Multi-Layered Expectations of Japanese Companies for Foreigners in Career-Track Positions

Focusing on the Granting of Industrial Citizenship

Abstract

This study empirically examines the preferred characteristics of foreign employees by Japanese companies. Research on highly skilled foreign workers in Japan has been dominated by policy and ideological discussions, with few empirical studies on the kind of highly skilled foreign workers needed by Japanese firms. In addition, the kinds of citizenship derived for them in industrial and civil society needs to be scrutinized. This paper qualitatively examines the kinds of foreigners that are appropriate for Japanese companies to grant industrial citizenship as career-track positions through interviews with nine large Japanese firms. According to the interviewees, foreign workers in fast-track positions must be able to: adapt to the current organizational systems, and utilize diversity to promote future internal changes. This reveals the multi-layered expectations of the companies that look for foreigners with the same abilities as the Japanese careertrack employees but with the heterogeneity of diversity-based innovation.

These results highlight the difficulties for foreigners in acquiring industrial citizenship as career-track employees in Japan, and vividly reflect the logic of corporate citizenship that creates social and organizational exclusion in Japanese companies. The analysis of “dual” citizenship for foreign career-track workers makes it possible to link migration studies and organizational studies, which were previously unassociated. Future research should consider additional factors such as Japanese company characteristics, their distribution in the labor market, and social norms.