For the maiden edition of this Newsletter, let me share my thoughts on the on-going debate between Western and Japanese styles of HR management.

For most of us foreign HR professionals in Japan, we have been quick to judge that Japan needs to be at par with global HR practices or approaches. When we say that HR is too "Japanese," we imply that it is backward and not progressive.

However, if Japan HR is really that backward or awful, then how come Japan remains the second largest economy in the world? How come the country produces global companies such as Sony, Toyota, Canon, Panasonic, and the likes? What keeps Japan from falling apart even if it doesn't fully subscribe to the notion of progressive HR management practices in the West?

Fortunately, UCLA Professor Sanford M. Jacoby offers some explanation to this paradox through his book entitled: "The Embedded Corporation" (Princeton University Press, 2005).

In this book, he offers some interesting findings that Japan HR is not that "bad" after all. In fact, in an interview with him by Veritude about his research findings, he noted that "the perception that Japanese companies have to become more like American companies to survive in this global environment isn´t born out by fact." He believes that due to "national differences in economic history and social norms or culture and to global competition itself, companies in Japan and in the United States continue to be different in the way they organize the HR function, the role it plays in the organization and the status of the top-level HR executive."

More interestingly, he also found that there´s some overlap. "On the one hand," Jacoby commented, "there are Japanese companies that are becoming more like those in the United States. But there are some U.S. companies that have an increasingly Japanese flavor to them. So, in each country, there´s a dominant approach, but there´s also a minority of companies that resemble the dominant pattern across the ocean."

However, it must be noted that Jacoby's research focused on large sized corporations like Sony, Canon, Toyota, etc. The question is if these results are reflective of the entire practice of the HR profession in Japan wherein 90% of its businesses are small and medium enterprises.

The answer is "I don't know." For me, Jacoby's explanations hold some sense of truth and wisdom and indeed worth considering in this on-going HR debate.

However, what I do know is that that there is no singular right approach to HR management. I propose that HR management should not be viewed as a "thing" or a system by itself alone but as a process of continuous evolution that naturally seeks out what works best in a given situation, culture, or country. After all, HR is all about people and we are a complex being that is too complicated to be fitted in a box...perhaps because we ourselves are still in the process of evolving. --JK