Engineers in Japan and Britain: Education, Training and Employment (Nissan Institute Routledge...

Engineers in Japan and Britain

Engineers are a key occupational group in the transformation of the modernworld. Contrasts between Japan’s ‘economic miracle’ and Britain’s relativeeconomic decline have often been linked to differences in the education, trainingand employment of engineers. Yet, such views have often rested on little morethan colourful anecdotes and selective statistics.

Using careful and systematic comparison, Kevin McCormick examines theapproaches to the training and education of engineers in Britain and Japan. Hehighlights the importance of several foreign engineering traditions and postwarindustrial reforms as well as analysing the education, training and employmentof R&D workers. Drawing on a wide range of literature and direct involvementin several comparative and collaborative projects, the author presents accountsof past, present and future developments in the engineering professions of Japanand Britain.

Professional engineers, engineering managers, industrial policy makers aswell as students and researchers in human resource management, businessstudies and Asian studies will find this book an invaluable source of data andanalysis which is not available elsewhere in the English language.

Kevin McCormick is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Sussex.He is the co-author of Japanese Companies: British Factories.

The Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies Series Editorial BoardJ.A.A.Stockwin, Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies, University of Oxfordand Director, Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies; Teigo Yoshida, formerly Professorof the University of Tokyo; now Professor, Obirin University; Frank Langdon,Professor, Institute of International Relations, University of British Columbia,Canada; Alan Rix, Executive Dean, Faculty of Arts, The University of Queensland;Junji Banno, Chiba University; Leonard Schoppa, University of Virginia

Other titles in the series:

The Myth of Japanese UniquenessPeter Dale

The Emperor’s Adviser: SaionjiKinmochi and Pre-war JapanesePoliticsLesley Connors

A History of Japanese EconomicThoughtTessa Morris-Suzuki

The Establishment of the JapaneseConstitutional SystemJunji Banno, translated byJ.A.A.Stockwin

Industrial Relations in Japan: ThePeripheral WorkforceNorma Chalmers

Banking Policy in Japan: AmericanEfforts at Reform During theOccupationWilliam M.Tsutsui

Educational Reform in JapanLeonard Schoppa

How the Japanese Learn to Work:Second EditionRonald P.Dore and Mari Sako

Japanese Economic Development andIndustrial Practice: Second EditionPenelope Francks

Japan and Protection: The Growthof Protectionist Sentiment and theJapanese ResponseSyed Jawed Maswood

The Soil, by Nagastsuka Takashi: APortrait of Rural Life in Meiji Japantranslated and with an introduction byAnn Waswo

Biotechnology in JapanMalcolm Brock

Britain’s Educational Reform: AComparison with JapanMichael Howarth

Language and the Modern State: TheReform of Written JapaneseNanette Twine

Industrial Harmony in ModernJapan: The Intervention of aTraditionW.Dean Kinzley

Japanese Science Fiction: A View ofa Changing SocietyRobert Matthew

The Japanese Numbers Game: TheUse and Understanding of Numbersin Modern JapanThomas Crump

Ideology and Practice in ModernJapanEdited by Roger Goodman and KirstenRefsing

Technology and IndustrialDevelopment in pre-War JapanYukiko Fukasaku

Japan’s Early Parliaments 1890–1905Andrew Fraser, R.H.P.Mason andPhilip Mitchell

Japan’s Foreign Aid ChallengeAlan Rix

Emperor Hirohito and Showa JapanStephen S.Large

Japan: Beyond the End of HistoryDavid Williams

Ceremony and Ritual in Japan:Religious Practices in anIndustrialized SocietyEdited by Jan van Bremen andD.P.Martinez

Understanding Japanese Society:Second EditionJoy Hendry

The Fantastic in Modern JapaneseLiterature: The Subversion ofModernitySusan J.Napier

Militarization and Demilitarizationin Contemporary JapanGlenn D.Hook

Growing a Japanese Science City:Communication in ScientificResearchJames W.Dearing

Architecture and Authority in JapanWilliam H.Coaldrake

Women’s Gidayu and the JapaneseTheatre TraditionA.Kimi Coaldrake

Democracy in Post-war JapanRikki Kersten

Treacherous Women of ImperialJapanHélène Bowen Raddeker

Japanese-German Business RelationsAkira Kudo

Japan, Race and EqualityNaoko Shimazu

Japan, Internationalism and the UNRonald Dore

Life in a Japanese Women’s CollegeBrian J.McVeigh

On the Margins of Japanese SocietyCarolyn S.Stevens

The Dynamics of Japan’s Relationswith Africaweku Ampiah

The Right to Life in JapanNoel Williams

The Nature of the Japanese StateBrian J.McVeigh

Society and the State in Inter-warJapanElise K.Tipton

Japanese-Soviet/Russian Relationssince 1945Kimie Hara

Green Politics in JapanLam Peng-Er

The Japanese High School: Silenceand ResistanceShoko Yoneyama

Engineers in Japan andBritainEducation, Training and Employment

Kevin McCormick

London and New York

First published 2000by Routledge11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canadaby Routledge29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. © 2000 Kevin McCormick All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproducedor utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission inwriting from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

McCormick, Kevin, 1944–Engineers in Japan and Britain: education, training and

employment/Kevin McCormick.p. cm. —(Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese studies series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.1. Engineering—Study and teaching—Japan. 2. Engineering—Study and teaching—Great Britain. 3. Engineers—Training of—Japan. 4. Engineers—Training of—Great Britain.I. Title. II. Series.

T155.M37 1998 99–14505620’.0071’052–dc21 CIP ISBN 0-415-16181-9 (Print edition)ISBN 0-203-01401-4 Master e-book ISBNISBN 0-203-20514-6 (Glassbook Format)

In Memoriam

Brian McCormick (1931–1998)

Contents

List of figures xiiList of tables xiiiList of abbreviations xviAcknowledgements xixSeries editor’s preface xxi

Introduction 1

1 Historical legacies for engineers 9

Introduction 9Debates on Henry Dyer 11Developments before 1914 13The inter-war years 22After 1945 25Institutional histories: UMIST and TIT 32Conclusions 40Notes 45

2 International rankings of engineers 46

Introduction 46Controversial numbers 48Outlines of the two educational systems 54The implicit qualitative dimensions of comparison 62The social standing of engineers 72Conclusions 79Notes 80

x Contents

3 Engineers and the lifetime employment system 81

Introduction 81The lifetime employment system 83Recruitment and selection 85Training and assignments 90Pay and careers 94Lifetime employment, business strategy and in-company training 102The changing context of the lifetime employment system 106Conclusions 108

4 Engineering innovation: from ‘national systems’ tocorporate laboratories and projects 112

Introduction 112National systems of innovation 114Comparing engineers in the innovation process 119The International Research Group on R&D Management 126Corporate R&D 130Project organisation 145R&D outputs: patents and papers 148Conclusions 151Note 153

5 Building skills and careers in research and development 154

Introduction: skill formation and career development 154Employment systems: ‘market-oriented’ versus ‘organisation-oriented’ 155Career timetables 157Building the R&D workforce: company policies and practices 162Knowledge and skill formation 167Reforming education and training: industrial perspectives 173Discussion 176

6 Research and development work: its contents anddiscontents 180

Introduction 180Engineers and scientists as professionals in industry 181The paradoxical professionalism of Japan’s R&D workers 188R&D inputs: working hours 191Managing project work 194Reward systems 197

Contents xi

Contents and discontents 198The scope for collective voice: professional institutions and unions 204Conclusions 209Note 215

7 Engineering transplants 216

Introduction 216The supply side of Japanese foreign direct investment 218The demand for Japanese foreign direct investment 219Debates on ‘Japanisation’ and technology transfer 222Transplants and the employment of engineers: a survey 225The organisation of engineering work 228R&D: the ‘attached’ and the ‘independent’ R&D units 249Conclusions 252Notes 257

8 Conclusions: comparisons and contrasts between engineers 258

Introduction 258Becoming professional engineers 260Models of the organisation and production of technical labour 263Conclusions: diverse comparisons and diverse engineers 269Note 275

Bibliography 276Index 297

Figures

2.1 Progression routes in the Japanese educational system (1994) 554.1 Number of research institutions established by Japanese

companies 1335.1 The organisation of skill formation 1636.1 Wage composition under the seniority-oriented system 1986.2 Salary composition under shokunoshikaku system 1997.1 A checklist of ‘Japanisation’ 2237.2 Colour television manufacturing processes 2317.3 Career paths in Terebi TV Company 233

Tables

1.1 A comparison of the careers and salaries of engineering andbusiness graduates in Mitsubishi Zaibatsu (1886–1916) 20

2.1 Number of higher-education students by subject 502.2 Engineering graduates in the UK, France, Germany, Japan and USA 532.3 A-level points scores for British entrants to university engineering

and history (1995) 642.4a Hensachi scores for engineering entry to public universities (1988) 662.4b Hensachi scores for engineering entry to private universities (1988) 662.5 Hensachi scores for entry to science and engineering (1997) 673.1 Financial structures, company performance and labour force

data for a sample of Japanese companies 843.2 Differences in monthly contractual earnings by age group 973.3 Differences in annual cash earnings (bonus included) by sector,

education and age group (males) 98–93.4 Differences in regular monthly salary by job cluster 1003.5 Wage differences by job cluster: male white-collar workers

(university or college graduates) in manufacturing industry 1013.6 Wage differences by job cluster: male white-collar workers

(university or college graduates) in manufacturing industry 1014.1 Educational backgrounds of senior officials at the Ministry of

International Trade and Industry (MITI) (1988) 1284.2 Basic data on sample survey companies in Japan and Britain 1294.3 Employment mobility (percentage changing company) 1314.4 Percentage of the company respondents who joined the

company after graduation and the percentage who weremid-career recruits 131

4.5 Percentage of R&D staff applying for patents by area of workand country 148

4.6 Percentage of R&D staff with published papers by area ofwork and country 148

4.7 Percentage of Japanese R&D staff applying for patentsby company 149

4.8 Percentage of British R&D staff applying for patents

xiv List of tables

by company 1494.9 Percentage of Japanese R&D staff publishing papers

by company 1504.10 Percentage of British R&D staff publishing papers

by company 1504.11 Reward levels by patent application and publication 1504.12 A comparison of the world rankings in basic research and

industrial R&D 1525.1 Preferred future (type of organisation) by current work

location 1575.2 Proportion of each age group preferring a company move

by age group 1575.3 Career timetables 1585.4 Actual age on reaching career milestones 1605.5 Ideal age to reach career milestones 1615.6 Preferred future types of work by current work location 1615.7 The relation between age and effectiveness as a front-line

R&D worker 1625.8 Job search channels after graduation in four countries 1645.9 Job search channels after graduation in Japan 1655.10 Effective methods of knowledge and skill development 1695.11 Forms of work experienced since entering the current company 1725.12 Self-initiated versus directed participation in off-the-job training 1725.13 Reasons given for participation in off-the-job training courses 1735.14 Reasons for the need to further develop knowledge and skills 1735.15 Areas needing curriculum reform in university and

company education 1756.1 Personal goals of R&D workers in four countries 1896.2 R&D workers’ membership in professional organisations in

four countries 1906.3 Importance attached to work goals by R&D workers in

Britain and Japan 1926.4 Importance attached to work goals by ‘research’ or ‘development’

function in Japan and Britain 1936.5 R&D staff reporting out-of-work social contacts

with colleagues 1946.6 R&D staff reporting out-of-work social contacts

with supervisors 1956.7 Number of projects for which an R&D staff member is responsible

by position 1966.8 Reward level by age cohort 1976.9 Reward level by stage of career development 1986.10 Degree of satisfaction with aspects of work in Japan 2006.11 Degree of satisfaction with aspects of work in Britain 2006.12 Sources of dissatisfactions among Japanese R&D staff 201

List of tables xv

6.13 Sources of dissatisfactions among British R&D staff 2026.14 Japanese membership of collective organisations (unions

and professional institutions) 2066.15 British membership of collective organisations (unions

and professional institutions) 2066.16 The significance of professional institution membership in Japan 2076.17 The significance of professional institution membership in Britain 2076.18 Benefits of professional organisation membership in Japan 2106.19 Benefits of professional organisation membership in Britain 2116.20 Benefits of union membership in Japan 2126.21 Benefits of union membership in Britain 2137.1 Manufacturing plants and the R&D intensity of Japanese

manufacturing in Europe 2207.2 Number of R&D units established by Japanese companies in Europe 2217.3 Plant size and number of Japanese graduate engineers 2277.4 Plant size and number of UK graduate engineers 2277.5 UK engineers compared to expatriate Japanese engineers 2427.6 Characteristics of Japanese R&D units in Europe 2517.7 Parent company industries of principal independent R&D

centres in the UK 2518.1 Models for the production and organisation of technical labour 2658.2 Dimensions of the production and organisation of engineers 269

Abbreviations

A level Advanced levelAFE Advanced Further EducationBEng Bachelor of EngineeringBER Board of Engineering RegistrationBTEC Business and Technical Education CouncilBTech Bachelor of TechnologyCATs Colleges of Advanced TechnologyCGLE City and Guilds of London InstituteCNAA Council of National Academic AwardsCRL Central Research LaboratoryCRNS Centre National de Recherche ScientifiqueCRT Cathode ray tubeCTV Colour televisionD&D Design and developmentDES Department of Education and Science. Having taken

over some of the functions of the employmentdepartment, it has become the Department for Educationand Employment (DfEE)

DTI Department of Trade and IndustryEEC European Economic CommunityEIAJ Electronic Industries Association of JapanESRC Economic and Social Research CouncilEPA Economic Planning AgencyGCE General Certificate of EducationGDP Gross Domestic ProductGEM Graduate Research Institute of Economics and ManagementGNVQ General National Vocational Qualifications overseen by

the National Council for Vocational Qualification(NCVQ)

