Abstract
In this chapter, we clarified how the concept and practice of Human Resource Management has been accepted in Japan and how HRM in Japanese companies differs from that in the USA. A careful review of the literature in Japanese academic circles since the 1980s reveals that the term “HRM” was introduced in Japanese academic circles in the early 1980s, the same time that HRM became a mainstream paradigm in the United States. However, for a while there was little research on HRM and the number of papers on HRM was stagnant, but it was found that the number of papers based on the HRM paradigm increased rapidly from the late 1990s. We also found that many of these papers focused on the strategic aspects of HRM or dealt with issues of the HRM paradigm. In the business world, especially since the 2000s, management strategies have been developed that take into account the linkage between the strategies of the HRM paradigm and business performance. However, the term HRM is not used explicitly in daily life, and it is evident that unique HRM practices are being developed based on the Japanese social and organizational context, incorporating HRM findings into practice.
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Notes
- 1.
This society was established in 1970 to study labor problems from different approaches. The first annual meeting was held at Rikkyo University in 1971; the annual meeting has been held once a year since then. The society is considered to be a leading HRM academy in Japan because the number of members is large, it has a longer history than other societies, and it has large accumulation of research. Currently, the society calls itself “Japan Society of Human Resource Management (JSHRM)” in English; therefore, its Japanese and English name are quite unmatched.
- 2.
In Enatsu et al. (2021), the database has been composed of “texts” such as “Title name, Cited Reference Title (1) Cited Reference Title (2) … Cited Reference Title (n)” for each paper, and puts them in each volume of “Ronshu” or in “Institutional Journal”. A “paragraph” is created that connects each issue. In addition to the frequency of appearance of various words in sentences and paragraphs, the strength of co-occurrence between words is measured. The strength of co-occurrence was visualized by the Jaccard index as “the value obtained by dividing the frequency with which both one word and another word appear by the frequency with which one appears.” For the analysis, they used a text analysis software called “KH Coder.”
- 3.
The survey period was May to August 2017. The survey form was mailed to 3000 listed companies with more than 100 employees and addressed to the human resources director in each case (500 companies have foreign affiliations). Data were collected by means of a response form on the JMA website. There were 134 companies with valid responses (collection rate: 4.5%). In each of the following chapters, the analyses are based on the data obtained in this survey.
- 4.
This term refers to the neoliberal economic policies of the United Kingdom and the United States. Together with technological advancements and development of globalization since the 1990s, this principle focuses on being able to freely adjust through the market. In aspects of HR systems, employment, training, and evaluation are changing to incorporate market-oriented elements.
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Niwamoto, Y., Kambayashi, N. (2022). The Development of Human Resource Management Theory in Japan. In: Mitsui, I., Isomura, K., Takeuchi, Y. (eds) Translating and Incorporating American Management Thought into Japan. Translational Systems Sciences, vol 30. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4542-7_7
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