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1996 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

A Social Historical Research on the Shaping of the Japanese Employment System

Research Project

Project/Area Number 06630059
Research Category

Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)

Allocation TypeSingle-year Grants
Section一般
Research Field Economic history
Research InstitutionTohoku Gakuin University

Principal Investigator

SUGAYAMA Shinji  Tohoku Gakuin University, Department of Economics, Assistant Professor, 経済学部, 助教授 (00202127)

Project Period (FY) 1994 – 1996
Keywordswhite-collarisation / Japanese employment system / democratisation of firms / single status / employee Unions / from school to work transition / Labor market of fresh school leavers / regular recruitment
Research Abstract

From a historical perspective, the 'Japanese employment system' characterised by some as 'white-collarisation' of blue-collar workers emerged as the spread of employment relations originally institutionalised in white-collar staff employees to the blue-collar workforce. This study aims to verify the process of 'white-collarisation' by examining changes in work discipline, labor relations and labor market in Japan from the 1930s to the 1960s. Firstly, the status hierarchy, in Japanese enterprise collapsed during the tumultuous years of 'total war' and post-war democracy. The labor ideology of the wartime planned economy, which saw enterprises as production communities and assumed equality between white-and blue-collar workers, challenged the nature of employment relations. As the experience of the post-war union movement reveals, this wartime ideology exerted apervasive influence on Japanese labor, and, during the US occupation, it forced widespread 'democratic' reforms on enterprise management.
Secondly, the acute shortage of labor which followed rapid economic growth and remarkable improvement in academic achievement had a great impact on the structure of Japanese labor market. The number of temporary workers fell sharply in the 1960s, and companies began to employ high school graduates-who formerly would have worked in low-level white-collar jobs-as manual laborers. This shift resulted in the spread of recruitment management of white-collaremployees to the blue-collar work force, and the estalishment of regular hiring, a system in which job vacancies were matched to available graduates by the employment services at affiliated high schools.

  • Research Products

    (6 results)

All Other

All Publications (6 results)

  • [Publications] Shinji Sugayama: "Work Rules,Weges and Single States : The Shapingof the Japanese Employment System" Business History. 37-2. 120-140 (1995)

    • Description
      「研究成果報告書概要(和文)」より
  • [Publications] 菅山真次: "日本的雇用関係の形成(山崎宏明・橋川武郎編、日本経済史4「日本的」経営の連続と断絶" 岩波書店, 191-231 (1995)

    • Description
      「研究成果報告書概要(和文)」より
  • [Publications] 菅山真次: "企業民生化(岡崎哲二・菅山真次・西沢保・米倉誠一郎、戦後日本経済と経済同交会" 岩波書店, 1-78 (1996)

    • Description
      「研究成果報告書概要(和文)」より
  • [Publications] Shinji Sugayama: "Work Rules, Wages and Single Status : The Shaping of the 'Japanese Employment system'" Business History. 37-2. 120-140 (1995)

    • Description
      「研究成果報告書概要(欧文)」より
  • [Publications] Sugayama, Shinji: "Nihonteki Koyo-kankei no Keisei" Yamasaki, Hiroaki and Kikkawa, Takeo (eds.) Nihon Keieishi 4 'Nihonteki' Keiei no Renzoku to Danzetsu. Iwanami Shoten, 191-231 (1995)

    • Description
      「研究成果報告書概要(欧文)」より
  • [Publications] Sugayama, Shinji: "Kigyo-Minshuka" Okazaki, Tetsuji, Sugayama, Shinji, Nishizawa, Tamotsu, Yonekura, Seiichiro, Sengo Nihon Keizai to Keizai Doyukai. Iwanami Shoten, 1-78 (1996)

    • Description
      「研究成果報告書概要(欧文)」より

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Published: 1999-03-09  

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