The Changes of Employment Structure, Work Process, Way of Life and Social Values of Workers

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Our research project studied the changes of employment structure and the changes of ways of work and life since 1990's on both levels, that is, on micro level, for example, on employment management and production system at individual companies on the one hand, and on macro levels, for example, on policies and proposals regarding employment and personnel management adopted or proposed by government, unions and employers associations.According to our research of automobile industry and electric equipment industry, new concept on division of labor has emerged during 1990's. This concept which produced 'completed process' and 'cellular' production system during 1990's is a new idea about division of labor. In order to overcome defects of serial flow line production this concept tries to avoid over-fragmented division of labor and to regard completed work process as important, which consist of functionally meaningful jobs. At this point, this concept and Volvo Uddevalla production system ar … More e in common though both are often thought as utterly different from these appearances. Of course, both have different points for example with regard to method of development and utilization of the abilities of operators. In Japan the range of completeness of tasks of each operators under 'completed process' or cellular production system tends to be determined pragmatically by narrowly defined economies or production efficiencies. As a result many contingent workers have been increasingly utilized in shops. The introduction of the concept of completed work process has gone side by side not only with the innovation of the development process of products and production sites, but also with the reform of personnel management system.The Changes of employment structure on macro level are not radical but gradual in actual situations. Surely during late 1990's new employment practices have spread which introduce market-based principles into employment system within big companies, that is, internal labor market. However, many business leaders of big companies tend to be skeptical about market-based principles, so it is unclear that new employment principles will become dominant. Less