Clair Brown - Böcker

In Work and Pay in the United States and Japan, authors Clair Brown, Yoshifumi Nakata, Michael Reich, and Lloyd Ulman provide an integrated and detailed analysis of the components of firm human resources systems in the US and Japan. Drawing on data obtained from fieldwork in comparable establishments in these two countries, as well as from national sources, this work examines the relationship between company practices and national economic institutions. The authors address a number of key questions about employer-employee relations. How have major Japanese manufacturing companies been able to convert the assurance of "lifetime" employment security into a source of superior employee efficiency and adaptability, when job and income security have been feared as a source of "shirking" and wage inflation in the US? How have higher economic and real wage growth rates been associated with greater equality in earned income distribution in Japan, when the incentive role of income inequality to worker effort and savings has been stressed in the US? How could Japanese emphasis on employment security in the firm be reconciled with greater price stability and lower unemployment than in the US? This work analyses elements such as employee training and involvement programs, wage behavior as an incentive system and an alternate channel of savings, and synchronous wage determination (shunto) at work in the Japanese economy that provide for such successes. The book also explores the costs that have been associated with these Japanese accomplishments, as well as who must bear them. In particular, it examines how Japanese women compare less favorably with American women in terms of opportunities for work, pay, and promotion; the higher hours of working time for men in Japan than in the US; and the constraints on mobility for Japanese workers. It also poses the question of whether Japanese unions are weaker than their American counterparts, or just more sensible and far-sighted. Finally, this \ork examines the outlook for these distinctive Japanese institutions and practices in a period of slower growth and economic "maturity." Based on a research project carried out in both countries, the book concludes with the lessons that each country can learn much from the employment practices of the other. Work and Pay in the United States and Japan will be essential reading for students, professors, and all professionals involved with employment systems and employer-employee relations.

The third quarter of the twentieth century was a golden age for labor in the advanced industrial countries, characterized by rising incomes, relatively egalitarian wage structures, and reasonable levels of job security. The subsequent quarter-century has seen less positive performance along a number of these dimensions. This period has instead been marked by rapid globalization of economic activity that has brought increased insecurity to workers. The contributors to this volume distinguish four explanations for this historic shift. These include 1) rapid development of new technologies; 2) global competition for both business and labor; 3) deregulation of industry with more reliance on markets; and 4) increased immigration of workers, especially unskilled workers, from developing countries. In addition to analyzing the causes of these trends, the contributors also investigate important consequences, ranging from changes in collective bargaining and employment relations to family formation decisions and incarceration policy.

That women have entered the work force in large numbers is a well-known economic development, but many questions remain about the effects of this dramatic shift. Have women been truly integrated into the labor market? How have they fared in the competition for fair wages and professional jobs? What has happened to the American family and its standard of living?