This book considers an aspect of the often applauded Japanese personnel management system in a manner which is refreshingly critical. Through a series of case s... » 

This book considers an aspect of the often applauded Japanese personnel management system in a manner which is refreshingly critical. Through a series of case studies, personal interviews with staff concerned, and detailed analysis of historical and present-day developments, Di Martino shows that policies of Japanse industry toward engineers' education, working conditions and career paths are not only often lacking in attention to personal aspirations and private life, but that they can sometimes be described as inefficient and even counter-productive from a managerial point of view.

Now that Japanese giant corporations are no longer booming, the shortcomings of their style of management come to light more clearly. Its success and resulting benchmark status in the Western literature on the subject in a period of unmatched growth had made its built-in weaknesses almost invisible. By being unable to fulfill their promise of lifelong employment to their workers and especially the tacit trade-off between total commitment of engineers and their ultimate promotion to management now that managerial posts have become scarcer, Japanese companies are facing problems they have never had to deal with before.

It is the author's achievement that he has clearly identified these problems and explored the road ahead for Japanese industry in an area essential to its survival in a world where knowledge is vital, the personnel management of its engineers. He also re-establishes European and American policies as more balanced and thus helps to end the obsession in Western management literature with the Japanese Style of Management.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Luis Alberto di Martino studied Economics at the University of Buenos Aires and the National University of Mexico, as well as Japanese Studies at the Colegio de Mexico. He was a Visiting Scholar at the Ohara Institute of Social Research, Hosei University, Tokyo from 1987 to 1989 and has continued his research at Kyoto University since then, where he obtained his PhD with this book in March 1997. The author has traveled extensively, addressing numerous international conferences on the subject. «