The Japanese Work Culture : why are they ahead of us and how it affects its Working
population.
Arshati R. Halgekar
Fergusson College, Pune - 4
PSY4201 Advanced Statistics and Research Methods
Prof. Sheetal Ruikar
15/04/2023
Abstract
Japan - Also known as the land of the rising sun, Is an Island country in east Asia and has a
current working population (total labor force) of approximately 69 million people (2022). It's
also said that Japan is almost 10-15 years ahead of all the other countries in terms of Technology
and Innovation. There were many changes seen in Japan's work culture in post world war II.
There are many issues which are related to the work culture in Japan over the past years since
the 1990's. We all know that people in the Japanese workforce are very well known for their
long working hours and their loyalty and dedication towards their work. In this paper we shall
look at both sides of the coin of the Japanese work culture, its economic, Industrial growth along
with its effect on the well being of the working population. In this paper we also discuss factors
that influence the work culture in japan.
LITERATURE REVIEW
The Japanese work culture has always been radically different from the American work culture.
The term “ Karoshi” (death by overwork) is very popular in japan. The root for the Japanese long
working hours and its very unique working culture is the institutional complementarities of the
Japanese employment system and the cultural particularities underlying it. The few core reasons
behind it include the Human capital investment, the Input driven society, Women Inequality,
working Traditions over the years, the Collective group awareness and hierarchical relationships,
ambiguous JD’s , etc. Personnel economics (Lazear 2000; Prendergast 1999) focuses on the
impact of remuneration and incentives on workers’ behavior. When we view this issue from a
sociological perspective we see that with this economic based approach, emphasis is put more
on the monetary incentives and the context in which workers find themselves is not taken into
consideration. The companies introduced salary structures which pay extra for employees who
work overtime, this is a way that discourages employees who work specifically to earn this
overtime pay. Ineffectiveness of these measures of the personnel economics could be explained
to a certain extent by differences between countries’ tax systems (Prescott, 2004). The long
working hours problem cannot be corrected by providing monetary incentives or by changing the
legal system alone. This issue is much deep rooted. Japan has been progressing at a rapid rate,
but this for now can be only said from an economic growth point of view. The shift from light to
heavy industries brought about the fast regional transformation from the Tokyo-Osaka bipolar
system to the Pacific industrial belt system, and a shift from heavy to high-tech and service
industries induced the second transformation to the Tokyo monopolar system. There are various
recent developments in telecommunications and transportation technologies that tend to
agglomerate knowledge-intensive activities in the core regions of Japan while dispersing
mass-production activities to nonmetropolitan regions and overseas.
Now a question arises, what might be the reason behind Japan’s rapid economic growth ?
According to my observation, this can be negatively correlated (extensive pressure on the
working class) with the working culture of japan. In statistical terms, even if we estimate
working hours by including observable (or measurable) characteristics such as reward structures
or tax systems, then this model would have little explanatory power and its implications would
be limited. The main reason why the working hours issue has escaped the policy remedies is that
its cause is not observable.
In a research conducted by masaki sugita and takuya takahashi, they used an instrument that was
developed by Cameron and Quinn (2006) that measured corporate culture. The instrument
measured the culture in four different categories : clan culture, adhocracy culture, hierarchy
culture, and market culture. The results indicated that adhocracy culture had statistically
significant positive relationships with the management system, product development, and climate
change mitigation aspects of environmental management or sustainability management.
Excessive hierarchy culture had a negative relationship with the overall score of environmental
management.