HMSO Her Majesty’s Stationery OfficeHNC Higher National CertificateHND Higher National DiplomaIDS Institute for Development StudiesIFO Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung e.V., Munich. One of

the major economic ‘think tanks’ in GermanyIMS Institute of Manpower Studies (now renamed to Institute

for Employment Studies) at the University of SussexISCED International Standard Classification of EducationJETRO Japan External Trade Organisation

List of abbreviations xvii

JIL Japan Institute of LabourJPC Japan Productivity CentreJSME Japanese Society of Mechanical EngineersJSPS Japan Society for the Promotion of ScienceLEST Laboratoire d’Economie et de Sociologie du TravailLSE London School of EconomicsMEng Master of EngineeringMIT Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyMITI Ministry of International Trade and IndustryMSC Manpower Services CommissionNAFE Non-Advanced Further EducationNCTA (CNTA) National Council (or Council of National) Technological

AwardsNCUEE National Centre for University Entrance ExaminationNEDC National Economic Development CouncilNEDO National Economic Development OrganisationNIER National Institute for Educational ResearchNISTEP National Institute of Science and Technology PolicyNTSC One of the three systems used for encoding colour

picture information for transmission, the US NationalTelevision System Commission (NTSC) systemhas been adopted across Canada, Mexico and Japan

OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Developmento-j-t On-the-job trainingOTA Office of Technology AssessmentPAL The ‘Phase Alteration Line’ system is the encoding

system adopted in the UK and most otherWest European countries

PhD Doctor of PhilosophyQC Quality controlQSEs Qualified scientists and engineers. This classification was

used by official advisory bodies on scientific andtechnological manpower reports and surveys in the1950s and 1960s

QSETs Qualified scientists, engineers and technologistsR&D Research and developmentRE Registered EngineerRE(Assoc) Registered Engineer AssociateREng(Dip) Registered Engineer DiplomateSARTOR Standards and Routes to RegistrationSCAP Supreme Commander Allied PowersSECAM The ‘Système Electronique Couleur Avec Memoire’

(SECAM) is the colour encoding system originallydeveloped in France, and later adopted in EasternEurope and the former Soviet Union

SERC Science and Engineering Research CouncilSPRU Science Policy Research InstituteSTA Science and Technology AgencySTC Standard Telephones and CablesTIT Tokyo Institute of TechnologyTUC Trade Union CongressUGC University Grants CommitteeUK United KingdomUKAEA United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

xviii List of abbreviations

UMIST University of Manchester Institute of Science and TechnologyUNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural OrganisationUS United StatesUSA United States of AmericaUSSR Union of Socialist Soviet Republicsv. VersusVTR Video-tape recorder

Acknowledgements

A stimulus to pull together some of the threads of a body of research on theeducation, training and employment of graduate-level engineers in Britain andJapan came with an invitation to join the Graduate Research Institute ofEconomics and Management (GEM) in the Faculty of Economics of GakushuinUniversity and the generous support of a Japan Society for the Promotion ofScience (JSPS) Short Term Fellowship in 1996. Professor Imano Koichiro, myhost at Gakushuin University, was one of my collaborators in a comparison ofcareers in industrial research and development (R&D) in Britain and Japan.

My past research had enjoyed a number of valuable collaborative ventureswith Japanese scholars. My early studies of the lifetime employment systemand its consequences for large and small firms owed much to UmetaniShun’ichiro (Tokyo Gakugei University). Later studies of R&D careers werecarried out in Japan and Britain with the generous aid of Imano Koichiro(Gakushuin University), Sato Hiroki (Tokyo University), Yahata Shigemi (JapanInstitute of Labour), Fukutani Masanobu (Japan Productivity Centre), and ScottDavis (Reitekku University). This project was then enriched and extended tothe United States (US) and to Germany with the support of more collaborators:Philip Shapira (Georgia Institute of Technology), Angelika Ernst and the lateGerhard Wiesner (IFO, Munich). Studies of the role of engineers in transplantoperations benefited from research collaboration with Iwauchi Ryochi andKimoto Shin’ichiro (Meiji University) and Muta Hiromitsu (Tokyo Institute ofTechnology).

Among UK researchers, I have valued working with Peter Senker from theScience Policy Research Institute (SPRU) on small firms in Japan and Britain.A quartet of researchers drawn across three universities—David Cairncross(Imperial College), Brian McCormick (Sheffield University), Alan Turner(Sussex University), and Yumi Hanstock (Sussex University)—joined me in afruitful study of engineers in transplant operations.

I am grateful to several publishers for permission to incorporate revisedmaterial from these earlier studies appearing in previously published papers:Routledge for material in Chapter 1 from the volume edited by Howard Gospel(Industiral Training and Technological Innovation: a Comparative andHistorical Approach); Falmer Press (now part of International Thomson

xx Acknowledgements

Publishing) for sections of Chapter 3 drawn from the volume edited by PaulRyan, (International Comparisons of Vocational Education and Training forIntermediate Skills 1991); Blackwell for material in Chapter 5 (from R&DManagement 1995) Chapter 7 (Technology, Work and Employment 1996);Carfax Publishing for material in Chapter 5 (Studies in Higher Education 1993).

Financial support for projects was appreciated from a number of sources,including the Unit for Comparative Research on Industrial Relations (SussexUniversity), Great Britain-Sasakawa Foundation, the Japan FoundationEndowment Committee, the Joint Committee of the Science and EngineeringResearch Council and the Economic and Social Research Council (SERC-ESRC), and the ESRC.

Ron Dore’s lectures to Sussex undergraduates had whetted an appetite forstudy of Japanese industrial relations, which was later encouraged and sustainedby his writings and wise counsel. The School of Social Sciences in the Universityof Sussex, nestled between research institutes—such as the Science PolicyResearch Unit (SPRU), the Institute for Development Studies (IDS), and theInstitute for Manpower Studies (re-named as the Institute for EmploymentStudies)—has provided a congenial research environment. The School ofEngineering has provided many cohorts of students and constructive criticism.Specific aid in survey work came from Helen Connor and her colleagues in theSurvey Unit of the Institute for Employment Studies and from David Hitchinand his colleagues in the University Computing Centre. Substantive and stylisticimprovements have been much appreciated from Nick Von Tunzelmann (SPRU,University of Sussex) on Chapter 1, and from Ozaki Ritsuko (University ofSussex) who did much to enhance the first full draft. Victoria Smith and ananonymous reader provided patient support and guidance from Routledge.

It is custom and practice for researchers to acknowledge the support of theircontemporary family and this volume provides no exception. My wife andchildren have borne my absences and distraction with considerable stoicismand followed my travels with tolerant indulgence. However, the seeds of thisbook were sown and nurtured in family relationships in a more distant past.The conversations of my father, a craftsman engineer, and my older brother,Brian, stimulated my curiosity about the world of work and industrial relationsas a schoolboy and led on to my study of industrial relations from theperspectives of economics and sociology. After our mother’s death in April1995, Brian and I dedicated our co-authored book to the memory of our parentsand sister. Following Brian’s sudden death in March 1998, this bookacknowledges that rich vein of family indebtedness with a dedication to thebrother whose challenging wit, humour and enthusiasm enlivened our journeysthrough life and the social sciences.

Series editor’s preface

Japan, as the new century begins, has been experiencing a turbulent period inwhich some of her most cherished institutions and practices are placed undercritical scrutiny. The financial crisis that began in the latter half of 1997—butwhose origins go back several years earlier—gravely affected Japan as well asother Asian countries. Quite apart from the economic and political implicationsof recession, including bankruptcies and increased unemployment, the crisishad a marked impact on the psychology of ordinary people. They had beenaccustomed to steadily increasing proseprity and the international respectgenerated by the successes of their politico-economic model. Now, however,they were coming to wonder whether attitudes and ways of doing things thathad been central to their lives and outlook over several decades were stillappropriate to the disturbingly unstable world in which they now foundthemselves.

One straw in the wind was a hugely popular soap opera on Fuji Televisionin the spring of 1998, entitled Shomu 2 (General Affairs Section 2), in which agroup of women office workers egotistically assert their rights as individualsand challenge time-honoured working practices. By challenging the prevailingatmosphere of inefficiency, refusal to face up to responsibilities, conformism,sexual harassment of women and mindless deference to hierarchy, this feistygroup of ‘office ladies’ succeed in saving the company from bankruptcy.

However much of a caricature the Fuji TV soap opera may be, it issymptomatic of a sense that not all is right in what used to be seen as anunbeatable set of methods for running society. Grave though the crisis beingfaced by Japan was, the impressive human and material resources that thecountry was still able to command were advantageous in the struggle toovercome the crisis. Whatever might be the outcome at the economic level,however, a troubling intellectual problem remained. Few could doubt that radicalreform was needed, but if this reform were simply to be a case of conformitywith the norms of an America-centred global economy (following the principlesof the free market and egotistical individualism), where did that leave the statusof Japanese values? History suggested that simple acceptance of foreign modelswas an unlikely outcome, and that ultimately a creative solution might emerge,

xxii Series editor’s preface

mixing external with indigenous elements. To follow this process over thecoming years should be an intriguing task.

The Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies Series seeks to foster aninformed and balanced, but not uncritical, understanding of Japan. One aim ofthe series is to show the depth and variety of Japanese institutions, practicesand ideas. Another is, by using comparisons, to see what lessons, positive ornegative, may be drawn for other countries. The tendency in commentary onJapan to resort to outdated, ill-informed or sensational stereotypes still remains,and needs to be combated.

The role of engineers in industrial development is self-evidently crucial,but different societies undergoing modernisation since the nineteenth centuryhave trained and used engineers in surprisingly different ways and to differentextents. Kevin McCormick, in this thorough and penetrating comparison ofengineers in Japan and the United Kingdom, is able to demonstrate graphicallyjust how contrasting the patterns in the two countries have been. He is rightlyimpressed by the effectiveness of the utilisation of engineers in Japan by contrastwith Britain, and argues that Japanese companies appear to have gotsubstantially more engineering work out of their engineers, and to have doneso without paying premium rates. He relates this to different practices in training,systems of incentives and employment practices, including the ‘lifetimeemployment’ enjoyed in Japan by core members of the workforce, includingmany engineers. On the other hand, he sees Japan increasingly adaptinginnovative best practice in Britain towards the creation of new forms oforganisation in a Japanese cultural environment.

In so many aspects of Japanese life creative adaptation is the key tounderstanding new trends, and McCormick’s book constitutes a definitive guideto such trends in the employment of engineers.

J.A.A.Stockwin

Introduction

My first meeting with some Japanese engineers was fortuitous (but timely),helpful and instructive. I had slipped from under the protective embrace of myhotel and conference group for a solo saunter into Tokyo. It was easy enoughto enter the subway and find my way to a bar in the Shimbashi district. Retracingmy steps might have proved beyond my rudimentary map-reading of the subwaysystem without the aid of some drinking companions, who had introducedthemselves as ‘Toshiba men’. They were working as engineers in Tokyo andhad had a brief (but mixed) experience of England. It was their self-identificationby company first, and only secondarily by occupational title that gave thatextra thrill of recognition and the feeling that I was in familiar territory. Theycould have stepped out of the pages of Ronald Dore’s British Factory-JapaneseFactory, allowing for their substitution of ‘Toshiba’ for Dore’s ‘Hitachi’.Whatever else might have seemed exotic on my first-time visit to a Tokyo bar,my new-found companions and guides were substantial enough confirmationthat my sociology books had some relevance as a starting point for a closerlook at the education, training and employment of engineers in contemporaryJapan, and for comparisons with Britain.

My trip to Japan in 1983 included participation in the Japan Institute of Labourseminar on ‘Japanese industrial relations in action’ and the International IndustrialRelations Association Conference in Kyoto. However, the underlying purposewas to discuss the potential for collaborative and comparative studies of engineersin Japan and Britain. All the aims were achieved. Not only were the organisedevents very informative and stimulating in themselves, but the contacts madeand the very positive responses from Japanese researchers have sustained aprogramme of comparative studies of engineers in Japan and Britain over severalyears. During the 1980s, Japanese companies and schools became a source ofmuch-discussed models and exemplary lessons-to-be-learned, not only in Britain,but more widely in Europe and America. Japan was no longer of interest simplyas a model for third-world aspirants to join the list of industrialised nations.Japan appeared to have ‘lessons’ for the regeneration of flagging industrialisedeconomies. For both the first and third worlds, Japan appeared to offer exemplarymodels of economic growth and a seemingly boundless capacity to bounce backfrom adversity.

2 Engineers in Japan and Britain

Interpretations of Japan have been undergoing revision in the 1990s. The failureto develop a sustained period of economic growth after the collapse of the ‘bubbleeconomy’ in the 1991 recession has made it difficult to dismiss problems as ashort-term performance blip on the general trend. There are strong grounds forbelieving that Japan has been facing severe structural changes too. The combineddifficulties of a cyclical downturn on top of serious structural change have beenexacerbated by the failure to cope with financial reform. The ‘bad debts’ whichstemmed from the risky loans in the euphoric lending of the bubble economyhave still been haunting the economy and undermining confidence in the financialand political systems eight years later. The evidence that financial institutionswere colluding with sokaiya groups to cover their losses added to public outrageabout the financial institutions and put constraints on the government’s room formanoeuvre. Government could hardly risk being seen to use taxpayers’ funds toease the lot of criminal groups, particularly after the deep political divisionswhich followed government attempts to bail out financial institutions mired withthe taint of financial impropriety in the jusen housing loan scandal. The veryfinancial system which was praised for underpinning the long-term view ofmanufacturers by providing ‘patient capital’ is now criticised for its lack oftransparency and potential corruption. What were once praised as virtues areseen on the reverse side of the coin as vices. If financial reform includes morederegulation in the sense of freer access to international capital markets but morestringent and effective operation of the remaining regulatory mechanisms, thenJapanese manufacturers may lose ready access to that patient capital and may berequired to operate with more regard to shareholders and the shorter term.Considerations such as these suggest that the continuing success of Japan’smanufacturers is neither ‘inevitable’ nor ‘inexorable’. Japanese manufacturerswill have to learn how to achieve success in a new context, one in which the ‘eastAsian miracle’ is becoming unbundled for a variety of reasons. After years ofstruggling with the high value of the yen, companies have had some relief withcurrency depreciation. This may prove to be only a temporary respite as thevalue of the Korean won collapsed by 40 percent in autumn 1997 and madeKorean products very competitive in price.

