Japanese Hrm Essay

International Journal of tender imaging counseling, Human Resource Management Journal, Organizational Dynamics and Asiatic Business and Management. In 2005 he co-edited a book entitled japanese Management The Search for a New Balance between persistence and Change with Palgrave. Anne-Wil Harzing is Professor in International Management at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her look for interests include international HRM, expatriate anxiety, HQsubsidiary relationships, cross-cultural steering and the enjoyment of dustup in international parentage.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 brinytains an extensive website (www. harzing. com) with resource s for international and cross-cultural management as well as academic publishing and bibliometrics. Abstract The objective of this chapter is to infract suggestions as to how lacquerese multinational corporations (MNCs) might best make engross of foreign, here specifically American and German, HRM practices in order to reform their ingest HRM fashion fashion model. These suggestions be based on a large scale trial-and-error study, encompassing responses from more than 800 HR managers. The learning possibilities for Nipponese companies from oversea are analyzed on twain antithetical levels at headquarters and at subsidiary level.One obvious difficulty we are presented with if we wish to wait on the question what lacquer can learn from the West is the selection of countries that are representative of the West. In this study we limit our empirical question to the inspirations Japan might receive from the the States and Germany. This selection has some merit, in represen ting the largest and the third 2 3 largest developed economies in the world (with Japan world the second largest economy), and the economically possessive nations of North America and europium (with Japan being the leading economy in Asia).In addition, the USA and Germany from each one embody the prime example of two of the three master(prenominal) varieties of market economies the USA representing the free market economy of Anglo-Saxon countries and Germany the favorable market economy of continental Europe (with Japan embodying the third chief(prenominal) variety of market economies, the government-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 endure best practice ideals from which other(a) societies can borrow and learn. Consequently, these country models fork up been subject to numerous comparative analysis (Thurow, 1992 Garten, 1993 Yamamura and Streeck, 2003 Pascha, 2004 Jacoby, 2005). As economic surgery and ingathering paths vary over time the role of a dominant economy also rotates among countries. In the 1950s, 1960s and most of the 1970s the American management style clearly was dominant and a common scene was that it would spread around the world, gaining application in many foreign countries.From the deeply 1970s to the early 1990s, this argument increasingly was applied to Japan (Mueller, 1994), and to a lesser extent and limited to the European mount, to Germany (Albert, 1991 Thurow, 1992). Since the implosion of the Nipponese economy, the stagnation of the German economy, and with the advent 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 bang with rapidly evolving economic and technological conditions.Consequently, the USA beca me again the dominant role model (Edwards et al. , 2005). This study employs a very carefully matched design in which we investigate the same three countries (Japan, the USA and Germany) as home and swarm countries. We not only study HRM practices at headquarters (HQ) in each of these three countries, but 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 canvas 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(prenominal) sections. The first main section describes empirical resu lts from HQ and the second main section depicts the situation at subsidiary level.For each of the two main sections, first the context of existing search is summarized. Subsequently, the methodology of the empirical research is described. Findings are then presented and subsequently discussed. Finally, suggestions are made as to how the Japanese might best make use of foreign HRM policies to reform their consume HRM practices and ultimately improve competitiveness. Research context As mentioned above, the Japanese HRM model has often been recognized as a key factor to the elevator of the Japanese economy, particularly during the 1980s (see for example Inohara, 1990).However, the same Japanese HRM which until of late has been much celebrated in the West, and presented as a role-model to be wise(p) 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 (Frenke l, 1994 Smith, 1997 Yoshimura and Anderson, 1997 Crawford, 1998 Horiuchi, 1998 Ornatowski, 1998 El Kahal, 2001 Pudelko, 2005, 2007). Others, however, continue to stress its inherent 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 masses (Kono and Clegg, 2001) and the aim of human resource development (Ballon, 2002) that is ingrained into the Japanese management philosophy. In particular, the idea of defining the employees of a play along 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 tha t some shift toward Western management principles is taking place 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 erupt 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 find a new balance between the continuation of traditional (human resource) management principles and changes godly 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 review that existing literature in this field is in some respects inconclusive or sanely contradictory.Nor has it generally been informed by empirical examination of HR managers testify views on cross-national adoption processes. As this group might be judge 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 possibility of learning from each other. In this task, a quantifiable approach seemed to be the most appropriate.The analysis is therefore based on empirical data which have been drawn together from an extensive analyze (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 fictional that the heads of HR departments would have the highest degree of experience, knowledge and vision with regard to the issues being investigated, due to their senior positions within corporate hierarchies.