Alternative Forms, Same Emotions? Organizational Culture and Labor Relations in Contemporary Japan

The once-dominant organizational culture of Japanese-style management, which has been reserved for a minority of regular male employees from its start, is being gradually eroded. This organizational culture merged between the "three pillars" of lifetime employment, seniority system and enterprise unionism, and a discourse of paternalism, benevolence and trust. Ethnographic research conducted in Japan during 1996-1997 and 2000-2001 on co-partnership management and the National Union of General Workers shows that while newforms of labor relations have been implemented, they are still informed by the psychological and social discourse characteristic of traditional organizational culture. Two complementary perspectives, contingency theory and internal laor markets, are discussed in order to eplain the persistence of the traditional discourse.