Lots and lots of change has been happening since the economic crisis hit East Asia in the 1990's. To answer the first question on our Tute schedule, it's the economic crisis that moved the politics to move the culture. A bit of a chain reaction was started as 'The East Asian Model of Capitalism' was seen more as a weakness than a strength. The era of government intervention and long term relationships instead of markets was slowly coming to a halt. There has been some debate regarding whether or not an alignment closer to the Western economic structure would benefit this part of the world, however there are as yet no conclusive remarks and Japan and Korea seek for an alternate.
Japan's ER model for a long time differentiated itself from the west by its characteristic lifetime employment stability and seniority based wage structures. Korea's structure is also very similar to this, however employment stability was much weaker than Japan's. The major issues that have been pressuring Japan to change their ER system is the fact that seniority based pay is no longer valid in the economy shift in the 90's. The growing age of the workforce, the baby boomers, are increasing labor costs, and many flagship organisations were suffering with too large workforces.
Korean firms, on the other hand, have been found to be reluctant to make long term commitments to its employees. This fact has actually changed since the economic downturn, and now more companies are unwilling or unable to let employees go. This has resulted in decreased turnover for many large organisations, which is being regarded as a sign of development in Korea's labor relations. Seniority based pay was now slowly destroying the glass ceiling that existed for blue collar workers around the 1980's and earlier.
From what I could understand, only the major changes in the global environment had a small effect on East Asian policies. Generally, it seems as if Japan and Korea have been in some sort of economic bubble, having maintained their cultural ideals in spite of the ER changes.
http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.uwa.edu.au/stable/pdfplus/10.1525/as.2006.46.3.457.pdf?acceptTC=true&jpdConfirm=true
Interesting contrasts between the Japanese and Korean models. The economic downturn has affected pretty much every country in very different ways so it seems. Culture is seemingly a huge deal in many Asian countries so it does make sense that the cultural ideals have been maintained, Culture travels down through many many generations.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to read about how Japan differentiates itself from the west. Lifetime employment is really valuable in terms of job security and maintaining a living. If this were to brought in in other ER models around the world it'd be very beneficial however I also think it would prove difficult to do so. The seniority based wage system also seems to prove very beneficial in the Japanese ER model. It seems like the Japanese ER model is very employee friendly as opposed to that of the Korean model which, as you mentioned, is reluctant to make long-term commitments to employees.
I enjoyed reading this post and it helped me to understand the topic for this week more! :)