Changing Personnel Management Practices: A Case Study of a Japanese Firm
研究一家百年日本企业如何应对人口老龄化带来的年功序列制和终身雇佣制问题，包括调整晋升结构和招聘标准，对关注日本企业管理变革的学者有参考价值。
In 1977, Yakabe predicted that the rising median age of the Japanese labor force would make it very difficult for Japanese firms to maintain the seniority system and its related features. By 1987, Japan's population pyramid had began to bulge in its middle section, and it is projected to take more of a rectangular shape by 2025 (Anzai 1989). According to the Sanwa Institute of General Research (1990), the ratio of the jobs available per employable person reached 1.32 in 1989. In view of the changing population structure and the technological change, Moro (1982) predicted that some Japanese managerial traditions would be questioned. These include life-time employment; the seniority system; traditional criteria for recruitment with an emphasis on gender, age and prestige of school; and job commitment throughout family life. To examine these issues, problems generated by the changing age structure for one enterprise will be recounted, and strategies (anticipated or adopted) will be described. The 100-year-old firm studied is located in Osaka City, Japan. It is one of four quasi-autonomous branches of a single company. The branch maintains regular communication with the company president in Tokyo. The entire company employs 230 workers; the branch has 80 employees. Relative to other Japanese companies, this parent company is large as a wholesale firm, but small as a manufacturer. The company mainly wholesales steel-related products for construction and machinery, but also handles other goods, including food and computer hardware and software. In the summer of 1989, data were obtained through face-to-face interviews with key decision makers (the chief executive officer and four executive managers in personnel management and planning). The interviews were intentionally flexible, with only a few prepared lead questions. The following sections discuss personnel problems identified by the firm and the anticipated changes that will result from addressing these problems. Problems Related to Lifetime Employment and the Seniority System In this firm, life-time employment, and its collateral seniority system of promotion, resulted in a top-heavy personnel structure. Employees expect to be promoted to a supervisory position with an administrative salary after a certain number of years. Men ranging in age from 40 to 45 years old represented 35 percent of the employees at this office. All had titles, most of which implied supervisory responsibilities. However, because of the seniority system, the firm was beginning to issue supervisory titles to persons without subordinates. The executives soon realized this was unnecessary, and adopted a strategy to deal with this problem--they changed the personnel structure of each section into what is called a bunchin (Japanese paperweight) system. (A Japanese paper weight has one knob in the middle of a flat surface, symbolizing one supervisor with the rest of the persons of equal rank. This is in contrast to the traditional heirarchical structure.) Another component of their new strategy was to appoint an employee to a supervisory role based on the person's achievement. In this restructuring, a face-saving approach was adopted. The former supervisors were given new titles as specialists for certain tasks and assigned to new jobs. To make this transition less painful to former supervisors, seating arrangements also were changed so that rank was less conspicuous. In their traditional seating arrangement, the section head was at the end of a block of desks, the persons next in rank occupied the adjacent desks, and the lowest-ranked person sat at the end of the block. The new arrangement placed the head in an inconspicuous middle spot. Challenges to the Traditional Recruitment Criteria Shortage of new college graduates. In 1989, this firm was able to recruit the majority of new employees from new college graduates, as Japanese firms typically prefer to do. …