Yet just as it was unwise to over-exaggerate the virtues of Japanese engineersand engineering in the 1980s, so it would be foolish to exaggerate the vices ofthe system in which they operate in the late 1990s. The competitive strengths ofJapanese manufacturing companies cannot be dismissed lightly and written off.Companies in the leading industries—automobile, electronics and machinetools—have some of the best applied engineering in the world, with great strengthsin product development and manufacture. Companies have been putting increasedeffort into cost reduction, quality improvement and technological advances(Berggren and Nomura 1997). Some companies are using their vast resources ofskilled engineers and proprietary technology to refocus themselves: for example,Toshiba is realigning its activities from abroad-based electronics company to aninformation technology company. One of the outcomes of the difficult tradingsituation in Japan and the intensified international competition from a resurgent

Introduction 3

US and a desperate Korea might be increasing polarisation within Japaneseindustries as the leaders within industries become stronger and the weakercompanies struggle deeper in their difficulties.

While the shine of the Japanese model has been somewhat dimmed, eventarnished, by the long recession of the early 1990s, the workings of Japaneseinstitutions are still much debated. As in many debates, views become polarised.Japan seems to excite some unusually inflamed passions in internationalcomparisons, from its staunch advocates to its fierce detractors. Often, viewsabout the way that institutions are supposed to work or sheer wishful thinkinghave become closely enmeshed with purportedly straightforward description andexplanation. This book addresses many of the themes in those debates and it isintended to provide a systematic overview of the subsequent research, taking acloser look at the institutions which regulate the education, training andemployment of engineers in the two countries. By looking at the institutionalarrangements for the education, training and employment of engineers, theirprogressive development and the people who pass through them, we can find aconvenient point of entry to some of the debates about the wider picture ofeconomic and social development in Japan and Britain over the course ofindustrialisation.

It is hardly surprising that engineers should attract attention in discussions ofindustrialism and industrialisation. Indeed, the surprise might be that they donot attract more attention. As an occupational group, engineers were put at thecentre of the very conception of an ‘industrial society’ by the man who coinedthe term, Henri St Simon, a French aristocrat who perceived the collapse of theancien régime in eighteenth-century France and the emergence of a new moraland material order. St Simon saw the need for a new national elite, to includeengineers, to build national wealth through productive effort and to replace thearistocracy whose skills lay in war and diplomacy. St Simon’s ideas had theirtangible impact on French industrialisation in the 1850s when engineers groomedin the grandes écoles reached positions of influence. The creation of specialistinstitutions for the education of high-level engineers was one of the centralfeatures of continental Europe’s drive for industrialisation. In 1868, when Japanbrought to an end over 260 years of semi-centralised feudalism under the controlof the Tokugawa clan, the newly restored emperor took the title of Meiji(Enlightenment). The Meiji government put building Japan’s industrial strengthhigh on their agenda in order to escape from the feudal order and to avoid therisk of foreign encroachment. They sent emissaries to England in the 1870s,then the ‘workshop of the world’, to recruit an English engineer to develop agovernment-sponsored engineering college that would develop a corps ofengineers to handle imported technology and to build an indigenous capabilityfor industrial development. They returned with a Scot, and a century later, Japanitself had become a respected source of engineering ‘best practice’ inmanufacturing industry. In the 1970s, the British government, disappointed bythe levels of national economic performance, especially in the manufacturingindustry, sent its own mission under the chairmanship of Sir Monty Finniston to


learn about the education, training and employment of engineers in Japan and toreport on any potential lessons to guide the reform of the engineering professionin Britain.

We might have expected that the recognition of the centrality of engineers toindustrial progress, the workings of competitive pressures in capitalist industrialismand all the efforts to study rivals and to ‘learn from abroad’ would lead to a greaterconvergence in the ways that engineers are educated, trained and employed inindustrial societies. Yet, considerable variety remains. Moreover, although there iswide agreement that engineers are important, it is much less clear who engineersare, what they do, and just how important they are. The term ‘engineer’ is quiteelastic within most industrial societies and there is considerable varietyinternationally in the ways that engineers are formed. Because of their importance,both historically and in contemporary societies, there has been a growing interestin international comparisons, of which my own studies are just one example.

The approach adopted here for the comparative study of the education, trainingand employment of engineers is familiar among sociologists conductingcomparative studies of social institutions and the processes of institutionalisation.Social institutions are important in social structures since they socialise newmembers, regulate clusters of roles and order social conduct through norms andsanctions. While educational institutions, such as universities, take their place amongcultural and socialisation institutions regulating the development of science andthe scientific labour force, economic institutions, such as business corporations,regulate the production of goods and services. Meanwhile the concept of‘institutionalisation’ serves as a reminder that social institutions have to be builtand social practices become sufficiently constant and persistent that they carry thestamp of legitimacy. Nevertheless, while social institutions become established,they can suffer crises, become subjects of national debate and undergo reform orreplacement. In trying to compare institutions across societies, sociologists haveimmediately faced questions about whether like is being compared with like andjust what counts as an ‘engineer’ in either country. There are no simple answers.Very broadly, I shall take a pragmatic solution to put the focus on those peopleemployed in industry as ‘engineers’ with university-level (or equivalent) education.In other words, I shall take the employers’ definitions. However, this can be contestedin many ways. The ‘equivalence’ might admit those with sub-university educationor those with science education. Such issues provide rich material for ‘occupationalpolitics’ and for educational and occupational pressure groups keen to achieve theclosure of labour markets and establish a particular preserve. In Britain, this isevident in pressures for an all-graduate profession and sharp boundaries between‘professional engineers’ and ‘technicians’ or between ‘engineers’ and ‘scientists’.Employers, however, have preferred to retain their freedom of action to appointthose whom they have deemed would meet their functional requirements. Inworkplaces where occupational titles are contested, sociologists have respondedby attempting to devise generic titles such as ‘technologists’ or ‘technical workers’or ‘R&D workers’. None is wholly satisfactory. Technological advances and

Introduction 5

increasing economic and organisational complexity undermine efforts to freezeuniversally valid definitions or to sustain professional licensing.

Differences in national engineering formation prompt a number of questionsabout the relative strength of those pressures (such as competitive pressures) whichmight encourage growing similarity against those other pressures (such as cultureor history) which might sustain continuing differences. The Japanese term for‘engineer’, gijutsusha, has considerable elasticity and can be used to cover both‘engineer’ and ‘technician’. To speak of ‘university-level engineers’ raises questionsabout whether ‘university’ has the same meaning across countries. Setting out witha pragmatic definition of ‘engineer’ and a brief to investigate how engineers areeducated, trained and employed in two advanced capitalist countries, leads inevitablyto some of the wider debates among social scientists about the varieties of capitalistindustrialism and to contemporary debates about the impact of global forces andthe prospects for increasing convergence among capitalist economies.

For this volume, I have set the following agenda of questions: • How important are the historical legacies for today’s engineers?• Do international rankings of the numbers of engineers produced matter?• Does lifetime employment make any difference to the training of engineers?• What part do engineers play in the organisation of innovation?• How do engineers and scientists develop their skills and careers in R&D?• What is R&D work and what are its satisfactions and dissatisfactions?• Can engineers transplant ‘best practice’ methods across countries?• What have we learned about engineers through comparative study?

The apparent failure of the British government to promote advancedtechnological education in the late nineteenth century has been contrasted with theapparent readiness of the Japanese government to establish a College of Engineeringhas a resonance with wider economic and social history debates in Britain andJapan. In looking at the evident success of the Japanese economy from the 1950s,some writers have been tempted to advance historical explanations and to see deeproots into the nineteenth century to explain the post-war success. This line ofexplanation has its parallel in historical accounts of the deep roots for Britain’srelative economic decline. Thus, there is a strong temptation to run the story ofJapan’s rise and Britain’s decline in tandem, posing the question: did the Japanesegovernment lay the foundations for subsequent success just as British governmentslost their way, particularly in relation to engineers? Chapter 1 shows the closeinvolvement of British engineers in the early Japanese efforts to industrialise andsome of the ironies in the subsequent development of engineering formation andthe perceptions of economic performance in the two countries. The story of HenryDyer, a young Scots engineer appointed by the Meiji government to found anengineering college in 1877, provides a starting point for the view that Japan wasdoing something right (and Britain was failing to do something) in the late nineteenthcentury. Dyer’s own comments on his experiences can be picked up in two ways—on the one hand, as historical support for the later debate about ‘the late development


effect’ in Japan, and on the other hand, as a comment about the ‘cultural malaise’which some argue exacerbated Britain’s relative economic decline from the latenineteenth century. My own argument is that there is a ‘grain of truth’ in theargument—Japan did begin to establish higher-level institutions for the formaleducation of engineers in the late nineteenth century while Britain relied muchmore on informal methods for longer for a larger proportion of its elite engineers.However, I shall argue further that seeing contemporary arrangements in Japan(the relatively large number of engineers produced, the relatively high share of themore able students who study engineering and the propensity of university engineersto reach senior levels in the manufacturing industry) compared with Britain aslargely the outcome of decisions of great-great-grandfathers is simplistic andneglects much that is historically contentious in the experiences of both countries.

One of the key charges laid against British institutions is that they failed toadapt to the needs of modern industrialism—for example, failing to produce thenumbers of engineers demanded by employers. International rankings of thenumbers of engineers produced have been one of the more widely quoted summarystatistics of international comparison. The rankings were the labour-force corollaryof the widespread interest in rankings of economic growth. The ‘failure’ to matchJapan’s alleged numerical superiority became one of the sticks to beat governmentin Britain and the US. It seemed a self-evident symbol of government failure to geta grip on the educational system and use it to support industry and promote economicgrowth. However, Chapter 2 shows that many influential Anglo-Japanesecomparisons were wildly inaccurate. Part of the process of refinement in thecomparisons, and making sure that like is compared with like, lies in getting abetter understanding of terms like ‘engineer’, ‘graduate’ and ‘university’. Thereforethis chapter will involve going behind the numbers to look at the structure of thetwo educational systems and how they operate. The relative standing of engineershas often been assumed to be high in Japan in contrast to the allegedly lowlyposition of engineers in Britain. However, closer examination of the availableevidence suggests that these comparisons have been wildly overdrawn too.

Even if Japan does produce two-and-a-half times as many engineers as the UK(per head of population), what does Japan do with them? This means moving fromthe education system to employment. To many observers it seemed intuitivelyobvious that with the lifetime employment system Japanese companies would bemuch more generous investors in the training of their employees than foreigncounterparts. However, attempts to document training costs have suggested thatJapanese companies spend less on training. Chapter 3 argues that the level of trainingeffort cannot properly be gauged from financial measures or training budgets alonesince the context of lifetime employment makes a good deal of difference to thenature of training itself.

Much of Japan’s economic success has been widely attributed to a pronouncedcapacity for taking in ideas or designs, improving them and adapting them to localpurposes or even re-exporting them. Time and again, examples are produced ofsuch phenomena in popular accounts of Japan’s success. Echoes of this theme of‘borrowing’ and ‘adaptation’ can be seen in more scholarly accounts, whether it is

Introduction 7

of Henry Dyer and the Engineering College in the late nineteenth century orphenomena as varied as the writing system introduced from China in the sixthcentury or cameras from Germany in the twentieth century. However, Japan’s arrivalat the leading edge of many technologies has prompted concern about the need todesign new institutional patterns which promote more original design and newproducts in Japan. This theme has been taken up in reform debates at the nationaland company level. Chapter 4 takes up both these levels of R&D organisation.Recent comparative research has emphasised the importance of setting companiesin their national pattern of institutional development through debates about thesignificance of ‘national system of innovation’. While there has been considerableagreement about the main elements of the ‘Japanese national system of innovation’,there has been controversy about their relative importance historically. There issome agreement that the role of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry(MITI) was critical down to the 1970s, particularly in relation to importedtechnology from the West, but that it has been undergoing change to a less directiverole vis-à-vis companies. If the onus of innovation is to rest with companies, howwill companies reshape the role of engineers in innovation? Much of the discussionhas focused on MITI and less attention has been given to companies. Survey dataon R&D careers reveals the challenges to many taken-for-granted assumptions inhuman resource management involved in the changing role of company R&D.

There is no doubt that Japanese companies have been investing more in thelonger-term research component of R&D. Chapter 5 takes the discussion ofchanging human resource management further with an examination of skillformation. Much of the strength of Japanese engineering education is alleged tostem from the lifetime employment system and the patient building of skills. But isthis system appropriate for producing R&D staff? Does the system need furtherdevelopment or change—for example, mid-career recruitment for R&D staff? Howdo R&D organisations in more external-market oriented systems promote theeducation and training of R&D staff?

Much of the discussion of Japanese R&D deals with companies either as unitsof analysis or as national aggregates. There is little which tells us about the contentof R&D—what scientists and engineers actually do. Still less is there any discussionof the aspirations and experiences of engineers and scientists themselves, or whatproduces content or discontent. Chapter 6 takes discussion to the heart ofprofessionalism and professional organisation with a close look at the potential forconflict between professional aspirations on work goals, rewards and careers andthe potential for collective organisation to ameliorate the lives of R&D workers.

