This paper aims to overview empirical evidences of the recent changes in the Japanese Employment System. Firstly, the long-term employment has not been completely deteriorated. Secondly, the slope of wage-tenure profile has been polarized among establishments since 2000s. Thirdly, the increase in number of non-standard workers has been accompanied with the decline in self-employment, while the proportion of standard employment in the population has been preserved. Therefore, the recent changes in the Japanese labor market can be considered to be employment expansion, keeping the core of the Japanese Employment System.

This paper analyzes the changes in employment following the collapse of the asset-inflated bubble economy from the viewpoint of labor-management relations. The system of Japanese-style labor-management relations achieved both productivity improvement and maintenance of employment. However, later it failed due to the tremendous change in the economic conditions and social environments. Some companies reduced personnel expenses in order to improve productivity, and therefore, the employment situation became unstable.
For some time, a number of Japanese companies did not sufficiently employ young workers. Hence, the deficiency of young workers in many workplaces have caused middle-aged workers to become exceedingly busy with handling the work of young workers’ in addition to their own duties. Those middle-aged workers have little time to pass on their know-how and skills to young workers. As a result of this situation, it is difficult for young workers to learn their jobs and to grow in their roles. Unfortunately, many young workers leave their jobs, resulting in the number of young workers being further reduced.
Japan is facing a challenging situation in which human resources are not increasing and technological skill is not being passed on. Under these circumstances, there is a serious problem that the productivity of companies improves for a short time but does not continue to do so over the long term.

Alongside the prolonged depression of the Japanese economy, the view that the cause is attributed to the Japanese employment system has prevailed in the mass media, and the arguments to advocate the fundamental change of the existing institutions have been repeated. However, two of the bedrock, long-term employment and competence-based seniority wage, are still preserved. Therefore, the radical transformation has been called for. What should be considered is, however, an institutional resilience that a system is provided with. For the sake of a reform, there is a need for the accurate understanding of the Japanese employment system.

It is inevitable that the U.S. auto industry reforms their work organization since their bankruptcy in 2009. This paper examines the real conditions of the reform, compares them to those of Japanese auto industry and analyze their issues. General Motors successfully introduced more sophisticated structure of “hoshin kanri (policy deployment)”; however their path dependencies, such as traditional management structure and employment system, prevent the execution of the “hoshin kanri.” This paper demonstrates that U.S. auto industry’s reform is still on the way at present.

This article investigates how shareholders are involved in firms by means of participating in annual shareholder meetings. Using a longitudinal dataset on annual shareholder meetings of the Japanese firms between 1984 and 2014, the article clarifies the following two points: (1) While the decrease in corporate performance does not affect the number of attendees at annual meetings, it increases the number of questioners at the meetings; and (2) as the availability of the means of shareholder engagement improves, the number of attendees and questioners in the meetings increases.

Previous researches have documented that institutional entrepreneurs aiming to institutionalize innovative technologies must gain supporters who can provide legitimacy to the entrepreneurs’ projects by providing resources that render plausible public accounts. However, some important questions have not been adequately addressed: Who should be the supporters? How can we procure supporters? This study attempts to answer these questions.
First, institutional entrepreneurs must recognize the structure (i.e. distribution and inequity) of power providing legitimacy to institutionalization projects. Second, they must identify key supporters who have the power to authorize certain innovative technologies (e.g. administrative officials). Third, they must gain supporters by framing innovative technologies that satisfy the key supporters’ most important interests. On the other hand, we cannot promote institutionalization if we create groups of supporters without the power to authorize certain innovative technologies. Furthermore, a conflict of interest between these supporters and the key supporters would lead to a pile of institutionalization projects. Therefore, to illustrate this theoretical framework, this paper highlights the results of the analysis regarding the diffusion of an innovative slope reinforcement technique.