Wolff, Leon --- "The Death of Lifelong Employment in Japan?" [2008] ELECD 383; in Nottage, Luke; Wolff, Leon; Anderson, Kent (eds), "Corporate Governance in the 21st Century" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: Corporate Governance in the 21st Century

Editor(s): Nottage, Luke; Wolff, Leon; Anderson, Kent

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847209238

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: The Death of Lifelong Employment in Japan?

Author(s): Wolff, Leon

Number of pages: 28

Extract:

3. The death of lifelong employment in
Japan?
Leon Wolff
Lifelong employment in Japan is more trope than literal fact. As a synecdoche,
it encapsulates Japan's system of industrial relations. As a metonym, it epito-
mises the employee-oriented communitarian firm (Abe and Shimizutani,
2007, p. 347). As a metaphor, it represents Japan's distinctive form of stake-
holder capitalism (Dore, 1993). Yet none of these tropes holds as a truth.
Lifelong employment does not signify the dominant form of employment in
Japan. It does not privilege employees' interests over business concerns. And
it does not constitute a benign, kinder form of capitalism compared with the
market-based model.
If there is one trope that best describes the institution of lifelong employ-
ment in Japan, it is irony. As this chapter will show, lifelong employment is
not an institution at all. If anything, it applies to less than 20 per cent of the
working population, mostly male workers in large companies or public insti-
tutions ­ and, even then, only for a portion of their working lives (Hiwatari,
1999, p. 275; Marshall, 2005, pp. 103­4). Nor, to the extent that it does exist,
is its exclusive concern with guaranteeing lifetime job security. Rather, both in
practice and in law (Araki, 2000, 2005, 2007; Yamakawa, 2001), it enshrines
`flexicurity' (Wilthagen and Tros, 2004) ­ a combination of security of
employment and flexibility of working practices. Nor is it innately `Japanese'.
It is neither a cultural form of co-operative, communitarian capitalism ( ...