While the picture emerging from research agendas on national systems ofinnovation sets companies firmly in their national context, the activities ofcompanies in foreign direct investment and the debates about ‘globalisation’ directattention to questions about the ability of engineers to engineer transplants. Chapter7 asks whether Japanese engineers are limited to simply producing screwdriverplants in overseas locations. Some critics argue that, first, Japanese engineers cannotintroduce the important features of Japanese technology and Japanese workorganisation elsewhere because these elements are too dependent on Japanese


culture and social organisation, and, second, that Japanese companies will havelittle interest in bringing high value-added work, involving R&D and high skillwork, leaving only low value-added, low skill, lowly paid types of employmentfor the transplants. While it has not been too difficult to establish assembly plantsusing a good deal of semi-skilled labour, developing the full factory with asophisticated technological capability, such as R&D or design and development,is a good deal more difficult. This chapter will examine the extent to which Japanesecompanies in the UK are employing UK engineers and developing the workingrelations between Japanese and British engineers. Already there are over 200Japanese companies with manufacturing facilities in the UK and there are over100 Japanese companies with some R&D facilities.

A major motive for comparative research is to know ourselves better, and oftento indulge in some self-improvement. Thus constructing a particular image of aforeign land in order to promote some favoured cause at home is one of the pitfallsof international comparison. Chapter 8 summarises what we have learned aboutengineers through comparative study and the interpretative frameworks in whichthey have been studied.

1 Historical legacies forengineers

‘Britain created its first modern engineering college in Japan.’

(Henry Dyer, cited in Oshima 1983:20).

Introduction

At the beginning of the 1990s, summary comparisons of Japanese and Britisheconomic statistics played up the sharp contrasts in the economic fortunes ofthe two countries since the 1950s. No matter how one looked at the growth ofthe Japanese economy—whether at the whole economy, the manufacturingsector, the share of manufactures in world trade, the size of banks, or the strengthof the yen as an international currency—Japan had made remarkable progresssince the 1950s. The figures could still stimulate the admiration of Britishobservers. Despite the more bullish claims about the revival of the economyunder the Thatcher governments, there was still a strong preoccupation withlong-term economic decline in Britain. Comparisons with Japan over a hundredyears of industrialisation provoked even sharper contrasts. So where did theBritish start to go wrong and where did the Japan start to get it right? It wasunderstandable that questions about economic development were put in theseterms, even if they are very contentious. The sense of gloom about Britain’seconomic position was often overdrawn (Brown 1998:3). Moreover, the morerecent headlines on Japan and protracted recession through much of the 1990ssuggest that economic fortunes (or perceptions of them) can change quitequickly in fickle fashion. Yet, despite the many problems in selecting appropriateeconomic indicators, the crude question provides a convenient starting pointfor unravelling the picture over the course of the twentieth century.

This chapter explores one popular line of answers to the question, namelythat the source of Japanese success and British failure lay in the capacity todesign and establish viable social institutions which could promote economicdevelopment. The processes of institutionalisation, or institution-building, havelong attracted social scientists. Although many different institutional areas mightbe cited, this chapter examines those institutions concerned with the education,training and employment of engineers. There is a strong interest in examining


the conditions for the institutionalisation of the science-technology system,that is, processes of innovation in social institutions which not only enhancedthe scale and scope of the new science-based technologies, but rapidly diffusedtheir application more effectively through the economy. Freeman has pickedout the establishment of the Technische Hochschule in Germany for theeducation and training of higher-level engineers as one of the two mostimportant institutional innovations paving the way for the modern network ofscientific and technological institutions, alongside the development of the in-house company R&D laboratory in the US (Freeman 1992:170). The commentat the head of the chapter, attributed to Henry Dyer, suggests that Japan beganto set out on a virtuous spiral of economic growth in the late nineteenth centurywith the creation of a modern engineering college, while Britain still was caughtin the vicious spiral and failed to develop new institutions.

Two broad lines of answer to the question of why institutional developmentswere promoted or inhibited have lain with the ‘late development effect’ and‘cultural constraint’. The ‘late development effect’ was coined by Dore (1973)in the context of explaining differences in the institutional structure ofemployment relations in Britain and Japan, and he suggested that thesedifferences rested on the timing of industrialisation. The ‘late developer’, Japan,established new institutions appropriate for industrialisation on two grounds:‘modernity factors’ and ‘underdevelopment factors’ (Dore 1990:447).‘Modernity factors’ implied that Japan could select the latest models forinstitutional development from the tried and tested models observable in thecurrent advanced nations, while the ‘underdevelopment factors’ suggested thatfactors in the social structure would mean that Japan had little option toundertake institution-building in the same manner achieved in the pioneer nationbecause it lacked appropriate elements in its own social structure. Applied tothe issue of an advanced engineering college and Dyer, the argument would bethat Japan could look across to Europe and select an appropriate model fortraining high-level engineers (the ‘modernity factor’) and that it was not freeto use traditional methods of apprenticeship-training for craftsmen becausethe teachers would not be able to cope with imported technology from theadvanced nations (the ‘underdevelopment factors’). Therefore Japan was ableand obliged to deploy the latest techniques of social organisation for theeducation and training of engineers. The other side of the coin is that Britainhad too much invested in existing institutions to set about widespread reform—in essence, the ‘liability of being first’. While this line of explanation emphasisesthe timing of industrialisation, another line of explanation has emphasisedcultural factors, particularly the mix of social attitudes and socially approvedconventions on conduct from the pre-industrial era which inhibited Britain’swholehearted acceptance of industrialisation.

In the following sections of this chapter, I will approach the central issue ofthe significance of institutional innovation in Japan and the more modestadaptation in Britain by outlining some of the questions which emerge on closerexamination of the contribution of Henry Dyer and his colleagues to institution-

Historical legacies for engineers 11

building in Japan. Then I will compare developments in the respective patternsof engineering education and training in Japan and Britain in three time periods—the period up to 1914; the inter-war period; and the period from 1946 to thepresent. While any attempt to chop time into bite-size portions runs the risk ofarbitrary decisions, particularly when covering two countries, these periodscover, first, the period of British economic leadership up to the watershed ofthe First World War and the take-off into industrialisation in Japan; second, theinter-war period of depression, recovery and structural change in Britain andthe period of Japan’s initial gains from the dislocation of world trade duringthe 1914–18 war, followed by Japan’s experience of economic fragility anddepression with recovery under the stimulus of militarisation; and, third, theperiod of mixed fortunes from the end of the Second World War, as bothcountries enjoyed growing prosperity in absolute terms, albeit at very differentrates of growth and with marked changes in respective shares in world trade.So much gloom and despond has covered writing on Britain’s economicperformance that ‘relative economic decline’ has often been contracted simplyto ‘decline’ and sight lost of the growth enjoyed in absolute terms over thepostwar period (Edgerton 1996).

Debates on Henry Dyer

The story of Henry Dyer’s encounter with Japan has become a popular startingpoint for British and Japanese writers on the historical development of Japan’sengineering workforce (Lorriman and Kenjo 1994:1). It is certainly aninteresting tale in its own right. It has the smack of adventure as the story of ayoung engineer sought by Japanese emissaries shortly after the Meiji restorationin 1868, and subsequently appointed to establish an engineering college in1873. Dyer’s own forthright expression and writings give colour to the tale.His account of his experiences, titled Dai Nippon (Great Japan), a play on theidea of the ‘Great Britain of the East’, has a prophetic ring (Dyer 1904). Hiscomment quoted at the beginning of the chapter, has an appealing irony aboutan apparent case of the British doing for others in the late nineteenth centurywhat they failed to do for themselves. However there is a broader reason, beyondthe story’s intrinsic merits, for taking a close interest in the establishment of anew kind of engineering college in nineteenth-century Japan.

Although starting out from the Dyer story, I want to emphasise the lengthyand uneven processes of institution building in Japan and to caution againstthe oversimplifications which can come from encapsulating over a century ofcomparative economic development in one brief episode and embellishing itwith layers of moral certitude about where Japan started to build the institutionalframework for subsequent economic success and where Britain failed to perceiveor anticipate the needs of modern industrialism.

Dyer’s story has been used in some of the big debates on the respectiveeconomic histories of Japan and Britain. On the one hand, there are the debatesabout the explanation for Japan’s ‘economic miracle’, that remarkable economic


rise from the ashes of defeat in 1945. Dyer’s comment has its attractions bothto those who argue that the roots of post-war success lie in the pre-war periodsand to those who emphasise the importance of the ‘late development effect’,where it has been argued that a country setting out late on the path toindustrialisation can select judiciously from the experience of the predecessorsto shorten the process of trial-and-error learning and to avoid some of theirmistakes. In other words, the ‘late developer’ can start industrialisation with‘state of the art’ technology and might even leapfrog ‘the pioneer’, whethertechnology is used in its narrow sense (the machinery or ‘hardware’), or in thebroader sense (including the ‘software’ of social institutions and techniques oforganisation). The establishment of the College of Engineering is oftenportrayed as an illustration of the learning process in one of its critical phases.

By the same token, Dyer’s story has been cited to argue that Britain’s relativeeconomic decline began long ago with a trail of missed opportunities in thelate nineteenth century. In a sense, this is to argue the reverse side of the Japanesecoin, that Britain suffered the ‘liability of being first’ where Japan had theadvantage of being a ‘late developer’. In essence, it has been argued that Britainwas either unable or unwilling to reform social institutions formed in earliertimes, although there has been argument over whether the constraints shouldbe interpreted either as aspects of a ‘cultural malaise’ or as the product ofinstitutional rigidities. From either perspective, Britain’s economic difficultiesin the post-war period can be traced to the governments of Victorian Britainand their alleged failures to oversee the adaptation of British institutions tocope with the requirements of the emerging ‘second industrial revolution’ andto build the institutional framework for continuing economic success. There isa long history of debate about the role of ‘culture’, ‘the state’ and ‘the Victorianbusinessman’ in explanations of the ‘relative decline of the British economy’,whether that decline was more precipitous than it need have been, and whetherthe alleged British failure to develop a technical and vocational education systemto meet modern industrial needs was a major factor (Child et al 1983;McCormick 1985; Child et al 1986; McCormick 1986b).

Britain has been alleged to suffer from a number of constraining culturalinfluences. Hierarchical conceptions were held to have buttressed retained elitistelements in higher education, for example, by setting limits to the extension ofeducational opportunity and to the development of non-traditional elements inthe curriculum (Banks 1968:38). Similarly, it was held that the remnants of anaristocratic tradition of liberal education impeded but could not block theresponse of higher education to industrialisation (Clark 1962:57). Renewedinterest in cultural impediments to industry, technological education andeconomic growth was boosted with the publication of Wiener’s highly readableargument that literary intellectuals captured England’s educational system tofoster an anti-industrial culture in the formative stages of a national educationalsystem (Wiener 1981). Although Wiener’s discussion of engineers is limited,the general tenor of his argument was supported by Barnett’s critique of ananti-industrial culture thesis (Barnett 1977; Barnett 1986). However, more recent


writing from a variety of historical perspectives from business history to culturalhistory have severely damaged the Wiener/Barnett thesis as facile ‘in itsmonocausal simplicity’ (Robbins 1990:21).

While the popular rendering of Dyer’s role in Tokyo provides a neat prologueto some big themes, there are two immediate questions prompted by Dyer’scomment about the Tokyo College of Engineering: first, what was meant by a‘modern college of engineering’, and second, to what extent was it a ‘Britishcreation’. Here we run into contentious matters. Some see Dyer taking a Britishinterpretation of the German Technische Hochshule into Japan, whereas othersargue that there is no evidence for such a claim. Although important, someargue that the focus on Dyer and his British colleagues is to miss the eclecticnature of Japan’s borrowing and the shrewd learning by the Japanese hosts.Moreover, putting the stress on the Meiji period can result in a distorted readingof the historical legacies for today’s engineers, one in which much of thesubsequent history is air-brushed out of the picture. The post-war occupationreforms were important in giving greater scope for engineers to influence thedevelopment of the mass-production industries which have been at the forefrontof Japan’s industrial success. In other words, I shall argue that the seeds of theCollege of Engineering legacies only fully ripened with the post-war reformswhen Japanese engineers entered the shop-floor areas of the mass-productionindustries in a changed relationship with blue-collar labour.

Developments before 1914

Although the bases of laissez faire policies were crumbling for Britain by the1860s and 1870s, business opinion and government policy adjusted slowly.The main tasks of government remained to set the scene for entrepreneurialtalent to flourish. Therefore the late Victorian state was ‘a regulatory state’,but one still committed to minimal regulation; it was little involved with thedirection of business enterprise or the production of engineering manpower.By contrast the central task of the Meiji modernisers was to transform a peasanteconomy into a modern economy with the technological capacity to stem anywestern political threat. Thus the Meiji state took the lead in industrialisationto introduce technologies from the West, to provide examples in model factories,and to direct the educational system to national purpose. Meiji Japan created aMinistry of Education in 1872 and Japanese enrolments in primary and tertiaryeducation matched those in Britain by 1910 (Dore 1976:35–6).

