抄録
The breakout of World War l (WWI, hereafter), which spurred on Japanese industrializaion, brought about remarkable changes in the circumstances of staff, especially junior staff in industry: bureaucratization of business enterprises, and expansion of secondary and higher education. The purpose of this paper is to make it clear what kind of changes in employment management of junior staff came about responding to these new circumstances after WWI, with special reference to Hitachi Ltd. Hitachi Ltd. first embarked on electrical machinery manufacturing in 1910. Its chief strategy in employment management at the early stage was to secure highly-educated engineers. In fact, graduates from higher schools occupied 64% of all the recruits of senior staff between 1912 and 1915. However, recruits of lower-class engineers graduating from secondary technical schools (Kogyogakko) employed as junior staff were few until after 1916. During WWI Hitachi developed into one of the biggest factories, but such a rapid growth was not without confusion in its production system. Moreover, reentry of foreign companies into the Japanese market after the end of WWI accelerated competition, and the prices of products declined sharply. Thus, Hitachi was forced to adjust and expand management organization on a large scale to further control over production process. This increased importance of the role of junior staff remarkably. The number of recruits from secondary technical schools showed a sharp increase after 1916. In the 1920s, when the staff market underwent a complete transformation through expansion of secondary education and the panic of 1920, the majority of junior staff in demand came to be supplied by regulary recruiting graduates from secondary schools throughout Japan. As a result, in the early 1920s the graduates of secondary schools occupied 64% of all the recruits of junior staff. In the late 1920s the rate rose to 90%, and at the same time, chances of promotion from workers to junior staff decreased sharply. Therefore, it should be safe to say that distinction between graduates from secondary and higher schools and non-graduates came to be fixed as stratification between staff and workers in the late 1920s.
