In the years 1960, 1976, and 1990, Shinichi Takezawa conducted worker perception studies at each of two plants in the steel and plate glass industries in Japan. He then used the data to give an overall perspective of human resource management and industrial relations in major private industries in Japan. All the participating production workers were male and randomly drawn from the perspective major operation centres. The two companies chosen for this study were NKK Corporation and Asahi Glass Company, Ltd. Professor Takezawa presented the results of his survey in "Japan Work Ways", a book published by The Japanese Institute of Labour in 1995.

Although fascinating in many respects, the survey is particularly helpful in measuring the historical trends of the attitude of Japanese employees to work. While the survey originally was conducted as a comparative study of work attitudes in the United States and Japan, the scope of this paper will be limited to explaining the reasons for the shift in attitude towards work that has occurred among workers in Japan. To better relate the attitude changes to macroeconomic alterations and other factors, the survey measurements will be aligned with several well-known theories on Japanese human resource management. Before commencing with a comparison of specific numbers, however, it is necessary to summarise the four stages that, according to Takezawa, have occurred in the development of industrial relations and human resource management in Japan from 1945-1990,

The first stage, which Takezawa terms "Labour and Management: Acceptance as Partners", concerns the periods of tumultuous labour-management relations that followed the Second World War and lasted until about 1960. Socialist influences and radical labour unions made extensive demands in terms of wage increases and other benefits, and strikes were rampant. However, there soon developed an understanding that constant labour disputes were detrimental to both management and workers. In the words of Takezawa: "Through such years of trial and error, both managers and workers at each enterprise began to learn how to live and work together with each other". What they discovered was that their interests were interlinked, and perhaps most important was the development of the enterprise union.

As the economy continued to expand rapidly, Takezawa argues that the relationship between management and labour continued to develop during the second phase, which he terms "Growing Investment in Human Resources". The system of lifetime employment began to develop during the period from 1955-1973, as did related characteristics of the HR system such as job training and also what will later in this paper be referred to as the horizontal information structure. In addition, the importance of performance appraisal started to grow, and the traditional line between white-collar and blue-collar workers was slowly removed.

The fourth stage in the development of industrial relations and human resource management commenced with the first oil shock in 1973, as Japan was forced to move into high-value added products. Evidently, the end of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 did not help to ease this impact. The headline Takezawa gives the period, namely "Meeting New Challenges", does in this regard hit the spot. This serves only as a brief introduction to some of the major changes that took place in Japan following the Second World War, and should in addition help demystify the Japanese human resource management system. While the latter undoubtedly was very successful and effective during the period of high economic growth, the system is rather recent and has experienced some remarkable changes during the last few decades. As the Japanese economy is in the doldrums, pressure on the system to reform is derived from both domestic and foreign sources. Some commentators argue that Japanese institutions and people are unable to change, mainly due to embedded conservatism and a general resistance to change. Japanese history, however, tells a different story, as do the numbers presented by Takezawa’s survey.

The first of the three surveys presented by Shinichi Takezawa was conducted in 1960, thus after the years of domestic instability following the Second World War. One of the first tables introduced in Takezawa’s book is in fact not from his own survey, but actually adopted from The Institute of Social Problems in Asia (1982). It comments on the attitudes towards technological advances in West Germany and Japan, and shows that 76.7% of Japanese workers had a positive inclination towards implementing technological innovations in their company, while the corresponding figure for West Germany was only 31.6%. Perhaps part of the explanation for this discrepancy can be derived from cultural issues. However, a more likely explanation is that while many German factory workers would agree with the following Karl Marx quotation, few Japanese workers would: "Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer".

It is likely that Karl Marx would have been surprised to see the unique labour-management relations that have developed in Japan. "The Japanese firm", says Stanford Professor Masahiko Aoki, "should be regarded as a coalition of the body of the employees and the body of stockholders rather than the sole property of stockholders, as postulated in the neo-classical paradigm". In Western countries, the management of a company will generally view new technology as a potential cost cutter, the latter usually in the form of a reduced head count. Workers are thus, perhaps understandably, skeptical to the benefits they will derive from the introduction of new machines or robots. T.J. Pempel, a much quoted expert on Japanese political economy, simply underlines this by saying: "Core workers in Japan rarely faced layoffs; in periods of financial stress their bonuses might be reduced, the oldest workers might be "tapped on the shoulder" and encouraged to take early retirement, or workers may be reassigned to new jobs". This certainly helps explain the positive attitude of Japanese workers to technological change, yet also points a finger to the dire economic problems faced by Japan today. While Japanese companies have been experiencing slumping profits for more than a decade, most have been reluctant to cut the payroll, which again implies that the Japanese human resource management system is undergoing a slow change to economic reality. On the other hand, while the reluctance to fire workers may cause difficulties in times of economic downturns, positive results can be derived in terms of improved company morale.