Although around the turn of the century some British engineers advocatedreform of British engineering education along continental European lines,Britain continued to put much reliance on informal methods to produce evenhigh-level engineers. This meant, for example, the assignment of a youngschool-leaver as an apprentice to a professional or senior engineer to receive amix of on-the-job experience and off-the-job instruction and become recognisedas a ‘professional engineer’ by becoming a member of a professional institution,often by taking examinations. Although there were changes in the nature of


instruction, with an increasing amount being provided through part-timeeducation, often evening classes, the part-time route of part-time evening orday-release education mixed with employment remained the main route toprofessional standing for British engineers through much of the early twentiethcentury. The full-time route through university or college followed byemployment and training did not draw level in providing new entrants until the1960s. Now well over 90 percent of new engineers come through the full-timeroute and the part-time route has been virtually closed. By contrast, Japan wasputting an emphasis on university-level education for the high-level engineersin the nineteenth century. The first ‘chair’ in electrical engineering in the worldcould be claimed to have been established in Tokyo, and the laboratory furnishedfor its first incumbent, the Englishman, Ayrton, attracted much internationaladmiration (Checkland 1989:85).

During the late nineteenth century British engineers were very much awareof the development of a more theoretical and scientific engineering and theeducational developments in Germany. In the early 1900s, a debate broke outwithin the professional institutions which threatened the status quo of a divisionof labour which left universities and colleges responsible for an education inengineering principles and industry responsible for training with both elementsoverseen by the professional institutions. Yet, the offers of the ‘educationists’to provide a complete professional education within the universities, wereoutvoted by the ‘practitioners’, who insisted on the retention of pupilage andapprenticeship as the means of providing practical training—and maintaininga source of income for themselves (Watson 1976). Thus universities settledinto a pattern where the curriculum was organised around a relatively specialisedthree-year degree course based in departments organised around a disciplinesuch as civil, electrical or mechanical engineering. Once this settlement hadbeen established Divall notes that there was relatively little change in thestructure of the curriculum at either Manchester University or Technical Collegebetween 1905–39 (Divall 1987).

Dyer’s position, as the first Principal of the College of Engineering (KobuDaigakko), owed much to the priority which the Meiji government put upontechnology in the drive for modernisation and acquiring the technological meansto avoid Western colonisation (Dyer 1904).1 Aged just 25 and paid a salary 20percent higher than that of a contemporary Japanese cabinet minister, Dyerhas been seen as doing for Tokyo what he could not do for Glasgow (Tsuru1983). With import levies limited to no more than 5 percent ad valorem underthe Unequal Treaties imposed on Japan by the Western powers and a governmentfearful of the entanglements of foreign loans, the surplus for modernisationwas essentially squeezed from peasant agriculture. Despite these meagreresources and the financial pressures generated by coping with internalrebellions and threats from external Russian incursion into the northern islandof Hokkaido, the Meiji government initially spent almost 40 percent of its totalbudget on salary payments to foreign experts in 1868–72, dropping to 2.42percent in 1873–77, and 1.2 percent in 1878–82 (Inoue 1984). Engineers formed


the largest group of foreign experts, and among them British engineers wereprominent with responsibilities to give ‘on-the-job’ training to Japanesecraftsmen assigned to them. The costs of the ‘hired foreigners’ prompted otherprogrammes including sending students abroad and determined efforts to growhome talent to replace foreign experts with Japanese engineers.

‘Modern’ in Dyer’s comment is open to variety of interpretations. In theultimate irony, Japan was importing the Technische Hochschule via Scotland—that is, the ‘continental European’ style of engineering college was beingdeveloped in late nineteenth-century Japan, in order to introduce formal methodsof teaching and research in engineering higher education and to provide thebulk of the new supply of high-level engineers. However, Morikawa, author ofone of the central histories of engineers in Japan, protests that there is noevidence to support tracing Dyer’s ideas to either Glasgow or Zurich (Morikawa1991:146). The more common view is that Dyer was attempting a hybridinstitution, ‘combining the best in British and continental systems’ (Fox 1969:464). For this view there is a strong body of circumstantial evidence. Dyer putstress on the blend of ideas on which he drew, declaring that he made a

special study of all the chief methods of scientific and engineering studyin the different countries of world and of the organisation of some of themost important institutions, with the intention of devoting myself to theadvancement of engineering education, so that I had fairly definite ideasboth as to what was desirable and what was feasible.

(Dyer 1904:2)

In a careful commentary on the influences on Dyer, including hisapprenticeship prior to undergraduate study at Glasgow University, Brock notesthat Dyer had access to the syllabus of Zurich Polytechnic from either JohnScott Russell, the engineer and naval architect, or from the 1870 Report of theInstitute of Civil Engineers (Brock 1981:232). Using Japanese sources, thearchives of the College of Engineering, Nakayama traced an even more directlink between Dyer, Zurich and Tokyo (Nakayama 1965:345).2 On balance, thereseem reasonable grounds for thinking that Dyer was trying to adapt a blend ofBritish emphasis on practical training and the emerging continental Europeanemphasis on theoretical understanding in the new college. However, it wouldbe unwise to neglect either the influence of his Japanese hosts or the Japanesecontext.

Much attention has focused on the College six-year curriculum (based ontwo years in academic classes, two years of half-time study and half-timepractical and two years at a work-site) and the comment of Dyer that in thenewly industrialising Japan the Japanese engineer would find himself alone inthe workplace and need to be self-sufficient. However, Morikawa gives creditfor the curriculum initiative to Yamao, noting both Yamao’s own experienceand the Ministry of Public Works’ (Kobusho) 1871 plans for a college whichincluded practical training at the worksite, but acknowledging that the eventual


programme was agreed with Dyer and his British colleagues (Morikawa 1991:140). Yamao Yozo, who was appointed Vice-Minister of Public Works in 1872and host on Dyer’s arrival as Principal at the Ministry’s new college in 1873,had been one of the five Choshu samurai officials who had been chosen tovisit England in 1863, still in the Edo era and before all the drive forindustrialisation launched with the Meiji Restoration. This select band includedIto Hirobumi (later Prime Minister in Meiji), Inoue Kaoru (later FinanceMinister), Inoue Masaru (later Railway Minister), and Ito Kinsuki (later Directorof the Mint) (Morikawa 1991). During his visit, Yamao worked as an apprenticein the Napier shipyard and studied in the evenings at Anderson College inGlasgow. Thus Morikawa credits Yamao with much of the responsibility forrecognising the importance of engineering practice in the curriculum and ashared outlook with Dyer. Dyer acknowledged the importance of Yamao insecuring the development of the College, noting that he had been aware of himat Anderson’s College in Glasgow, although they had not met when they wereboth students there (Dyer 1904:2–3). Wherever we put the emphasis for thecurriculum initiative, the link with the Ministry of Public Works meant thatthere was little difficulty in securing training placements in the government-sponsored industries.

The early students at the College of Engineering came from the formersamurai class, often sons of military officers or government officials, who hadreceived the classical education for the samurai class. This background providedsome tensions as they met their Western tutors in English-language teachingon engineering. However, their tutors were well-pleased with the diligenceand eagerness for learning evident among students (Checkland 1989:86–90).Just as Yamao had studied overseas, other Japanese engineers studied in Europeand the US and became important in the eventual replacement of the expensiveexpatriate engineering teachers. Graduates of the College of Engineeringbecame important in Japan’s industrialisation. For example, Hunter traces thecareer of one example, Kikuchi Kyozo, who used a wealthy family backgroundto finance his study at the College and then enter the textile industry (Hunter1991:140–5).

In early Meiji Japan there were two strands to the training of high-levelengineers through formal education. One route lay through Dyer’s College ofEngineering, administered under the Ministry of Public Works, and the otherlay through the Faculty of Science of the University of Tokyo, which had beenunder the control of the Ministry of Education since 1877. Eventually thesetwo institutions became respectively the Faculties of Technology and of Sciencewhen the new Imperial University of Tokyo was created in 1886 out of theamalgamation of several institutions, and the responsibilities of the Ministryof Public Works were shared between several ministries. The changeoverbrought curriculum changes as the new Imperial University shortened theengineering course from the College’s six years to three years (with three yearsnow assigned to the high-school stage and three years to university-level studies)and the two years of practical training were shortened. This reduction of the


practical element reflected some feeling that students had been overemphasisingpractical matters and a desire to bolster their mathematics skills to matchstudents in the Science Faculty. Behind these educational changes lay somedeeper influences which reflected the different factions making up the Meijileadership and the wider international links and sympathies of those factions.While the Ministry of Public Works and the Engineering College reflected thesympathies and links of the Choshu faction of the Meiji government with Britain,other factions had different orientations and connections. The Science Facultyin Tokyo University had reflected other links with a larger proportion of Germanteachers and a greater emphasis on theory in teaching. In the new ImperialUniversity, these influences were brought together in a new synthesis.

For a decade, Tokyo had a monopoly of the supply of engineering graduates(indeed of all graduates) until the second Imperial University was created inKyoto (in 1896), stimulated in part by the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95. By1900 over 1,000 engineers had graduated from the Tokyo Imperial University,with a similar number from the other higher technological institutions(UNESCO 1971). Further Imperial Universities were established—Tohoku (inSendai in 1907), Kyushu (in Fukuoka in 1910), and Hokkaido (in Sapporo in1910). Meanwhile private universities and schools had been started byintellectuals and figures associated with political opposition: for example, Keioand Waseda Universities. Although the Government would not employ privateuniversity graduates initially, employment opportunities grew with the gatheringpace of industrialisation after the mid-1880s. Of the 20 higher educationinstitutions in 1914 (universities, higher technical and higher commercialschools), 11 were regular suppliers to industry and these included the fourprominent institutions—the Imperial University (later Tokyo University), KeioUniversity, Tokyo Higher Commercial School (later Hitotsubashi University),and Tokyo Technical School (later Tokyo Institute of Technology) (Yonekawa1984:194). The shift in initiative to private industry in industrialisation and thesignificance of industrial employment in stimulating engineering educationcan be seen in the changing proportion of technology graduates in industrialemployment. In 1883 only 3.5 percent of the technology graduates of theforerunner of the Tokyo Imperial University entered employment in privateindustry compared with 42.9 percent by 1900 (UNESCO 1971:128).

Ingenious inventors were an important source of engineering skill inindustrialising Japan (Takeuchi 1985). Odagiri and Goto point to the importanceof adaptations in indigenous technology and the contributions of the mastercraftsmen skilled in mechanisms (karakuri), who could turn their hands tosteam engines, electrical equipment and looms and other aspects of Westerntechnology (Odagiri and Goto 1996:14–15). Although Japan did not have manyscientists, an understanding of scientific developments in the West had beenpossible even in the relatively closed world of the late eighteenth-century Edoperiod via China, and then through translations from Dutch learning (Rangaku),particularly as Rangaku spread beyond Nagasaki to provide an importantnationwide cultural resource and precondition for development which marked


Japan out from other late developer societies. For Lehmann, the existence of anetwork of Rangaku-sha (students of Dutch learning) across Japan was animportant factor in the rapid speed with which Japan could assimilate scienceand technology from the advanced countries of the West (Lehmann 1982:128).

For the take-off into sustainable economic development it was important tobuild on the proto-industrialism of karakuri and the scientific intellectuals withthe graduates from more formal courses from the Kobu Daigakko (and laterthe Imperial University)—and the graduates needed employment opportunities.While many of the early jobs were found in government posts, the privatesector opportunities began to emerge, particularly after the successful waragainst China in 1895. One of the more significant promotional efforts forprivate-sector development was that of the joint-stock company system(Nakagawa 1977). In a span of 40 years after its introduction the joint-stockcompany system had penetrated all the main sectors of the Japanese economyat a much faster rate than that achieved in England (Nakagawa 1977:21). Onefactor in this rapid diffusion was the close association between the introductionof the newest Western industrial technology with the newest social technologyof business organisation. Nakagawa cites a further factor in the preferences ofthe educated sons of ex-samurai for employment in joint-stock enterprises ratherthan traditional family businesses (Nakagawa 1977:22). At this stage, the roleof engineers was still ill-defined, and as Hunter noted in her essay on KikuchiKyozo (1859–1942), they tended to be ‘hired as independent professionalsrather than “company men”’ (Hunter 1991:146). The entry of the graduateengineers into management was not smooth, and they sometimes faced hostilityfrom owners because they lacked capital and from workers because they wererelatively highly paid (Hunter 1991:142–3). Large joint-stock enterprisesbecame prominent in the growth of the cotton industry in the late 1890s, butthese companies remained single-product and single-function enterprises forthey were dependent on the general trading companies (sogo shosa) for theirmarketing functions. While the trading companies focused on the creation of aworld-wide efficient marketing system and the development of links with high-quality supplier companies, the industrial companies concentrated onproduction. Management in the industrial companies became the managementof the (imported) technology rather than the management of marketing orfinance (Iwata 1977; Yonekawa 1984). The Osaka Boseki-sho Kabushi Kaisha(Osaka Cotton Textile Company Limited) was one of the leading joint-stockcompanies and provided a model for the ascent of an engineer to becomePresident in 1897. Yamanobe Takeo had entered London University to studyeconomics and insurance. However, when the eminent businessman, ShibusawaEiichi, invited him to join his cotton textile project, Yamanobe moved first toKing’s College to study mechanical engineering and then to a Lancashire cottonmill as an apprentice in 1878 (Yasumura 1993: 91). Within the Osaka company,Yamanobe gradually assumed managerial control because the senior directorswere businessmen untutored in plant operations. By 1897, Yamanobe hadbecome a stock holder. After a boardroom battle over dividend policy, in which


he championed higher plant investment at the expense of dividends, Yamanobebecame President (Yasumuro 1993:94).

