The Paradox of the Ideal Corporate Worker Identity:An Examination of Discourse at a Japanese Business Manners Training Camp

Abstract

In Japanese society, the transition from student to shakaijin (mature, contributing adult) is an important life change involving a fundamental identity shift. Primarily using “tactics of intersubjectivity,” this study explores how new employees are instructed to become competent members of the corporate world during a four-day-business manners training camp. The analysis demonstrates how an instructor teaches the norms and ideologies of the business world by assigning the new employees to various categories throughout the training period. Furthermore, the study shows that the instructor’s aim is for the new employees to fully adopt new identities based on the ideal of kigyō senshi (corporate warrior), reflecting the meso level norms and ideologies of the corporate world, even though this kigyō senshi model has been marked as problematic in macro level social and governmental discourses. The study therefore argues that the meso level determines the construction of professional identity. It also suggests that the recent societal shift toward valuing work-life balance will have limited success without deeper changes to the ideal of the corporate worker.