From an HR point of view, it's important to note that one aspect of business practice is the
attitude toward the skills demanded of newly graduated recruits. Previously the heads/managers
valued attitudes such as cooperativeness, flexibility, etc. however in the past few years, the
business groups have been emphasizing on a new set of qualities including Creativity, problem
solving, alongside the communitarian attribute. These skills and the employee’s level of
contribution are believed necessary to keep the harmony of the firm. Japanese firms are more
focused on their human capital. The long work days produce waste and very inefficient
allocation of human capital. The human capital theory informs us that the workers invest in
human capital to raise their own productivity. This neo-classical theory assumes complete and
symmetric information: In the labor market, individual workers are aware of their own market
value and demand a market wage that matches the value of their human capital. If workers invest
in themselves then they acquire general skills. When a company invests in workers, they acquire
firm-specific skills. Usually in the workplace culture, Japanese people view over time working
overtime as a positive signal and returning home on time is considered as a negative signal.
Many Japanese workers simply “do not know how to change jobs'' (Ono and Rebick 2003).
We can also observe that Japan uses their capital less efficiently than their western counterparts.
One of the major concerns for Japanese corporate governance is how to improve the productive
use of Capital. At the macro level, the inefficient use and allocation of human capital is a major
concern for industry. Somewhere in the context of Japanese work culture, there is a built-in
inefficiency. The “crowding out” effect of work on married life, family life, caregiving and social
life is a serious concern. Problem of long working hours is closely linked to that of declining
fertility (Ikeda 2010). The advancement of diversity is hampered due to these long working
hours. The Japanese working environment is said to be very much man-centered corporate
culture. The long working hours act as an indicator of loyalty and commitment to the company.
workdays also marginalize foreign workers in the labor force. As globalization progresses and
competition for human resources intensifies, superior talent will forgo employment in Japan if
there is a significant disparity between the Japanese conventions and global norms. The result of
one survey suggests that long working hours are the biggest reason why foreign students in Japan
do not wish to enter Japanese companies. This results in labor shortage. Being at this position,
japan should be doing all it can to attract and retain the talent that it’s developing. To attract and
retain superior human capital, the top most priority is that the Japanese work days should match
the global norms. Long working hours have also have a negative impact on health and well
being. Continuously working long hours
has been shown to cause both physical and mental stress on a significant scale, and to be
detrimental to health (Ogura 2007; Yamamoto and Kuroda 2014). There is also evidence of a
negative correlation between long working hours and subjective wellbeing. Macro-level data also
reveal a negative correlation between total annual working hours and happiness. Based on data
from the 2015 World Happiness Report and OECD working hour data from the same year, the
correlation coefficient between the two was -0.45, which was statistically significant (p < 0.01).
If we exclude exceptional cases like Mexico, where working hours are long but happiness is
high, we can generally confirm a negative correlation. Till date, Shortening the workday is the
number one priority of Japan’s policy aimed at “reforming work-styles.” The assertion that the
Japanese work too much is nothing new. Ways to change the corporate culture of overwork have
been discussed for several decades with attempts to do so made at the level of policy and
legislation. But working hours have not decreased at all. Regular employees in Japan still work
more than 2,000 hours per year, a level more or less unchanged since the 1990s (Ministry of
Health, Labour and Welfare 2015). So far, repeated revisions in the Japanese law and policy have
been made by amending the labor standards act and also regulating working hours, but the
impact has been minimal. The recent trend is to advocate “a shift from quantity to quality of
work” — a transition of the focus of work from input to productivity. Long workdays are a
symbol of an input-oriented society. Under seniority-based pay, one of the pillars of the Japanese
employment system, wages rise automatically in accordance with years of service. In a research
conducted by Kato, kawaguchi and Owan (2013) using internal company data
has demonstrated a positive correlation between the number of working hours and the probability
of promotion. In research by Ono (2007) using the dataset Working Persons 2000 (Recruit Works
Institute), regular employees in Japanese companies most frequently cited working hours and
years of service when answering the question “What are the main factors that increase or
decrease your pay (monthly salary)?” By contrast, the most common responses by regular
employees working for foreign companies (in Japan) were individual ability, performance, and
outcomes. Another issue among the Japanese working class is the Collective thinking, also
known as collective awareness. Many Japanese employees feel reluctant to go home after
working hours just because their boss is still in the office. One major downside of Japanese
society is that group awareness can be overly dominant and hierarchical relationships too rigid.