In surveying the development of higher technical professions in Japan,Levine and Kawada stressed two features: firstly, that up to the end of thenineteenth century the numbers of engineers and scientists per 10,000population were quite small by comparison with more advanced nations, butsecondly, that the proportion of the educational elite trained in science andengineering was very high—for example over 50 percent of Japanese graduatesgraduated in science and engineering in the late nineteenth century (Levineand Kawada 1980). However, care is needed in thinking about engineeringeducation as a route to elite positions. By taking matched pairs of the careersof engineers and business managers across different generations in MitsubishiZaibatsu, Morikawa demonstrated that the economics or law graduates whoentered business careers rose faster and further in salary than their counterpartsin engineering (Morikawa 1975:56). Table 1.1 shows that among the 1886entrants, Mimura (a business graduate in the banking division) started aheadof Nakamura (an engineer in the mining division) and was well ahead by 1909.Although the differentials were not so marked, similar patterns emerged in thelater entry cohorts (1892, 1894 and 1905). Thus, although engineers wereimportant and accorded prestige, those commentators who painted pictures ofengineers enjoying accelerated career paths to the top, ahead of law or economicgraduates, run ahead of the available evidence.

In Japan, engineers could be defined in terms of either the education whichthey received or the work that they performed. In Britain, this picture has beenfurther complicated by a third definition in terms of their membership of oneof the professional engineering associations. British engineering educationqualifications have been indicators only of a readiness to practice; recognitionof professional competence has been given through membership of aprofessional institution. In the absence of state sponsorship for engineeringqualifications, the British professional institutions in engineering have servedas both ‘study associations’ and ‘qualifying bodies’ (Millerson 1964). A Britisheducation ministry was not created until 1899 and its remit did not includeuniversities, since the ad hoc grants in aid of British universities had alreadystarted to be routed through the Treasury and the Treasury Grants Committee.Although for a brief period the buffer body reported to the Board of Education,when government support for universities was regularised in 1918 the UniversityGrants Committee reported to the Treasury rather than the Board of Education.Membership of a professional institution could be gained either through an‘academic route’ (typically a university degree plus approved training inemployment plus a period of responsible professional practice) or through a‘practical route’ (combining part-time education, employment and professionalinstitution examinations). These possibilities have resulted in a much moreheterogeneous variety among British engineers compared to their counterpartsin other countries. The history of British engineering education has been thestory of the extension of full-time degree-level education in universities and


technical colleges from its very narrow and exclusive nineteenth-century base:for example, in 1945 only 35 percent of engineers came through the academicroute, compared to 50 percent in the mid-1960s and over 90 percent in the1980s. Presently between a half and two thirds of engineering graduates jointheir relevant professional institution, and professional institutions are steadilybecoming all-graduate organisations through their new members, yet there havebeen long-standing arguments about the efficacy of the relations between

Table 1.1 A. comparison of the careers and salaries of engineering and business graduatesin Mitsubishi Zaibatsu (1886–1916) (yen)

1 Kimura was an economics graduate from the Law Department of the Tokyo Imperial Universityand employed in the General Affairs department of the Mining Division.

Source: Morikawa 1975:56


universities and colleges, professional institutions and employers in securinghigh levels of competence among British engineers. Buchanan has complainedthat the critics have underestimated the value of the ‘practical route’ and havebeen too much impressed by contintental European developments, althoughhe conceded that the proliferation of the institutions and their disputes inhibitedthe presentation of a coherent voice for engineers (Buchanan 1985a).

By 1910 Japan was hardly ‘modern’ or ‘industrial’: agricultural labourconstituted almost 60 percent of the labour force, agricultural output made up40 percent and manufacturing less than 10 percent of net national product(Rosovsky 1972:230). Male factory workers did not outnumber female factoryworkers until the 1920s, reflecting the character of rural industrialisation insmall workshops (Allen 1981:252). Yet Japan was attempting to adapt traditionalsocial hierarchies to modern purpose. The early managers tended to be lowersamurai who had lost their stipends but gained a little technological knowledge(Sumiya 1974:30). Often they made mistakes and the heavily bureaucraticstructure of the government ‘model factories’ was a hindrance. Yet after thefinancial crises of 1881 and the sale of the model factories the way was clear inthe 1880s and 1890s for the recruitment of graduates in engineering, commerceand social studies for management posts. Graduates from the Kobu Daigakkowere prominent among the new engineering entrepreneurs and managers inthe nascent industrialism (Odagiri and Goto 1996: 260).

In 1914, Britain remained one of the three largest industrial andmanufacturing nations in the world. It is true that the 1914–18 war severelydisrupted Britain’s trade and the staple industries but the products of Britain’sinformal system of producing engineers were still capable of many notableachievements and their technology bore the brunt of a gruelling war. Thecliometricians exonerated Britain’s late Victorian entrepreneurs for succumbingto the problems presented by deteriorating factor costs compared to rivals andto the tariff barriers erected by rivals, and for moving from a ‘number one’ to‘number three’ economy, on the grounds that responding to given conditions isall that may be legitimately asked of entrepreneurs (McCloskey & Sandberg1971; Temin 1966). On the grounds that a legitimate expectation ofentrepreneurs is that they should ‘confront institutional constraintsinnovatively’, however, Elbaum and Lazonick find fault with the nineteenth-century British businessman (Elbaum & Lazonick 1986). In particular, theyargue that British businessmen became trapped in a matrix of ‘rigid institutionalstructures that obstructed individualistic as well as collective efforts atrenovation in industrial relations, enterprise and market organisation, education,finance, international trade, and state-enterprise relations’ (Elbaum & Lazonick1986:2). The solution which the British businessmen failed to see and securewas to replace the atomistic, competitive organisation of British industry witha Chandlerian allocative mechanism based on a corporate, concentratedmanagerial structure. Whether or not a more rapid development of managerialhierarchies could have staved off relative economic decline, there are examplesof vicious circles hampering developments in the new more science-based


industries of the second industrial revolution. Britain had been a leading centrein the emerging electrical industry, but began to lag in technological innovation.Despite initial delays caused by legal tangles and the relatively strongcompetitive position of the gas industry vis-à-vis electricity compared to othercountries, Britain was technologically well placed in the 1880s. Yet companiesrelied on the market and consulting engineers rather than in-house engineersfor design. The manufacturing companies began to lose their competitive edgeduring the 1890s, and in the bitter internal squabbles within companies theengineers lost out to the businessmen (Sakamoto 1980). The effects did not gounnoticed in Japan.

In the 1870s, the Japanese government had recruited British engineers,craftsmen and machinery operators to superintend the first telegraph lines andearly telecommunications industry (Levine & Kawada 1980:268–71). By the1880s, the pattern was changing as an indigenous capability was beingestablished and Japanese teachers were replacing the expensive British teachers.Furthermore Japan was now sending Japanese abroad for training and had sentelectrical machinery engineers to Britain for training and attachment to Britishcompanies (Checkland 1989:134–47). By the 1890s, the pattern was changingagain for now they were being attached to the new progressive companies inthe electrical industries in the US and Germany instead of Britain, and thesecountries were replacing Britain as the primary sources of electrical goodsimported into Japan (Uchida 1980:158–60; Imazu 1980:135–7).

The inter-war years

By 1914, Japan had renegotiated the irksome ‘unequal treaties’, was becomingan imperial power, and had developed the distinctive characteristics of‘industrial dualism’ with some large modern establishments in a few industriesand a vast penumbra of small to tiny firms and traditional technology in others(Broadbridge 1966). The textile trades were the meeting point of the ‘traditionalpeasant economy and the new capitalistic economy’, for after the sale of ‘modelfactories’ most of the initiative came from private entrepreneurship in cotton,silk and other textiles (Allen 1981:80). In the heavy industries, governmentstimulus and support remained critical, for as Allen observed: ‘politicalnecessity rather than economic advantage supplied the impulse’ (Allen1981:82). Expansionist policies in financing military ambition, territorialacquisition and investment, and the industrial base were straining nationalfinances however. While Japan had seen economic progress since the 1870s,its financial position was still precarious. Development had brought importsand the trade balance was often in the red up to 1914. The outbreak of the1914–18 war in the West provided an unexpected bonus with a large boost indemand for Japanese munitions and the opportunities to penetrate foreignmarkets deprived of their usual suppliers. This respite was temporary for ascompetitors began to establish themselves in the 1920s the weaknesses becameapparent again. In this setting American economists advised that Japan should


abandon any ambition to be the ‘Britain of the East’ and concentrate on ‘villageindustry’ (Scott et al 1980: 61–8). Instead, the military ambition prevailed andJapan sought to extend its economic base through further imperial acquisition.

With direct and indirect support the zaibatsu extended their dominance ofthe major industrial enterprises. In the 1920s, they extended their recruitmentof graduates for managerial careers, built on intra-firm skill training anddeveloped those measures to encourage employee loyalty—long-termemployment, seniority wages and enterprise unionism—which have come tobe termed the ‘Japanese employment system’ in the post-war period (Okayama1983). Although the zaibatsu were based on family interests, were organisedaround the ‘ie’ (household principle), and fostered a paternalistic managementstyle, they were not run as directly controlled family businesses becauseexecutive activities were devolved to university graduates recruited forprofessional management. Morikawa, tracing the gradual acquisition ofdecision-making powers by salaried managers, pointed to variations acrosszaibatsu—for example, Mitsui with interests in copper recruited more engineersthan Mitsubishi (Morikawa 1989). Meanwhile the technological levels in cottontextiles and in the zaibatsu-controlled companies were changing from the 1920sto the 1930s such that Chokki can depict the passage of an era from that of the‘old engineer’ without formal technological education to that of the ‘newengineer’ graduated from the university (Chokki 1977:173–4).

On the education front, the first four decades of the twentieth century werelargely occupied by a filling out of the pattern laid down in the 1891 ImperialRescript on Education. Beneath the Imperial Universities were the privateuniversities and a variety of other institutions. The private universities evenenjoyed some official encouragement and reorganisation after the First WorldWar had stimulated the Japanese economy. In an educational pattern of sixyears’ elementary school, five years of middle school, three years of high school,and possibly three years of university (i.e. 6–5–3–3), there was a complexmulti-track system. After the six years of compulsory and co-educationalelementary schooling, the tracks became highly differentiated between boysand girls, and then further between the tracks for those leaving at the end ofmiddle school, those going further on vocational tracks and those entering theacademic tracks. In total, there were five recognised tracks for boys and threetracks for girls. The route to university for boys lay along an academic trackthrough middle and high school, but with university provision well below levelsof demand there was fierce competition, often termed ‘examination hell’ (shikenjigoku) (Passin 1965). For those who failed the academic route a variety ofcolleges (senmon gakko) or higher technical schools (koto senmon gakko) couldlead to qualification as a doctor, dentist, architect or engineer at a lowerprofessional level than the university.

In the next main phase in the development of the education system (1936–45), nationalism, militarism and wartime mobilisation gave a renewed vigourto the development of engineering education. Since the cohorts who enteredadvanced engineering education in this period were arriving at responsible


positions in the 1950s–60s, the years of the nationalist education system mustbe given some due recognition for creating the springboard of human resourcesfrom which Japan could launch the dramatic recovery of the post-war period.In both absolute numbers and relative proportions the contrasts betweenengineering education in 1931–35 and 1940–45 were dramatic. The educationalexpansion of the ‘Taisho era’ (a period of more experimenting in liberaldemocracy under Emperor Taisho and sometimes termed the ‘Taishodemocracy’) had been led mainly by law and liberal arts students, so that the30,000 science and engineering graduates over the period 1931–35 accountedfor only 15 percent of all graduates. By contrast, after mobilisation for ananticipated war with Russia in 1937 and the outbreak of real wars with Chinain 1937 and the US in 1941, the 100,000 science and engineering graduatesfrom 1940–45 accounted for 23 percent of all graduates in those years (Asoand Amano 1972: 53).

The extent to which the inter-war years represented another era of lostopportunity in Britain remains a matter of contention among business historians.Chandler suggests that the multi-divisional firm did not emerge in Britain untilthe 1950s (Chandler 1984). Hannah, on the other hand, suggests that many ofthe characteristics of that form of organisation for large-scale firms were alreadybecoming evident in the 1930s (Hannah 1980). Although Chandler cited a rangeof obstacles (including Britain’s educational system and its industrial geographyand history), he gave prominence to two factors—the lack of anti-trustlegislation and the continuing commitment to family-controlled business. Forexample, he noted that even ‘holding companies’, born out of mergers, tendedto be organised as federations of family firms (Chandler 1984:495–8). However,as Hannah observed, proof of family connection is not necessarily proof offamily dominance in direction and management (Hannah 1980:53). Pendingmore case studies the picture appears mixed and generalisation tentative.Although Payne saw evidence of British companies grappling with managerialinnovation and the problems of large-scale innovation in the growing numbersof ‘accountants, lawyers and technicians in the boardroom’, in commenting onentrepreneurial performance in the inter-war period he noted increasing lagsbehind the major international competitors in the adoption of new technologyand he identified a major restraint in ‘the paucity of technical expertise in theboardroom’ (Payne 1978:213, 217). International comparisons show how theemergence of the large-scale enterprises sent different signals to the educationalsystem in different countries. Where American large-scale enterprises wereevident in all sectors of the economy, the British large-scale companies tendedto be disproportionately in the consumer sector whereas the Japanese tendedto be in the production sector (Chandler 1984:479).

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Oxford and Cambridge had beenjoined by London University, a federal institution composed of London colleges,and several civic universities which had been colleges in the major provincialcities. Unlike the German universities these English universities had notprevented the entry of engineering as a course for university study in the


nineteenth century (Ashby 1958; Armytage 1955; Sanderson 1972). ThereforeEngland did not develop alternative institutions in the manner of the GermanTechnische Hochschulen, but university studies in engineering made slowprogress—for example the total enrolment in science and technology of 13,000in 1938–39 was only 7 percent higher than in 1920 (Poole & Andrews 1972:258). The annual output of 5,000 scientists and technologists was approximatelyevenly divided between scientists and technologists. Yet the engineers wereremarkably concentrated even in the 1940s. While 10 universities and twouniversity colleges provided degree courses in engineering, over 50 percent ofthe university graduates came from Cambridge University and the ImperialCollege of Science and Technology, a constituent college of London University.In other words, the majority of engineers who came through the ‘academicroute’ did so through highly prestigious segments of the university system.However, the bulk of the new supply of engineers continued to come throughthe ‘practical route’ rather the ‘academic route’.

