ABSTRACT

Do apprenticeships enhance product quality? Whether guilds and apprenticeships have promoted technological change has been debated, but the issue remains unsettled because of the lack of data which allows us to empirically assess technological change by apprenticeships in the comparison with technological change by non-apprenticeships. By scrutinizing apprenticeships in the sake brewing industry and utilizing the national sake quality competition results and the master brewer list, this study examines to what extent the craftsmen trained through an apprenticeship enhanced or reduced product quality. The empirical results indicate that the training in apprenticeships actually decreases the probability of winning quality competitions, which indicates that apprenticeships do not improve product quality. Thus, we discuss why apprenticeships was a dominant form of training and learning, even if they had little bona fide utility for product quality. We show that brewers originally utilized apprenticeship-type practices adopted for migrant labor to reduce production costs. This study also shows that the breweries began to create a positive imagery associated with apprenticeships and sake quality from the 1980s even though apprenticeships actually reduce the probability of brewing high-quality sake.

摘要

学徒提高产品质量吗？公会和学徒制是否促进了技术变革，一直存在争议，但由于缺乏数据，我们无法根据经验评估学徒制的技术变革与非学徒制的技术变革相比，这个问题仍未解决。通过研究清酒酿造行业的学徒制，并利用全国清酒质量竞赛结果和酿酒师总名单，本研究考察了通过学徒制培训的工匠在多大程度上提高或降低了产品质量。实证结果表明，学徒培训实际上降低了赢得质量竞赛的可能性，这表明学徒培训并不能提高产品质量。从而，我们讨论了为什么学徒制是培训和学习的主要形式，即使他们对产品质量几乎没有真正的效用。我们表明，啤酒制造商最初利用的是农民工所采用的学徒式做法，以降低生产成本。这项研究还表明，尽管学徒实际上减少了酿造高品质清酒的可能性，但酿酒厂从1980年代开始就开始建立与学徒和清酒质量相关的正面形象。