Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The durability of Japan s industrial products now holds world acclaim. But the durability of jobs in Japan despite misleading Western images of lifetime employment is no better than in other industrial nations. The group model of Japanese society that has been in fashion in the West confuses the goals of an organization with the personal aims and aspirations of its members. Like workers anywhere, those in Japan must go through life reconciling their duties to the job with their often conflicting obligations to family, to community, and to self-respect. Career outcomes are anything but certain in Japan once we see them from a worker s point of view.
Work and Lifecourse in Japan is a collection of workers eye-level reports on career development in a variety of Japanese organizations and professions. In addition, there are overview chapters on employment trends in the Japanese economy, and on the problems of scheduling one s life-events in the demanding milieu of our post-industrial world."
Synopsis
David W. Plath is Professor of Anthropology and Asian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Table of Contents
Life is just a job resume? / David W. Plath -- Careers and mobility in Japan's labor markets / Solomon B. Levine -- Changing employment patterns of women / Karen C. Holden -- Aborted careers in a public corporation / Kenneth A. Skinner -- Shiranai Station / Paul H. Noguchi -- Intertwined careers in medical practice / Susan O. Long -- Where security begets security / Jack G. Lewis -- Cataclysm and career rebirth / Theodore F. Cook -- The office--way station or blind alley? / James McLendon -- The tempo of family formation / Samuel Coleman -- Where work and family are almost one / Jill Kleinberg -- Timetables and the lifecourse in post-industrial society / Julius A. Roth.