The Technische Hochschule theme was sometimes taken up by championsof the technical colleges when they tried to promote their cause vis-à-visuniversities. The central differences between universities and technical collegeslay in the forms of government, sources of finance, and the title of finalqualifications. Universities were formally independent institutions with theirgovernance based on their Royal Charters or Act of Parliament, receiving theirincome from fees, endowments, and grants in aid from central government.Technical colleges were largely managed and financed by local authorities underregulations drafted by the central government’s Board of Education. Wherethe universities had powers to grant degrees, graduates on advanced engineeringcourses in technical colleges took national certificates or diplomas on syllabidevised by the colleges, the boards and the professional institutions. Thesebroad distinctions between the two routes to professional engineering wereblurred in practice however. Such areas of overlap fanned the aspirations oftechnical colleges for the greater autonomy, prestige, and powers of universitiesand have provided a dynamic to debates in educational policy for over 40 years(McCormick 1986a). For the technical college lobby a central failure of nationaltechnology strategy was the reluctance of central government to promotetechnical colleges to a parity of prestige with the universities, as the Germanstate did for Technische Hochschulen when they were given degree-grantingpowers at the end of the nineteenth century.

After 1945

In view of the more recent history of American trade friction with Japan, theearly post-war years provided some ironic twists. On the day that war endedwith Japan’s unconditional surrender, the United States announced the end ofthe ‘lend-lease’ arrangement with Britain. In preparation for business as usualin the aftermath of year, Britain and its Empire was regarded within the UnitedStates as the main commercial rival. However jubilant about the ultimate military


victory of the Allies, the British were nearer to economic exhaustion. Withinfive years, the intervention of the Western powers in the Korean peninsulaunder the United Nations flag meant that Britain was called upon to halt thetransition to a peacetime economy and re-arm, knocking the Labour governmentand its economic plans off course. While British hopes that the United Stateswould help fund some of the re-armament costs were dashed, the Japaneseeconomy was rescued from a parlous state by US military procurement for theKorean War, and Japan became the ultimate beneficiary of that conflict.

By 1945, the Japanese economy was in ruins. Now shorn of empire, it had afurther six million repatriate mouths to feed. The defeat was a profound shockto Japanese society. While Japanese industry could be proud of the technologicaljourney made in such a short time (for example, in its brief history the aircraftindustry had developed the Zero fighter as a formidable fighter aircraft), bythe end of the war, it was clear that there was a ‘technology gap’, and onewhich widened during the course of the war. The Americans and the Britishhad been able to make significant increases in the power of their aircraft,whereas the Japanese had not. Moreover, Japanese industry had not been ableto achieve consistency in quality and reliability compared to their opponents(Odagiri and Goto 1996). The arrival of the Allied occupation ushered in adetermined effort to reshape Japanese institutions into the American mould ofdemocracy involving reforms in the constitution and political institutions, landreform, business organisation, industrial relations, and education—providinga major stimulus and wherewithal for technology transfer. The negotiation ofreform was in some senses more complex and other senses more simple thanthat in occupied Germany. On the one hand, it was complex process since theJapanese administration was kept relatively intact and reforms were negotiatedwith and through it, whereas the administration had collapsed in Germany. Onthe other hand, reform was largely directed by the American SupremeCommander Allied Powers (SCAP), and not the political football of four alliesas in Germany. Relations between the occupying forces and the Japaneseadministration were much influenced by changing perceptions of developmentsin the ‘Cold War’. The outbreak of the Korean war with the boost of ‘specialprocurements’ coupled with rising exports to south east Asia from 1950 werevery important factors in boosting industrial production up to pre-war levels.However, the stimulus was not just in volume terms, since Japanese industryhad to improve standards to meet American military procurement requirements.

By 1952, independence had been granted and the Japanese administrationhad more freedom to shape its own economic and industrial policy. Instead ofcontinuing the logic of comparative advantage in ‘low quality textiles’ and‘gadgetry’ based on abundant supplies of cheap labour, the Ministry ofInternational Trade and Industry (MITI) determined that Japan needed capitaland technology intensive industries if it was to raise living standards for apopulation of 85 million people on a limited land space with few naturalresources (Scott et al 1980). In the 1950s, most of these industries—steel,automobiles, petrochemicals, industrial machinery, electronics—were under


protection as ‘infant industries’ but emerged as vigorous competitors for theirshare of growing world markets in the 1960s.

The growth of Japan’s domestic market after the Korean war boost meantthat advantage could be taken of massed production and increasedmechanisation. The astute adaptation of Western technology and productionmethods in Japanese industry developed apace under the watchful eye and‘administrative guidance’ of MITI (Johnson 1982). The enthusiasm in Japanfor American production engineers who appeared to be lost prophets in theirown country has become the stuff of legend (Schonberger 1982; Halberstam1986). The company groupings based around the reconstituted zaibatsuremained a significant element in the export efforts of Japanese companiesgiven the elaborate communication networks for co-ordinating intelligence,marketing and distribution in the trading companies. However with the increasedimportance of product-specific skills, services and facilities associated withhigh-technology industries and growing markets, the manufacturers ofautomobiles and electrical goods began to develop extensive marketingoperations and the more extensive managerial hierarchies of managerialcapitalism (Chandler 1984:502). In turn, the growth of these companies in the1960s stimulated the further expansion of engineering education in theuniversities and colleges in order to supply the managerial cadre of thecompanies.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the Japanese companies in steel, autos andelectrical goods reaped the benefits of mass production through policies oftechnology licensing, reverse engineering and continuous product and processengineering (Hull, Hage & Azumi 1984). The success of the innovation-basedstrategies rested on the ability of the companies to recruit employees with thegeneral knowledge and learning skills to cope with changing technologies andtasks, on their ability to combine them in systems of work organisation whichmaximised productivity gains and flexibility, and on their ability to developsystems of developing necessary knowledge and skills through the employees’working careers (Wersky 1987). Aoki has emphasised the importance ofhorizontal communication flows in the Japanese work organisation:

…the developing Japanese system is the one which relies more on semi-autonomous problem-solving capability (information processing capacity)of workers, thus making the intra-firm demarcation between control andoperating tasks rather ambiguous. In contrast, the prevalent Westernsystem seems to aim at the pursuit of economic efficiencies realisablethrough professional control and operational tasks.

(Aoki 1988:4) This system of work organisation rested on aspects of the ‘Japanese EmploymentSystem’ in the large corporations, including long-term employment for regularworkers, rotation and a commitment to systematic ‘learning by doing’ byemployees who have high standards of formal schooling. In addition it depended


on a high concentrations of engineers in the production areas with relativelylow social distance between the engineers and blue-collar operators (Okuda1983).

Where Meiji Japan had been remarkable for the creation of a smalltechnologically-literate educational elite, occupied Japan began the transitionfrom an elite to a mass higher-education system in which engineering educationretained a prominent part. By 1945 education had virtually ceased under thetwin impacts of the mobilisation of students and allied bombing. Thereconstructed system managed to combine the US occupation aims ofdemocratisation through widening access to education with a continuation ofthe fierce competition of a certification system.

The main aim of university reform was to reduce the sharp differentiationof the pre-war system and this was attempted by regrouping institutions intotwo types—the four-year universities and the two-year junior colleges from1949. Major distinctions remained through the 1980s however—for example80 percent of the students in 4 year universities were male while 90 percent ofthe students in two-year junior colleges are female. Although the ratio of femalestudents in higher education has reached parity with males across highereducation in the 1990s, males remain in the majority in the four-yearuniversities. Within the university system, there are national universities (whichinclude the former Imperial universities and the universities of the 47prefectures), the public universities (financed by municipal authorities), andthe private universities. Most of the growth in university and student numbersin the post-war period occurred in the private sector. The total number ofuniversities more than doubled from 199 in 1950 to 446 in 1980, but there wasonly a 33 percent increase in the number of national universities compared tothe 207 percent increase in the number of private universities. There was asixfold increase in engineering student numbers from 1949 to 1982. Thegovernment’s income doubling plan of 1960 stimulated the most significantleap in the early 1960s with a near doubling of the new intake from 26,000 in1960 to 50,000 in 1965.

The strong emphasis given to engineering studies in the Imperial universitiesof Meiji Japan has had a continuing legacy in the relatively greater commitmentto engineering studies in the national universities. Not all of the 461 four-yearuniversities in the 1980s had engineering faculties, yet they existed in wellover half of the national universities compared to only 11 percent in the smallerpublic universities and less than 20 percent in the private universities. Thispattern was confirmed by student numbers—in 1984 the 3,375 new entrants toengineering faculties represented only 18.0 percent of all new entrants to privateuniversities, compared to 24,494 new engineers or 28.3 percent of all newenrolments in the national universities. Given that only 55 percent of the nationaluniversities had engineering faculties, it seemed likely that engineering studentsmade up over 30 percent of student numbers in those universities. The exampleof 38.4 percent at Tohoku University supported the view that in Britain theseformer Imperial Universities might well be called ‘technological universities’.


The hierarchy of academic prestige in Japanese higher education has itsorigins in Meiji Japan and was evident in the competition for university entryin the 1920s and 1930s. Amano classified universities based on degree-grantingpowers (from doctoral level to bachelor-degree only universities) and date ofestablishment (Amano 1984). This hierarchy of prestige based on academicpowers correlates well with the average age of the institutions and with themore familiar classification into national, public and private universities; themore prestigious universities tended to have earlier foundations and nationaluniversities tend to figure disproportionately among the more prestigiousinstitutions. There is a clear association of prestigious institutions withengineering studies. Against the national average of 28.4 percent ofundergraduate enrolments in engineering and science, the ‘research universities’had 35.6 percent of their undergraduates in engineering and science and the‘bachelor-only universities’ only 22.1 percent. At the postgraduate stage thestrong commitment to engineering and science in the prestigious universitiesis even more pronounced, for over 60 percent of all postgraduate students arestudying engineering and science in the ‘research universities’. The advertisingliterature of the cram schools and test organisations has tended to confirm thelongstanding prestige hierarchy of university engineering schools along thelines suggested by Amano’s approach—only three private schools but all sevenformer Imperial universities were included in the top twelve ranking ofengineering schools in 1984 (Westney & Sakakibara 1985).

The Percy Committee’s 1945 report foresaw Britain’s need for moreengineers, new types of engineer and for a new settlement on the division oflabour between universities and technical colleges in the production of thoseengineers. They prefaced their remarks by a vision of Britain’s role in the worldto assist in the rehabilitation of devastated Europe and the development ofpoorer countries (Percy 1945). One mark of the heavy introspection whichdescended on Britain over the intervening forty years lay in the report‘Competence and Competition’, a widely-read report to government onvocational education and training systems, and its vision of ‘joining the club’as a national goal for the future (IMS 1984). The ‘club’ consisted of the threemajor capitalist industrial nations—the United States, West Germany and Japan.Although the post-war years have seen rising living standards and a nationaleconomic performance which compared favourably with its own past, in relativeterms the British economy did not perform as well as its continental neighboursor the new comparator, Japan. A chapter on the Japanese economy was includedin the second edition of a text on the British economy (Boltho & Hardie 1985).Despite its apparent incongruity, the authors could justify its inclusion bypointing to some past similarities and the recent sharp divergence in economicexperience:

…while in the early 1950s Britain accounted for nearly 8 percent of theOECD area’s GDP and Japan barely 2.5 percent thirty years later theseshares had changed to 6.5 percent and 14.5 percent respectively. Japan’s


per capita income, from being some 20 percent of Britain’s level in 1950–51 had edged ahead by 1980–81.

(Boltho & Hardie 1985:527)

Yet further echoes of the Technische Hochschule debates re-emerged in thepost-war discussions of educational reform. From 1947–64, there were twomain sets of innovations in the higher educational system. In the universitysector, six provincial university colleges were granted independent chartersand powers to award their own degrees rather than London University externaldegrees. In the technical college sector, central government promoted a set ofcolleges as direct-grant institutions with independent governing bodies andtermed Colleges of Advanced Technology (CATs). These changes werepresented in the context of a formalisation of the pyramid of powers and prestigein the technical college sector—at the apex were the CATs identified as nationalinstitutions on a par with the universities, below them were regional and areacolleges of technology, and local technical colleges were at the base. To someobservers, these CATs were Britain’s long overdue Technische Hochschulen.However, the die had been long cast for engineering education and the mainsource in the growth of graduate-level engineers came through the expansionof the existing universities, particularly the large civic universities.

After 1964, there was a considerable change in the face of British highereducation: the existing universities were increased in size and the number ofuniversities almost doubled as new universities were created and as the ex-CATs were transferred to the university sector. Having denuded the technicalcollege sector of its flagships, the government determined on the promotion of28 colleges of technology as polytechnics and made degree-level studies anddegree awards available in them through the Council of National AcademicAwards (CNAA). In this much larger higher education system there was stillconsiderable concentration—for example, the 18 largest engineering schools(i.e. those graduating over 200 students) were responsible for over 70 percentof the total output in 1979 (Finniston 1980:82). Now, however, differentinstitutions were involved—for example, the nine technological universities,most of which have at least 30 percent of their students in engineering studies,were responsible for over a third of the university output of engineers. Bycontrast with the former Imperial universities in Japan, Britain’s ‘technologicaluniversities’ have had a relatively lowly position in the prestige hierarchy ofBritish universities (Berthoud and Smith 1980:60). By the 1990s, thepolytechnics had been removed from local government control and had theopportunity to apply for charters as universities.

