Japanese Hrm Essay

International daybook of Human imagination guidance, Human Resource Management Journal, Organizational kinetics and Asian Business and Management. In 2005 he co-edited a book entitled Nipponese Management The look for a New Balance between Continuity and Change with Palgrave. Anne-Wil Harzing is Professor in International Management at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her inquiry interests include international HRM, expatriate management, HQ appurtenant relationships, cross-cultural management and the role of language in international business.She has published about these topics in journals such as Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Organizational Behaviour, Strategic Management Journal, Human Resource Management, and Organization Studies. Her books include Managing the Multinationals (Edward Elgar, 1999) and International Human Resource Management (Sage, 2010). Since 1999 she also maintains an extensive website (www. harzing. com) with resources for international and cross-cultural management as well as donnish publishing and bibliometrics. Abstract The objective of this chapter is to develop suggestions as to how Nipponese multinational corporations (MNCs) might best sack up use of alien, here specifically the Statesn and German, HRM practices in order to reform their own HRM model. These suggestions are establish on a large scale empirical study, encompassing responses from more than 800 HR managers. The go throughing possibilities for Japanese companies from abroad are analyzed on dickens different levels at headquarters and at subsidiary level.One obvious difficulty we are presented with if we wish to answer the question what Japan can learn from the West is the selection of countries that are representative of the West. In this study we limit our empirical research to the inspirations Japan might receive from the USA and Germany. This selection has somewhat merit, in representing the largest and the third 2 3 large st developed economies in the world (with Japan being the second largest saving), and the frugalally dominant nations of North America and Europe (with Japan being the leading economy in Asia).In addition, the USA and Germany each make up the prime spokesperson of two of the three main varieties of market economies the USA representing the free market economy of Anglo-Saxon countries and Germany the social market economy of continental Europe (with Japan embodying the third main soma of market economies, the goernment-induced market economy of East-Asia). Furthermore, according to Smith & Meiksins (1995 243) the USA, Japan and Germany are most frequently referred to as role models, as they provide best practice ideals from which otherwise societies can borrow and learn. Consequently, these country models obtain been subject to numerous comparative analysis (Thurow, 1992 Garten, 1993 Yamamura and Streeck, 2003 Pascha, 2004 Jacoby, 2005). As economic performance and step-up pa ths vary over time the role of a dominant economy also rotates among countries. In the 1950s, 1960s and most of the mid-seventies the American management style clearly was dominant and a common expectation was that it would spread approximately the world, gaining application in many foreign countries.From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, this argument increasingly was employ to Japan (Mueller, 1994), and to a lesser extent and limited to the European context, to Germany (Albert, 1991 Thurow, 1992). Since the implosion of the Japanese economy, the stagnation of the German economy, and with the coming of globalization, the conventional wisdom over the last one and a half decades up to the current economic crisis has been that the American management model is particularly well suited to provide the necessary flexibility to issue with rapidly evolving economic and technological conditions.Consequently, the USA became again the dominant role model (Edwards et al. , 2005). This stu dy employs a very carefully matched design in which we investigate the same three countries (Japan, the USA and Germany) as al-Qaida and host countries. We not only study HRM practices at headquarters (HQ) in each of these three countries, entirely also the practices of the subsidiaries of MNCs from each of the three countries in the two other respective countries. As a result, we re able to compare the HRM practices of nine different groups of companies HQ in Japan, the USA and Germany, subsidiaries of Japanese and German MNCs in the USA, subsidiaries of Japanese and American MNCs in Germany and subsidiaries of American and German MNCs in Japan. This design will enable us to disentangle the inspirations companies seek from abroad to a far greater extent than has been possible in other studies. 3 4 The structure of our analysis is separated into two main divisions. The first main section describes empirical results from HQ and the second main section depicts the situation at subs idiary level.For each of the two main sections, first the context of existing research is summarized. Subsequently, the methodology of the empirical research is described. Findings are thus presented and subsequently discussed. Finally, suggestions are made as to how the Japanese might best make use of foreign HRM policies to reform their own HRM practices and ultimately improve competitiveness. Research context As mentioned above, the Japanese HRM model has frequently been recognized as a key factor to the rise of the Japanese economy, particularly during the 1980s (see for example Inohara, 1990).However, the same Japanese HRM which until recently has been much celebrated in the West, and presented as a role-model to be well-read from (see for example Vogel, 1979 Ouchi, 1981 Peters and Waterman, 1982 Bleicher, 1982 Hilb, 1985), is now increasingly viewed as outmoded, and necessitating substantial reform (Frenkel, 1994 Smith, 1997 Yoshimura and Anderson, 1997 Crawford, 1998 Horiu chi, 1998 Ornatowski, 1998 El Kahal, 2001 Pudelko, 2005, 2007). Others, however, continue to stress its immanent strengths and warn against significant change (Kono and Clegg, 2001 Ballon, 2002 Ballon, 2006).On the other hand, American understanding of HRM has traditionally been viewed by Japanese managers with skepticism. It is regarded as contradicting in many ways the broad concept of respect for people (Kono and Clegg, 2001) and the aim of sympathetic resource development (Ballon, 2002) that is ingrained into the Japanese management philosophy. In particular, the idea of defining the employees of a partnership as resources (instead of members of the company family) that need to be managed (instead of developed) runs contrary to the key concepts of traditional Japanese HRM.However, in response to the deep crisis of the Japanese economy and management model, which has lasted for more than a decade now, it is clear that some shift toward Western management principles is taking p lace 4 5 (Frenkel, 1994 Ornatowski, 1998 El Kahal, 2001 Matanle, 2003). Thus, mirroring the economic growth patterns, adoption of Japanese HRM principles seems in the USA to be largely an issue of the past, whereas the question of adoption of American HRM policies is more current in Japan than ever.The key issue in Japan seems to be to hap a new balance between the continuation of traditional (human resource) management principles and changes inspired largely by Western or more specifically American strategies. Regarding finally the specific German understanding of (human resource) management, it has to be concluded that this is a subject of no significant importance in Japanese business research, if it is considered at all (Pudelko, 2000a). Methodology Data collection and sample It may be noted from this brief surveil that existing literature in this field is in some respects inconclusive or somewhat contradictory.Nor has it generally been informed by empirical examination of HR managers own views on cross-national adoption processes. As this group might be expected to constitute the chief change agent, empirical insight appears in this context all the more important. Accordingly, this chapter provides data on the perceptions of HR managers from three different countries on the mishap of learning from each other. In this task, a quantitative approach seemed to be the most appropriate.The analysis is because based on empirical data which have been drawn together from an extensive survey (Pudelko, 2000a-c). The heads of HR departments from the 500 largest corporations of Japan and for comparative reasons the USA and Germany were selected as units of investigation. It was assumed that the heads of HR departments would have the highest degree of experience, experience and vision with regard to the issues being investigated, due to their senior positions within corporate hierarchies.