There is a Japanese phenomenon which can be commonly observed is that The custom of“tsukiai
zangyo” (collective overtime), whereby going home on time makes people feel badly with regard
to their coworkers. Education and training by Japanese companies is heavily weighted toward
firm-specific rather than general skills, and is often conducted internally. The classic example of
this is on-the-job training (OJT). The work relationship between the work subordinates is very
hierarchical among the Japanese people. Thus, ambiguous JD’s is one of the issues that Japanese
employee’s face. In the Japan-Europe comparison study by Yamamoto and Kuroda (2014) assert
that the practice of clearly defining job descriptions in European workplaces makes it difficult to
assign locally hired staff to unspecified tasks. In employment relationships governed by explicit
contracts, workers can deny requests that fall outside their delineated responsibility. But in
employment relationships governed by implicit contracts as in Japan, with its rigid hierarchical
relationships and strong group consciousness, the dominant culture makes it hard for anyone to
refuse when asked to perform a task, however irrelevant to one’s core function. According to
(Picken S.D,1987) In the context of the widening trade gap between Japan and the U.S.A. and
the increasing numbers of missions visiting Japan aimed at a better understanding of the
Japanese market and Japanese business, topics such as ‘Just in Time’ and TQC have received the
most prominence, along with discussions of Japanese-style management and labor relations. The
weakness of most discussions has been their inability to set these into the context of the highly
complex Japanese value-system that runs through both business and society. Once understood, it
becomes apparent that there is a system of values and value-related strategies at work that have a
reinforcing effect in the directions of cooperation and efficiency. One of the major issues that are
even seen and practiced today are that of the gender division in the working class. The original
idea was that the salaries paid by companies were to support workers’ families, and the amounts
were high enough for only one spouse to work. This led to a division of labor between the sexes
whereby men devoted themselves to work and women to the home. The terms “masculinity” and
“femininity” define the traditional division of Labour. Nemoto (2013) gives a detailed portrayal
of the context of Japanese male-centered workplaces, based on interview surveys. Long working
hours are seen as a sacrifice to the company, and women are criticized as disloyal if their time
commitments are not on par with the men’s. Many women drop out because they cannot keep up
with the time demands of the male-centered work culture. From interviews with female
employees, on the other hand, Nemoto points out that the Japanese work culture offers women a
way to “opt out.” There are 3 circumstances in which a culture of long working hours is
disadvantageous to women workers, and the consequences of those circumstances include the
managers in the japanese firms that reinforce the gender stereotypes, prioritizing work over
personal and family life . next is that non–career-track women experience depressed aspirations
in relation to long working hours and young women express a wish to opt out due to the
incompatibility of work with family life; and lastly, workers who are mothers deal with extra
unpaid family work, stress such as guilt from leaving work early, salary reduction and concerns
over their limited chances for promotion. Gradually, however, legal and political changes began
to favor gender equality. The passage of the 1997 Equal Employment Opportunity Law (EEOL)
and international legal pressure resulting from Japan’s ratification of the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) paved the way for
progressive legal changes. Along with these Issues, there are also a few advantages that go
unobserved. Even in a country like this, one hears about mistakes made in business conduct but
there is no doubt that the special human relations in this work culture are part of the reason for
the economy’s success, strength and uniqueness. One of the important principles in Japan is the
virtue of work. Japan's approach to work involves paying attention to the needs of the employee.
