1950s until the burst of bubbles in the early 1990s. The prolonged stagnation after the bubble burst induced an increasing number of people to criticize the Japanese employment system as a barrier to the structural changes needed to allow the economy to adjust to the new environment, with detractors suggesting that such a system only serves to protect the vested interests of incumbent workers and firms. By investigating what caused the long stagnation of the Japanese economy, this book examines the validity of this currently dominant view about the Japanese employment system. The rigorous theoretical and empirical analyses presented in this book provide readers with deep insights into the nature of the current Japanese labor market and its macroeconomic impacts.

While offering a comparison of employment stability and flexibility in 16 OECD countries, the book provides a detailed analysis on the type of labor market regulations needed to ensure a balance of employment flexibility and security.