The Influence of “Japanese-style Management in the New Era” on External Labor Market Deregulation in the 1990s

Abstract

This paper examines the influence of pressure groups on non-regular employment labor policy through an analysis of pressure groups, mainly the Japan Federation of Employers’ Associations （Nikkeiren）, and proposals and requests to the government and ministries by government committees and councils during the deregulation of the external labor market deregulation in the late 1990s. We also focused on the impact of Nikkeiren’s “Japanese-style Management in the New Era” on labor policy. The main conclusions of this paper are as follows. There are many studies that criticize the “Japanese Management in the New Era” by Nikkeiren as the “trigger” for the deregulation of the external labor market, but the “Japanese Management in the New Era” is a summary of the way of human resource management that already existed within Nikkeiren and its member companies. Deregulation was already on the agenda when the report was published. Also, through the analysis of this paper, we could not confirm that the document had a significant impact on labor policy, and it became clear that the criticisms made earlier overestimated the influence of the document on the labor policy-making process.