White-Collar Mid-Career Hiring Behavior

: Redefining Typologies in the Employment Debate

Abstract

This study presents a new typology of the Japanese employment system by analyzing mid-career hiring behavior in large companies. Advocates of reforms to the Japanese employment system often base their arguments on national typologies. However, oversimplified typologies risk taking the debate in the wrong direction. The typology this study presents reflects the actual situation to invigorate the employment reform debate. The results of a case study reveal three types of mid-career hiring : “A-1 new graduate complementary,” “A-2 auxiliary,” and “B-1 permanent,” with more specific types within each. Of these types, A-type mid-career recruitment focuses on human resources in the “internal promotion type” internal labor market, while B-type mid-career recruitment utilizes human resources in the “fluid type” internal labor market. This finding suggests that multiple employment systems coexist in Japan ; that is, it is necessary to discuss employment reform based on the diverse internal labor markets that exist in Japan, rather than on an overly simplistic country-specific model.