A Comparative Study of Promotion, Mobility and Career Development in Japanese and American Organizations

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The purpose of this study is to conduct a comparative study of promotion pattern and career development in Japanese and American organizations. The main findings pertaining to the U.S.-Japan comparison can be summarized as follows. With regard to the mechanism of promotion, different conceptual formulations of the attainment process in an organization were proposed and tested: the late selection model, the tournament model, the sponsored model, the contest model, and the gatekeeping model. The Japanese company adopts the late selection model while the American company begins differentiating its employees from the early stage. In both companies, the attainment process is characterized by a two-step process of selection : the gatekeeping model which filters out a small portion of employees who do not meet the minimum standard of performance, and the contest model which allows the remaining employees to compete for higher positions without being affected by their earlier performance. Furthermore, the analysis about the relationship between educational credentials and promotion prospects examined the impact of the quality of institutions previously attended by the employees and their specialization in college. Both the Japanese and American companies appear to use the college quality as a signal of higher productivity of employees, and the alumni of high-quality institutions in both companies tend to have better cognitive and non-cognitive skills which increase the chances of promotion. These results suggest that there are substantial similarities both in the attainment process in organizations and in the impact of college quality and major on promotion chances in the two companies.