Strategic human resource management: An agenda for Japanese companies in the 21st century

Journal article

All firms globally are responding to a new and unprecedented set of business challenges. Securing competitive advantage and high performance is harder than it has ever been because the 21st century is a far more complicated and changeable global operating environment. New technologies are turning established industries upside down. New and non-traditional competitors from anywhere in the world are wrestling market share from established companies across all sectors and in domestic markets. Customer buying behaviour is reshaping expectations of variety, bundling and personalisation of the products and services they purchase. Sales cycles are getting ever shorter. All of these drivers of change, and more, are forcing leadership teams to urgently reevaluate where they wish to compete for market share, which strategies will yield best results and how to build organisations – and valuable human resources especially - capable of delivering those strategies.

It is well understood that managing human resources effectively is critical to firm performance . And yet, established human resource strategies don’t seem up to the task of securing performance and value in the face of 21st century organizational requirements for enhanced integration, agility and innovation . For instance, Japanese human resource management (HRM) has been characterized traditionally by three distinct features: lifetime employment, seniority based pay and promotion, and corporate unions. These employment practices were once the source of Japan’s tremendous industrial success. They are now considered by some to be out-dated and the cause of underperformance. Many up and coming executives we speak to in established Japanese companies express appetite for looking to the international scene for inspiration for how their company might reinvigorate their workforces and perform better.

Authors: Trevor, J; Kotosaka, M

• Publication status: In press
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Harvard Business School Publishing
• Journal: Harvard Business Review
• Publication date: 2017-05-01
• Acceptance date: 2016-12-15
• ISSN: 0017-8012