The Analysis of Diversity in Japanese Knowledge Workers’ Career Development : Software Engineers’ Careers In and Out of Organizations

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to investigate the diverse process of knowledge workers’ career developments and personal characteristics which are suitable for each career. In this paper, Japanese knowledge workers’ career developments are analyzed through the interview research. The key factors of the analysis are their career orientations, learning styles, and human networks. Especially, the difference between careers in organizations and careers out of organizations (job changes and opening a business) are investigated. As the results of the interview research for 20 Japanese software engineers, the findings are summarized as follows.

In software engineers’ careers in one organization, organized processes are able to be seen. Through these processes, engineers acquire knowledge about not only technology but also business, project management, and customers’ contexts, so on. At the same time, they become to have career orientations about both technical and managerial. Especially in the large company, engineers are able to find many opportunities to learn in the organization, and they interact very closely with superior colleagues, customers, and the other companies’ engineers who join the project team. Thus, they are able to learn very advanced and refined knowledge about both technology and contexts.

In contrast, in careers with job changes, such organized processes are not seen. Since there are many happenstances and accidents in their careers, engineers must adopt various environments very quickly. In addition, they must learn many things by themselves. Thus, successful engineers are always seeking for opportunities to learn outside of the organization. Therefore, they have spread human networks outside of organization, and many kinds of persons join the networks. Especially, entrepreneurs exchange information and knowledge about business or management frequently in the networks. It must be said there are some risks in their careers, and self-reliance and toughness are very important to survive in such careers.