This paper analyses recent developments in HR practice toward core white collar employees at Japan’s major automobile companies. It confirms there have been incremental but substantial changes in key HR policies such as compensation and the ranking system, but also finds that traditional long-term employment continues to be practiced at most firms. It further observes that Japan’s auto companies have introduced global HR polices earlier than have Japanese firms in comparable sectors. This, however, has not resulted in the alignment of policies toward those of overseas operations, which one often finds in other Japanese industries such as finance and pharmaceuticals. This would indicate that different trajectories of change are emerging in employment practices—that is, diversification in employment systems is expanding—according to sector (or, the products and services firms offer). This paper also analyses several background factors propelling such divergence, and suggests possible future constellations of employment systems among large elite firms in Japan. In these ways this study contributes to the debate on the effects of globalization on divergence and convergence of employment systems.

中文翻译：

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日本汽车业的就业实践：全球化对就业制度差异的影响

本文分析了日本主要汽车公司针对核心白领员工的人力资源实践的最新发展。该报告确认了主要的人力资源政策（例如薪酬和排名系统）已经发生了增量但实质性的变化，但同时发现大多数公司仍继续采用传统的长期雇用方式。它进一步观察到，日本的汽车公司比同类行业的日本公司更早地引入了全球人力资源政策。但是，这并没有使政策与海外业务的政策保持一致，这一点在其他日本行业中经常见到，例如金融和制药业。这表明，根据行业（或，公司提供的产品和服务）。本文还分析了造成这种差异的几种背景因素，并提出了日本大型精英企业未来可能使用的就业体系。通过这些方式，本研究有助于就全球化对就业制度的分歧和趋同的影响进行辩论。