To further emphasise that the positive Japanese attitude to new technology is a result of a different organisational structure rather than pure cultural differences, a look at Takezawa’s own survey may prove enlightening. In 1960, 21.5% of the NKK respondents said they would actively resist the introduction of new work-saving machines to their company, while an additional 14.2% would do so quietly. By 1990, however, the figures had been marginalised to 2.4% and 6.8% respectively, thus showing that stakeholder relationship that exists within Japanese companies in fact developed over time. According to Professor Ballon, "the stakeholder system embodies a community of fate, a social context diligently supported by Japanese legal practice and courts". Evidently, job security and the perceived sense of being rewarded as the company progressed contributed to creating the positive attitude toward technology. As is shown from Takezawa’s survey, any reform to the Japanese human resource management system is bound to have both positive and negative effects, as any breakdown of the coalition that exists between workers and management will lead to lowered worker loyalty and perhaps even internal resistance to corporate reform.

When asked what is the best way to get satisfaction if one feels that the rate of compensation received is unfair, in 1990 34.4% of NKK’s employees answered that the best thing to do is to show patience and confidence and management by not voicing a complaint. However, in 1960 and 1976, the figures were only 16.3% and 30.8% respectively. Still, it should be noticed that in all three surveys, more than 50% of the NKK’s workers and more than 60% of AGC’s workers responded that the best alternative would be to complain through one’s supervisor or union representative.

Professor Takezawa comments that the move towards performance based pay was particularly strong in the last of the four phases he describes. Due to a growing awareness of the importance of recognising individual differences in promotion and remuneration, workers at both NKK and AGC began to expect to earn more if they worked harder. In the case of ACG, only 12.5% expected an increase in remuneration when asked in 1960, while the figure had grown to 29.1% by 1990. While this may be interpreted as a weakening of the group culture, it may argued that the improved conditions had raised expectations in terms of salaries and other benefits. However, even at AGC, an overwhelming majority answered that they were motivated for other reasons than for instance an expected salary increase. For example, 34.9% of the AGC 1990 respondents replied that they are willing to work hard at their jobs because "they want to live up to the expectations of their family, friends, and society". It would be far from radical to suggest that the corresponding figure in the United States is much lower.

The movement towards evaluating and comparing workers is describe further by numbers presented on how workers believe the satisfaction of employees can be satisfied. At AGC, 28.4% resisted any form of evaluation and comparison of individual performance when asked in 1960, but only 10.7% held this view when asked in 1990. In both AGC and NKK, the overall tendency of a larger acceptance of worker evaluations seemed clear. Robert J. Ballon argues that "the post-war egalitarian approach that Japanese large companies adopted in wage administration is undergoing a significant evolution". Further, he comments that "Another much-talked-about development is stock options for top executives in large companies, with the hope that this would stimulate them to pay greater attention to shareholder value and commit them to financial disclosure more in line with international standards". It remains to be seen what impact this development will have on the earlier described clan culture that exists within Japanese companies, yet some may hope that Japanese companies have lost their fascination with stock options after the recent accounting scandals in the United States. Although Professor Ballon mentions lack of transparency as one of the potential problems faced by the stakeholder system, the American system of corporate governance and Arthur Anderson accounting may not appear to be much more effective.

Another interesting part of the survey concerns decision sharing, and how a supervisor should go about when it is necessary to implement changes in work methods. In 1960, 74.6% of the AGC respondents answered that the supervisor should first ask workers for their suggestions regarding proposed changes, while only 54.1% gave this response in 1990. Overall, however, the figures show that the stakeholder principle remained strong in both organisations, and only 4% of the AGC workers responded that the supervisor should decide himself without consulting the workers. According to Ouchi, one of the main strengths of what he terms the M-Form company, which basically means a Japanese firm, is that unnecessary centralisation is made superfluous by localised problem solving. "If teamwork is lacking in the middle management of an M-Form company", he writes, "all the disputes will be passed to the corporate office for resolution". This principle appears valid for all levels of the organisation, and workers therefore expect to be informed and involved in decision making. If, on the other hand, management ignores them, passive and active resistance within the organisation is likely to arise.

Very related to this are numbers presented to describe how Japanese workers think of their company. In 1990, 63.2% of respondents at NKK and 48.4% at AGC considered the company to be "a part of my life at least equal in importance to my personal life", while an additional 4-5% though of the company as being even more important than their personal lives. These figures, while having decreased slightly, show little change from 1960. Evidently, this brings Confucian and cultural values such as filial duties into question, yet these are harder to decipher than human resource management theories and socio-political economics. Some weaknesses of the system, however, can be described using very basic economics.

Still, Japanese workers appear to have become relatively reconciled with the possibility of facing layoffs during economic downturns. While 38.2% of NKK’s workers in 1960 would expect to be urged to resign if a company’s business should decline by fifty percent, the number had by 1990 risen to 60.3%. Still, it should be emphasised that they also would expect to receive special severance pay in addition to any accumulated retirement benefits. These expectations have made it excruciatingly expensive to restructure Japanese companies, but perhaps the breakdown of the stakeholder system is an even higher price to pay.