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

本研究的目的是对日本和美国组织的晋升模式和职业发展进行比较研究。关于美日比较的主要发现可以总结如下。在晋升机制方面，本文提出并检验了组织内成就过程的不同概念表述：后期选择模型、竞赛模型、赞助模型、竞赛模型和把关模型。日本公司采用后期选拔模式，而美国公司从早期就开始区分员工。在这两家公司，成就过程的特点是两步选择过程：把关模式，过滤掉一小部分没有达到最低绩效标准的员工；竞争模式，允许剩下的员工竞争更高的职位，而不受他们早期绩效的影响。此外，对学历与晋升前景关系的分析考察了员工以前就读院校的质量和他们在大学专业的影响。日本和美国的公司似乎都把大学的质量作为员工生产率更高的信号，两家公司高质量院校的校友往往拥有更好的认知和非认知技能，这增加了晋升的机会。这些结果表明，无论是在组织中的成就过程，还是在大学质量和专业对两家公司晋升机会的影响上，都存在着实质性的相似之处。

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.