Career Development of Managers in Large Retailing in Japan and the U.S.

Abstract

This study aims to compare career development patterns of managers in large retailing in Japan and the U.S. Here the targets are not managers in the stores, which have been discussed in the previous studies, but the managers in the marketing/sales, finance/accounting, and human resources functions in the head office or in the regional head office. The data of 226 retail managers exclusively selected from the larger data set collected by the Japan Institute of Labor are used. This study mainly analyzes the managers' vertical and horizontal job careers within the company. Also the study discusses their relation to the length of appraisal period in which “decisive selection” of managers for further promotion takes place. The vertical job careers mean promotion and selection, and such issues as degrees of the internal promotion practices, the timing of decisive selection, fast trucking, and the effectiveness of professional qualifications for the promotion are discussed. The horizontal job careers mean the span of job experiences within the company, managers' job experiences in different functions and the groundwork is discussed.

Main findings are as follows: As regards the vertical job careers, first of all, a high turnover rate of managers in the U.S. are found as expected. The years of services of managers who experienced turnover, however, were not so much short not as expected and some of them stayed with the current company for a relatively long time. Second, the fast truck system for managers that are commonly found in the U.S., was not especially widespread in retailing. Third, the decisive selection which determines the winners in later progression opportunities is set later in Japan, whereas that is set earlier in the U.S. Accordingly, the appraisal period for the decisive selection becomes longer in Japan than in the U.S.

Concerning the horizontal job careers, the span of functional experience and the nature of the groundwork are largely common in the finance/accounting and the human resources in both countries. On the other hand, there is a large difference in the span of functional experiences in the marketing/sales, though the groundwork is equally valued in both countries. Japanese marketing/sales manager managers experience a wide span of jobs in the “A-fields” defined in terms of specific sub-functions within the marketing area such as selling, buying, and marketing. They experience a narrow span of jobs in the “B-field ” defined in terms of marketing targets such as product mix, sales districts and regions, and customers. The opposite is the case with American marketing/sales managers.

Because it needs longer time to master skills in the A-field than in the B-field, Japanese marketing/sales managers can experience multiple A-field skills before the decisive selection and receive appraisals in the longer term. Conversely, American marketing/sales managers can not help pursuing the experience in the B field rather than A field, because the decisive selection is made earlier and that does not give managers long enough time to broaden experiences in the A field nor the employers appraise them. In sum, it can be pointed out that the career development pattern is consistent with the length of appraisal period in both counties. This is the most important implication from this study.