US and Japan Economic

U.S. And Japan economic

I have chosen lifetime employment as the observable feature of Japanese and U.S. economies to be analyzed and described. As we are probably aware, the employment span is quite different in Japan with respect to the United States. In Japan, employees are generally recruited from college or university by the company, usually have a residence period while still in the university and, for the most part, spend their entire life working for the same company. This means that they start their way at the bottom and usually reach higher positions in the company late in their life (over 50 years old anyhow).

In the United States, the procedure is somewhat different. It is quite uncommon for a person to spend more than a few years within a company. If they do so, it is either because they have not found a better position elsewhere (and this means they are not qualified and will be considered as such by the selecting companies) or they want to work their way up in the company they are employed in. However, the most important feature here is that age is no issue, although we do tend to have CEOs in average at over 35 years old.

From the two descriptions above, we can draw several conclusions about the social and cultural factors and patterns that influence these attitudes. One of them is certainly age. In the Japanese society, this is the basic factor on which promotion decisions are made. You can be an extremely good employee, if you have not reached the necessary age, you will not be promoted in a higher position within the company. The creed of the Japanese society is that older people are much wiser and much more able to make decisions at a higher level. It is also the basis for reciprocal respect and promoting younger people would mean that the elderly that have not yet been promoted would have to pay respect to the younger ones, which would contravene with the basic characteristics of the Japanese society. Additionally, in Japan, the company is regarded more as a family and less as a workplace. It is harder to break away from this environment.

On the other hand, the age factor is almost non-existing in the American society when it comes to decisions about employment.

The company is simply a workplace, an environment where the economic profit comes always first. Promotion is done on a merit-basis: however is able enough to reach a high position will do so. Resuming, the main difference that influences lifetime employment is the fact that the two societies tend to regard differently the company in which one works: familial in Japan, based on competition in the United States.