Does doing things the Japanese way attract highly-skilled migrants?

• Main Author: Liang Morita
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2018-01-01
• Series: Cogent Social Sciences
• Subjects: japan; highly-skilled migrants; human resource management; english
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2018.1430725

Like many global north countries, Japan has a rapidly aging and declining population. In order to maintain the size of its workforce as well as remain globally competitive, Japan needs to attract highly-skilled migrants. However, studies have shown that these migrants are dissatisfied with living and working in Japan in many ways. This paper focuses on two items on the list: Japanese-style human resource management (HRM) and the lack of use of English. This paper also identifies the predominance of Japanese-style HRM and lack of use of English as further manifestations of Japanese exclusionism and discusses them as such. Japanese-style HRM, which is characterised by long-term employment, seniority-based earnings and promotion, and teamwork orientation, among others, stands in sharp contrast to global standards in HRM. In addition, Japanese is the working language in the vast majority of companies. Unless Japan deals with these issues, it would not be able to compete with other global north countries for highly-skilled migrants on an equal footing.