Farewell to the salaryman? The changing roles and work of middle managers in Japan

Abstract

The 1990s and 2000s witnessed significant organizational change in Japanese firms and accompanying readjustments to the employment system. Such changes potentially have major implications for middle managers, or salarymen, in Japanese corporations. A survey of human resource managers and middle managers in eight medium sized Japanese organizations pointed to fairly significant, if not radical, change. This did, indeed, impact upon middle managers in those organizations. While the middle managers felt reasonably secure in their jobs, the nature of their jobs had reportedly changed, with a greater range of tasks, work intensification, longer hours, greater stress, more accountability, and a worsening work–life balance.

Keywords:

• corporate restructuring
• HRM work organization
• Japan
• middle managers

Notes

 1. The term salaryman has a deep seated connotation in Japan, typically as ‘put upon’ middle managers, but also as something to be aspired to.

 2. We are aware of the pitfalls of using sexist language, but in this case it is almost exclusively ‘he’. While this may suggest sample bias, such middle managers are nearly always male.

 3. Funding for this project came, in part, from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (R00023988).

 4. We acknowledge that interviews, as with all research methods, have their limitations. In particular, they may fail to fully capture changes in such a conceptual system as lifetime employment and seniority-based pay.

 5. There may be some sample bias here surrounding the choice of Nagoya as the research site. Nagoya has been one of the most prosperous industrial regions in Japan during the long recession, largely due to the continued success of Toyota. Different results might have been achieved had the research been conducted elsewhere, such as in Osaka.

 6. Of course, a poor work–life balance has pervaded Japanese industrial life for a considerable time prior to the recession.