Women\u27s Status and Roles in Contemporary Japanese Society

The combination of modernization and industrialization and the persistence of traditional attitudes serves to create a unique set of tensions and strains within the Japanese social system. The position of women is one such area in which the conflicting demands of this system are especially evident. Women in contemporary Japanese society are still expected to be good wives and mothers yet they are also often required to participate in the workforce in an economy beset by spiraling inflation. Even those women who are not forced to work by necessity have found that the importance of their wife/mother role has been significantly reduced by demographic and technological changes. The tension affecting women\u27s status and roles within contemporary Japanese society is the focus of this paper. I will use Wilbert Moore\u27s theory of social change, concentrating on the concomitants and consequences of industrialization and modernization to analyze the processes and effects of social change on women\u27s roles and status, and to construct a hypothesis concerning the future roles of women

The best of both worlds? An exploratory study of human resource management practices in U.S.-based Japanese affiliates

Japanese management practices have received considerable attention and notoriety over the past fifteen years as Westerners have searched for an understanding of Japan's meteoric economic success. As Japan's foreign direct investments have skyrocketed in the last few years attention has shifted from what the Japanese are doing at home to what they are doing overseas. In spite of this, however, relatively little empirical research has actually been conducted on the management of foreign affiliates of Japanese firms. This chapter reports the results of an exploratory study examining the characteristics of human resource management practices and policies in 49 Japanese manufacturing and service affiliates located in the United States. It describes the policies and practices of personnel selection, compensation, appraisal, and development in terms of three archetypal strategies for managing human resources. This chapter also examines the extent to which policies and practices conform to predications for the three HRM strategy types, as well as the degree of consistency found between stated organizational policies and actual practice

A bioecological approach to empathy, altruism, and intent to help: developmental, dispositional and contextual factors influence prosocial motivations and intentions

Whether one helps due to altruistic empathy or egoistic motivators has been debated in the social psychological literature most recently with the Felt-Oneness (Cialdini et al., 1997) and the Empathy-Altruism (Batson 1991) hypotheses. For strangers, it appears that helping intentions are predicted by felt-oneness, except in circumstances in which a bystander feels nurturance toward a target, in which case empathy is found to predict helping. For close relationships, however, empathy predicts helping, particularly in high need situations. Antipathy has been presented as a possible confound as well (Batson et al., 1997), but has not been tested. The present study took a bioecological systems approach (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006) in creating a model which includes severity of need, relational closeness, nurturance and antipathy as contextual factors in the prediction of altruistic empathy or egoistic motivations (oneness, personal distress and sadness) and intent to help. Additionally the model included person effects, with the developmental factors of temperament, socialization history and level of moral development, and the dispositional factors of dispositional empathy, personal distress, perspective-taking, and helpfulness. A path analysis with good model fit indicated that development influences prosocial dispositions. These dispositions, in addition to the contextual influences, predict outcomes of empathy, oneness, negative affect and intent to help. Follow up analyses were conducted to test the interaction of the contextual variables. There were significant main effects and interactions between these situational variables in predicting emotional response, oneness and intent-to-help. Relationship Closeness and Severity of Need were important factors, replicating previous findings (Cialdini et al. 1997), whereas nurturance is only important as a moderator. Antipathy, and its interactions with Severity of Need, is also an influential factor which does not appear to be a confound with oneness as previously suggested (Batson et al., 1997). Both felt-oneness and empathy significantly predict intent-to-help, within the bioecology of the person effects and context. Thus, support for both hypotheses was found by taking a bioecological approach, in addition to demonstrating the importance of including the effects of the individual and time when studying prosocial behavior

The prospects for industrial cooperation between the United States and Japan

As part of an extensive research project on the competitiveness of US and Japanese firms in three key industries (automobiles, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals) the research team undertook an examination of what some consider to be the inverse of competition, the possibilities for cooperation between the US and Japanese industries and firms. The series of questions that we asked was as follows: is there room for cooperation between US and Japanese companies and/or industries to further the cause of fair competition? Can the energy that is currently being put into breaking down barriers be usefully turned to building bridges

The transfer of human resource management systems overseas: An exploratory study of Japanese and American maquiladoras

The field of international management has, until recently, largely ignored how human resources management (HRM) systems in overseas subsidiaries are designed and how design impacts performance. In addition, there is virtually no research comparing the HRM systems in Japanese and Western affiliates. In an attempt to begin to address this important issue, this chapter presents the results of a study of Japanese and American maquiladoras (in-bond assembly plants) in Mexico. This chapter examines the relative influence of parent company strategy, strategic role of the affiliate, parent company administrative heritage, and host country environment on the HRM systems in eight maquiladoras, four Japanese and four American, located in Tijuana, Mexico. Using a contingency framework, this chapter also describes the fits between each maquiladora's HRM system and its internal and external environments. Finally, it identifies the resulting impact of these fits on performance, both at the individual employee and affiliate levels

The relationship between expatriates, parent company-affiliate integration and HRM control in overseas affiliates of Japanese and American MNCs

This paper examines the relationship between the level of parent company-subunit integration, parent control over the affiliate, and affiliate performance in a sample of 69 Japanese business units in the United States and 89 American business units in Japan. A discussion of the results and their implications are presented

Japanese banking in the United States: From transient advantage to strategic failure

Japanese banks instantly became major players in world financial markets when the 1985 Plaza Accord doubled the value of the yen. Access to cheap capital and long-term relationships with Japanese firms doing business abroad allowed them to undercut overseas rivals and achieve early success. However this quick-term overseas strategy lacked a defined long-term outlook. Based upon the author's interviews with 61 Japanese bankers, this paper examines the failure of Japanese banks to create and sustain competitive advantage. Their lack of "soft" resources, such as international experience, knowledge about local markets, and management expertise, have all contributed to their recent retreat

Ware ware nihonjin but we're not all alike: How Japanese managers champion innovation

This paper, using a study based on a survey of 678 managers in 8 Japanese firms, examines the similarities and differences in the preferred styles of innovation championing that exist across large established Japanese companies. The results of the study show that championing styles vary greatly across Japanese organizations. The implication of this finding is that research on Japanese firms should avoid looking only for similarities which reinforce stereotypes of a "Japanese way" of managing the innovation process

Organizational variation in championship behavior: The case of Japanese firms

This study examines differences in corporate culture between Japanese firms as expressed in championing behaviors. The results of a survey of 678 managers in 8 Japanese firms concerning their preferences regarding innovation championing styles are reported. These show that the emphasis in previous research on the similarities between Japanese firms should be abandoned. In addition, the present study lends important support to the assumption of independence of organizational culture from social environment

A longitudinal study of staffing patterns in U.S. affiliates of Japanese multinational corporations

This paper present results from a longitudinal investigation of staffing of 50 Japanese affiliates in the U.S. between 1974 and 1990. Results indicate that international experience and dependence of the MNC on affiliates lead to greater use of expatriates. Additional findings and their implications are also discussed