The company owner or manager, generally sees himself responsible for his employee’s and not
only at a limited work level but overall he is concerned of the employee’s welfare. The
customary work culture of Japanǯs economic companies differs from that of the West, and many
have written about its uniqueness (Albegglen & Stalk, 1985;
Batyko, 2012; Huang, 2011; Wokutch & Shepard, 1999; Wolf, 2004, 2008). Today’s work
system differs greatly from that of the past. In the 1990s, Taka and Foglia hypothesized that in
Japan there are very few instances of employees stealing from the companies in which they
work. Exploitation of one’s workplace for personal goals and attempts to harm one’s company
from within are usually more common and frequent in the West and less common in Japanese
companies. Employees in Japan are generally known for their loyalty to their places of work and
for having clear ambitions to see the companies they work for succeed and prosper. The personal
responsibility of the Japanese employee is great and, in most cases, reflects his desire to lead his
company to success (Imai, 1986). Gestalt theory assumes that the whole is greater than the sum
of its parts. A central principle of this theory is that one must look at the causes of things from a
holistic perspective (Perls, 1969, 1973). The Japanese regard their work culture as part of their
general culture in the country. For the Japanese, the substantive meaning of the word “work” is
to get pleasure from it. Group harmony, group awareness is one of the important principles of
Japanese culture. A sense of belonging to the group is a basic value in society. The workplace
generally serves as a social framework for the individual, enabling close friendships, and
give-and-take relationships. A person is able to satisfy his need to love and to be loved. This
support provides the employee with psychological resilience and is reminiscent of the theory of
humanistic philosophers and psychologists, such as Fromm (1941, 1970), Rogers (1961),
Maslow (1970, 1971), Frankl (1969). Japanese companies usually find an alternative way to help
save a failing company, and they do not care for the typical Western solution of firing employees
as a means of organizational cutbacks. Japanese organizations do not easily abandon workers, as
do companies in the West (Aoki, 1984; Tachibanaki, 1984). It is understood that employees will
be shown respect in any place of work and in any job role as long as they make an honest effort
to move ahead. Koehn 1994, presents the influence of “Eastern philosophy”, such as the
contribution of Confucius and Watsuji-Tetsuro, on the Japanese work and business culture. She
also notes the importance of trust in this culture (Koehn, 1996). The building of long-term
relationships and the humane treatment of others are important principles in Japan.
LIMITATIONS
Further research can be done on topics like paradigms for the study of OB in the USA and japan.
then the friendship and work culture specifically related to the women workforce in japan. How
spirituality is connected to work culture. the Organizational Change and innovation and the
business dynamics. also the economic aspects and dualism in japan.
CONCLUSION
It is said that it is the job of the tradition to turn knowledge into wisdom and transmit it to as
many people as possible. May it be any part of the world, Japan can learn a lot from the work
culture in other countries and the other countries can learn and adopt the Japanese values in their
work culture. It is always mentioned that the Japanese way and the American way are very
different from each other. In the latter part of the 20th century, there were a series of international
policy changes in many Asian and Eastern European countries that enabled a tidal wave of
international joint ventures and outsourcing. Quickly, business partners realized that making
these relationships successful required attending to national cultural differences. Ethics,
especially work ethics are interrelated with spirituality in japan. The spiritual values in Japan not
only influence individuals’ cognitive processes and behaviors, but also the collective beliefs and
the perception of reality as collective (Allen, 2018; Alston & Takei, 2005; Azar, 2016; Inamori,
2009; Kotter, 1997; Matsushita, 2015). Japanese believe that by being mindful of their thoughts
and actions, each movement, behavior, and activity can be used to transform their mind to attain
enlightenment and spiritual development. Japan traditionally has had a work-centric business
culture and are often described as workaholic (Lane, 2017; Nishiyama & Fujikawa, 2017).
Tireless practice and mastering a skill are thought of as becoming closer to kami (a godlike
state). The Japanese work culture is vastly connected to their spirituality. The spiritual normative
ethics is composed of both transcendental and group logics unique to Japan. To conclude, even
though Japan has various different negative aspects in its work culture, all of it is spiritually and
traditionally bound to the people. It does sometimes hamper the well being of the japanese
working class people but we should note that slow but gradual changes can be seen in the
japanese work culture. We should also consider the fact that because of this specific work
culture, Japan is one of the world's fastest economically developing countries and due to this
same culture the country is almost a decade ahead of any other nations.
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