The stagnation of the Japanese economy and the ageing of Japanese society has led to major changes in the labour market in Japan. This comprehensive study looks at how the Japanese employment system is adapting to its new economic environment. Using the latest statistical evidence, the book focusses on the growing use of part-time and other forms of atypical employment relationships and illustrates how this is expressed in several different parts of the labour market. Particular attention is given to the changing situation of women, the decline of the family enterprise, the problems faced by older workers and the poor prospects for recent high school graduates. The recent rise in unemployment, including hidden unemployment is analysed. Relations between management and employees in Japanese corporations are also becoming more individualistic with the introduction of performance-related pay and the declining importance of enterprise unions. As a result of these changes, the future may see rising levels of income inequality. The Japanese labour force is declining with the ageing of the population and Japan's ability to cope is examined with special attention given to immigration policy. This book will be of interest to anyone interested in what is happening today in Japan and what the possibilities are for the future.

No detailed description available for "Management Under Differing Labour Market and Employment Systems".

Working in Restructured Workplaces addresses contradictory influences in contemporary workplace restructuring, its impact on workers' lives, and the direction and nature of future changes in the workplace. This authentic collection of sociological thought and research consists of previous works in Work and Occupations and some commissioned specifically for this book to focus on the nature, causes, and consequences of workplace restructuring.

"This book documents the changes in Japanese employment structures, behavior patterns, and attitudes that indicate that lifetime employment was not 'an indestructible bastion of Japanese cultural heritage.' ... Readable and refreshingly free of jargon." --Asiaweek

The in-depth analyses presented in this book have a dual focus: (1) Social mechanisms through which the gender wage gap, gender inequality in the attainment of managerial positions, and gender segregation of occupations are generated in Japan; and (2) Assessments of the effects of firms’ gender-egalitarian personnel policies and work–life balance promotion policies on the gender wage gap and the firms’ productivity. In addition, this work reviews and discusses various economic and sociological theories of gender inequality and gender discrimination and considers their consistencies and inconsistencies with the results of the analysis of Japanese data. Furthermore, the book critically reviews and discusses the historical development of the Japanese employment system by juxtaposing rational and cultural explanations. This book is an English translation by the author of a book he first published in Japanese in 2017. The original Japanese-language edition received two major book awards in Japan. One was The Nikkei Economic Book Culture Award, which is given every year by the Nikkei Newspaper Company and the Japan Economic Research Center to a few best books on economy and society. The other was The Showa University’s Women’s Culture Research Award, which is bestowed annually on a single book of research that promotes gender equality. Kazuo Yamaguchi is the Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago.

Keizer examines changing employment practices in Japan, focusing on the position of the Japanese firm that is confronted with the need to address the changing economic circumstances while also maintaining some fit with the wider set of institutions that govern the Japanese labour market.

Information technology has become a constant presence in contemporary life, infiltrating community, business and state affairs. This book discusses the uses and problems of IT in both developing and advanced countries, focusing on the ways in which IT changes society without neglecting the problematic aspects of the Internet revolution such as computer crime and the lack of professionals with computer literacy, particularly from a developing country's perspective. It examines such issues as the characteristics of network economies, connectivity pricing, Internet access, regulation, changes in supply chains, IT gaps between supply and demand, productivity increases, and the digital divide. Emanuele Giovannetti, Mitsuhiro Kagami and Masatsugu Tsuji have gathered together a group of international experts in economics and trade who discuss the impact of this revolution globally, looking at countries or regions including the UK, EU, Central and Eastern Europe, USA, Japan, India, South Africa, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and China.

This book systematically evaluates the impacts of deregulatory reforms on employment relations in Japan especially focusing on the core white collar workers. Concentrating on changes in three aspects of employment relations; contracts, employee mobility and worker effort, it examines the process of social negotiation and its results.

The Japanese Economy, 4th Edition is for anyone curious about economics, for it is impossible to appreciate economics without vivid examples of its application. This book is also for anyone broadly interested in Japan, for it is impossible to fully understand Japan without learning what basic economics has to say about it, which is much. To know Japan - or any country for that matter - is more than an ability to recite a litany of facts about its history, geography, institutions, and culture. Disciplined thinking is needed to organize the disparate facts into a coherent system that can be grasped whole. Modern economics is the academic discipline underlying this book. The book uses economics and explains it, but without presuming the reader has any prior knowledge of it. The main object of interest is Japan. It starts with Japan's economic history since the late sixteenth century through the twentieth century. It then addresses contemporary topics in Japan's economy, beginning with ones that require an economy - wide perspective - economic growth and the business cycle, exchange rates, and the balance of trade. The discussion then moves on to sectors of the economy: the public sector, industry and trade, the financial system, the labor market, and more. The chapters can be read in any order, but four threads run through all the chapters and link them: Japan's economic growth and development, Japan's integration with the world economy, government policies and their effects, and peculiar economic institutions and practices.

Students of management are nearly unanimous (as are managers themselves) in believing that the contemporary business corporation is in a period of dizzying change. This book represents the first time that leading experts in sociology, law, economics, and management studies have been assembled in one volume to explain the varying ways in which contemporary businesses are transforming themselves to respond to globalization, new technologies, workforce transformation, and legal change. Together their essays, whose focal point is an emerging network form of organization, bring order to the chaotic tumble of diagnoses, labels, and descriptions used to make sense of this changing world. Following an introduction by the editor, the first three chapters--by Walter Powell, David Stark, and Eleanor Westney--report systematically on change in corporate structure, strategy, and governance in the United States and Western Europe, East Asia, and the former socialist world. They separate fact from fiction and established trend from extravagant extrapolation. This is followed by commentary on them: Reinier Kraakman affirms the durability of the corporate form; David Bryce and Jitendra Singh assess organizational change from an evolutionary perspective; Robert Gibbons considers the logic of relational contracting in firms; and Charles Tilly probes the deeper historical context in which firms operate. The result is a revealing portrait of the challenges that managers face at the dawn of the twenty-first century and of how the diverse responses to those challenges are changing the nature of business enterprise throughout the world.