A Study Of The Characteristics Of Japanese Corporate Culture Based On Japanese Human Resource Management

Japan, within a short period of twenty or thirty years after the World War II, had risen rapidly to an economic giant and a major market competitor of the USA. Economists and experts in management science from all over the world once held that the promotion of the competitive power of the Japanese enterprises was stemming from the superiority of their human resource management (HRM) and corporate culture. However, the serious "Bubble Economy" in Japan soon afterwards and the economic depression in the past 20 years make them raise doubt to the current situation and future development of Japanese HRM——Japanese HRM is apparently falling behind the development of economic era and can not meet the requirements of innovation in the knowledge economy era. Just as to pursue the reasons for Japanese economic rise from corporate culture, it is also practicable to seek the reasons for the incapable reform of Japanese HRM, which produced little effect, from the corporate culture of Japanese enterprises. The drawbacks of Japanese corporate culture which is supported by its core values of pragmatism distinctly come into view thereby.The text firstly summarizes the researches in relative fields both at home and abroad and introduces the consistency of HRM and corporate culture both in logic and functional objectives in the knowledge economy era. Secondly the text analyses the extrinsic source of Japanese culture, which is restricted by the features of island country, to illustrate the core values of pragmatism in Japanese corporate culture, which essentially determines that Japanese HRM was born with great hidden dangers which could not be overcome by itself. Then the text interprets the deep-seated cultural origins of Japanese HRM through a review of its reform from traditional to modern HRM and reveals the objective constraints by Japanese corporate culture to its HRM. Finally, from a critical point of view focusing on the fatal weak point in the duality of Japanese corporate culture, the text proves that the innovation of Japanese HRM is inevitably hampered by the conservative ideas of feudal stratum and convenient pragmatism in Japanese corporate culture.In the knowledge economy era of 21st Century, the focus of enterprise competitions is far beyond capital input and technical level. It is on a higher level of the competitions in human resources and corporate culture, which means that those who own the superiority of culture possess the competitive edge. The reform of Japanese HRM will never achieve real success unless it breaks away form the fetters in culture. Japanese enterprises should bring forth new ideas in their corporate culture in order to fully arouse and effectively integrate the innovation of their human resources and thus to promote their core competitive power.