Articles Trade & Economics

Employees don't choose job assignments

On the last day of the training program, each member of Hiro's doki was assigned to a branch bank. Before then, Hiro had no idea where he would go and had no chance to request a particular posting. Banks seem to be somewhat extreme in this respect; some of Hiro's contemporaries in other companies have told him that they can request specific assignments, although their wishes are often ignored.

Like many Japanese companies, Ringo manages job assignments this way for two reasons. First, a firm has to allocate limited resources to existing positions. It can't leave positions empty because nobody wants them, nor can it easily reduce the number of salarymen it hires, to match supply with demand. Were a firm to reduce its recruiting rate at a particular university, both the school and its alumni might feel insulted. Second, very few salarymen would leave a company because they are assigned jobs they don't want. The great majority of salarymen suffer through at least one posting they dislike, because they have nowhere else to go.

Although many Western managers in a similar situation would quit and find a new job, quitting over a transfer would be socially unacceptable for a salaryman. He would be seen as selfish, unwilling to sacrifice for the greater good of a group. A salaryman who quit his job would also find it nearly impossible to move to another Japanese company in midcareer. He could join a foreign company but would lose both social status and his guarantee of lifetime employment. Japanese wives, too, understand that transfers must be accepted. Even today it is common for husbands to accept a temporary separation from their families, in order to keep their children from having to change schools.

Excerpted from Inside the Kaisha: Demystifying Japanese Business Behavior, Chapter 1, by Noboru Yoshimura and Philip Anderson (c. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1997 ).

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