Where the Chandler thesis had held that structure followed strategy, thatstructure provided managerial hierarchies and that these hierarchies providedthe stimulus to education supply, some observers have argued that Britishcompanies have turned the thesis on its head. They argued that British companiesseem to demonstrate that ‘strategy is dictated by structure’ both in the latenineteenth century and for much of the twentieth century (Marshall and


McCormick 1986:86). However, insulation from change for British companiesbegan to break down in the 1960s with the ending of resale price maintenance,the loss of Imperial Preference, entry to the EEC, and the 1966 Kennedy roundof tariff reductions (Marshall and McCormick 1986:86–7). Yet many Britishcompanies showed a disappointingly poor response to the new challenges,seeking defensive mergers to stabilise markets without pursuing theopportunities for the rationalisation of production. If the previous crises ofwar and recession had done little to disturb the economic and social fabric ofBritain and provoke more effort to adjust to the new international order, theshocks came in abundance through the 1960s and 1970s (Walker 1980). Thesechanges provoked both the accelerated move towards multi-divisional structuresand a re-examination of the education and employment of engineers.

Disappointed by the relatively poor economic performance in themanufacturing industry, the Labour government appointed a Committee ofInquiry into the Engineering Profession under the chairmanship of adistinguished Scots engineer and industrialist, Sir Monty Finniston. When theFinniston Committee set out in 1977 to examine manufacturing industry’s needsfor professional engineers they broke new ground in a long line of officialinquiries by including Japan in their itinerary (Finniston 1980:209–14). Clearlythe wheel appeared to have come full circle since the Iwakura Mission had setout from Japan for England to learn the prerequisites of modern industrialismand had been moved to appoint another Scot, Henry Dyer, as Principal of theCollege of Engineering (Kobu Daigakko) just over a hundred years earlier.There were two further ironic echoes of the earlier Japanese institutionalinnovation. The Finniston Committee was a creation of an industry ministry.As such, its terms of reference excluded a direct focus on educational reformand the report had to work within the existing structure of educationalinstitutions. However, much the longest chapter of the report dwelt on education,and a curriculum design drawn from continental European practice, theEindhoven Technical University, was appended (Finniston 1980:236–7).However, while the Finniston Committee urged the better integration of theory,practice and application evident in German-style education, they reaffirmed abelief in a British tradition of putting the weight of industrial training into theworkplace:

…it is our belief that in the British context the work covered in the lastone or two years of continental engineering courses is, of its nature, betterundertaken within the working environment…We believe that providedindustry accepts this challenge and participates to the full in the newformation packages these will produce even better, more capable youngengineers than the continental system.

(Finniston 1980:103)


Having neither the institutional framework of continental Europeanlegislation nor Japanese lifetime employment, the Finniston Committee hopedthat the mix of putting some more training into the curriculum, rational employerself-interest and exhortation would produce a new social order in engineeringformation. The Finniston Committee proposed a new body, an EngineeringAuthority, as a major focal body for engineering, acting as a major lobby andtaking responsibility for supervising a register of engineers. The corollary wouldhave been the restriction of the professional institutions to their role as studyinstitutions, while the state-sponsored body took over the qualifying role.However, the new Conservative government introduced an Engineering Council.While the Council has undertaken some of the proposed roles in acting as alead body for the profession, it has not undercut the role of the professional bytaking over qualifying functions and the register. In several respects, the roleof the major professional associations has been strengthened and subsequentdevelopments in education and training have taken place within the continuitiesof the triumvirate of universities, employers and professional associations.

Institutional histories: UMIST and TIT

Some of the earlier broad strands in the historical development of engineeringeducation in Britain and Japan can be illustrated through a brief account of thehistorical development of two institutions, the University of Manchester Instituteof Science and Technology (UMIST) and the Tokyo Institute of Technology(TIT). These two institutions signed an academic co-operation agreement in1979, the first of TIT’s agreements with five UK universities. Although UMISTis located in a provincial city, rather than the nation’s capital, there are clearparallels in the development of both institutions from concerns with artisaneducation to institutions of university rank. However, Manchester was animportant centre for industrial and scientific development in Britain’sindustrialisation from the textile industry to the development of chemistry.Moreover, while TIT illustrates the key role of the state in the creation of theinstitutional infrastructure, UMIST demonstrates the importance of privateendowment and voluntary effort in the pioneer industrial nation.

UMIST was started as a Mechanics’ Institute in 1824, with a mission tospread popular science education among workers through part-time study. Yetit had largely failed in this role by mid-century and it had become little morethan a social club used by the middle class, since the weaknesses in elementaryeducation meant that workers usually lacked the rudimentary basis on whichto build further study (Cruickshank 1974:137). The successful redirection ofthe Institute came with the appointment of J.H.Reynolds in 1879 as secretary,a self-educated bootmaker but gifted as an ‘artisan intellectual’. He had a visionof the Institute as a technical school and he took advantage of the new City andGuilds of London Institute courses and examinations to reorganise classes andinstruction. This Institute, started by London livery companies, became part ofthe later Imperial College of Science and Technology. By 1882, the Manchester


Mechanics Institute was redesignated as the Manchester Technical School andacquired a new governing body with representation from the local authorities(the councils and school boards of Manchester and Salford), the Chamber ofCommerce and Owen’s University (then part of the Victoria University of theNorth of England, and later to be the University of Manchester). Against thebackground of growing concern among Lancashire industrialists about traderivalry with Germany and the relative strength of technical education incontinental Europe, parliament passed the Technical Instruction Act in 1889.The new powers permitting local authority support for technical educationgained substance with the ‘whisky money’ in the following year. Thenonconformist conscience, with prominent Manchester businessmen closelyinvolved, had pressed on parliament the passage of the Local Taxation (Customsand Excise) Act, which provided funds from an alcohol tax which could beused for technical education.

By the early 1990s, the Manchester Technical School was firmly under thecontrol of the City of Manchester. Meanwhile, the Victoria University had beendissolved in 1904, Owen’s College became the University of Manchester, anda division of labour was worked out with the university in 1905. Instead of theManchester University establishing its own Faculty of Technology, the Facultywas located in the Technical School. This intimate relation between Universityand School endured for almost ninety years. Promotion to the status ofManchester Municipal College of Technology in 1918 was eventually followedin 1956 by recognition of independent university status, under its own RoyalCharter and with independent funding from the University Grants Committee(UGC). In the eyes of the Principal, Lord Bowden, ‘the Faculty of Technologyof the University of Manchester, established within the Municipal TechnicalSchool in 1905, had, in effect, expanded to take over the whole institution’(Bowden 1974:248). While the Faculty of Technology arrangement continuedwith Manchester University, all non-degree study was moved in 1966 to theManchester Polytechnic (now the Manchester Metropolitan University) andthe institution took its present title of the University of Manchester Institute ofScience and Technology (UMIST). The latest step has followed from theEducation Reform Act (1988) and the Further and Higher Education Act (1992)to amend the Charters and Statutes to recognise full academic and financialautonomy for UMIST from the University of Manchester and a new Agreementon areas of mutual interest (UMIST 1994).

UMIST now occupies part of a huge campus area in the centre of Manchester,sitting cheek by jowl with the University of Manchester and the ManchesterMetropolitan University. The growth of this city-centre campus was achievedfrom the 1960s with the knocking down of slum dwellings, which had its ownironic twist. In the 1820s, there had been considerable disquiet among the upperand middle classes about Mechanics’ Institutes and their potential as centresfor political radicalism among the working class. The area eventually clearedin later twentieth-century slum clearances had been central to Engels’ accountof the condition of the English working class in the 1840s and material


inspiration for his later economic and political collaboration with Marx. Bythe mid-1990s, nearly 4,700 undergraduates and 1,570 graduate studentsoccupied the UMIST section of the campus, supported by 478 academic staff(UMIST 1997).

Whether UMIST was as influential in building human capital in Britishindustry as it ought to have been is a moot point. Yonekawa contrasted UMISTand TIT to suggest that while TIT graduates were prominent in Japaneseindustry, it is the paucity rather than the plenty of UMIST graduates which ismore striking in Britain (Yonekawa 1984:215). However, Kikuchi (seen earlieras one of the Japanese textile engineers who had studied in Britain) was agraduate from the Manchester Technical School (Yonekawa 1984). Efforts todevelop Manchester’s technical institution were long hampered by lack ofemployer demand (Guagnini 1991:86). Although employer complaints aboutengineering education have emerged in the post-war period, Divall, basingmuch of his discussion on provision in Manchester’s University and Collegeof Technology, demonstrated how the engineering curricula had a large measureof approval from employers (Divall 1990). Thus, insofar as industrialists wantedengineering graduates, they were reasonably content with those recruited.

Although the Tokyo Institute of Technology is highly regarded both insideand outside Japan, its very self-conscious mimicry of America’s most prestigioustechnological university, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (or morecommonly, MIT) was largely for external image and causes some confusionbetween Japanese and foreign visitors. In Japan, its name, Tokyo Kogyo Daigaku(or Toko-Dai), more readily translates as the ‘Tokyo Industrial University’.Even this contemporary name is the product of several changes over a lengthyprocess of historical development and institutional upgrading since the Meijiera. Originally founded as the Tokyo Vocational School (Tokyo Shokko Gakko)in 1881, it was retitled as the Tokyo Technical School (Tokyo Koto Kogyo Gakko)in 1890. By 1901, it had been elevated to the Tokyo Higher Technical Schooland achieved university status and degree-conferring powers in 1929 as theTokyo Kogyo Daigaku. The parallels with MIT came with the post-warreorganisation during the occupation period under the National SchoolEstablishment Law in 1949, when the Faculty of Engineering was establishedand the three-year course was extended to four years. Tracing TIT’s historicaldevelopment under various presidents shows the variety of efforts to weave aninstitutional fabric appropriate for Japan from many diverse strands of foreigninfluence, with clear attempts to draw from Britain, Germany and the US.

The first president, Masaki Taizo (1881–90), had been sent to England tostudy at University College under the chemist, Professor Williamson in 1871.Despite the Meiji government enthusiasm for foreign technology, there werestill places to acquire either relevant technological skills or employment inJapan. Therefore, Japan was heavily reliant on the ‘imported foreigners’ andthe Japanese who went abroad and returned as champions of technologicaldevelopment. Williamson’s assistant, R.W.Atkinson was invited to Japan in1874 and taught at Tokyo Kasei Gakko, later part of Tokyo University. Masaki,


who had returned to England in 1876, was recalled to Japan by the EducationMinistry in 1881. After a year of planning and preparation, Masaki welcomedthe first intake of 60 students to the new trade school in 1882.

The experiences of the second president, Tejima Seiichi (1849–1918),illustrate the vicissitudes of life in the social reorganisation from the feudal toMeiji periods and the importance of America as a source of examples for themodernising elite in Japan. Tejima was one of the pioneer advocates of technicaleducation in Japan and his zeal was a major influence in piloting thetransformation from vocational school to higher technical school. Born in thelate Tokugawa period, the son of a samurai retainer in the service of a feudalclan, Tejima set out in 1871 for study in the US on money borrowed from theclan on mortgaged family property. However, his science studies at LafayetteUniversity were cut short when the feudal class structure was abolished andhis funding disappeared. Instead he took employment with the Iwakura Mission,as an interpreter to Iwakura’s secretary, and travelled with the Mission toEngland and the United States. Subsequent employment in educationaladministration and official trips to the international expositions in Philadelphia(1876) and Paris (1878) reinforced his resolve to campaign successfully fortechnical education and the creation of the Tokyo Vocational School in 1881(Tokyo Shokko Gakko). However, these were still times of transition withdifficulties in both budgetary constraints and limited employment opportunitiesfor graduates. Yet Tejima was able to steer his college through two promotions,first to Technical School and then to Tokyo Higher Technical School in hissecond period as President. Moreover, the efforts to secure full enrolment despiteuncertain employment was aided by government measures to adopt premiumwages for specified technically trained workers and to exempt students fromconscription (Toyoda 1987:10).

Professor Dr Gottfried Wagener brought a continental European perspectiveto the trade school in the 1880s. My own first impressions of Wagener’ssignificant contribution to Meiji Japan were gathered from the monumentalcharacter of his gravestone in the Gaijin corner of Aoyama Cemetery, thattranquil corner of modern Tokyo that ought to attract any visitor accustomedto musing in English churchyards or simply keen to find some respite fromTokyo’s city bustle. Wagener had been among the very first foreigners to arrivein Japan as a technological adviser in 1868, the first year of Meiji. Over thenext two decades, he drew on a wealth of academic knowledge and practicalexperience to promote the two-way relationship between Japan and the Westin technology. Originally recruited to advise on pottery in Kyushu, Wagenercautioned against the wholesale adoption of Western techniques and bent hisefforts to the modernisation of traditional industry. He helped to make Japanand Japanese traditional products better known at international expositions,such as Vienna (1873) and Philadelphia (1876). His own scientific preparationhad been in prestigious company, having studied mathematics under Gaussand taken a PhD at the age of 21 in 1852. But Wagener combined his academicdistinction with much practical industrial experience, for he had been involved


in the establishment of a new iron works in Germany and a new chemical plantin France. In 1871, Wagener was teaching physics and chemistry at DaigakuNanko, an institution which was later to be part of the University of Tokyo.Wagener’s strong belief that Japan should replace the traditional apprenticeshipsystem with a continental European-style technical education can be seen inhis letter of advice written in December 1888 to the Meiji government on adyeing and weaving school:

14. Besides the training of the school workshop there ought to be eveninglectures for the pupils, in mathematics, drawing and designing ofmachinery, elements of natural philosophy and chemistry etc. This canbe done by outside people. In Europe such lectures are easily availablein any town, and it would be a good thing if similar lectures were initiatedin all the large towns of Japan. Foreign language would also form a subjectof outside teaching.

15. As to the financial management of the school it may be observed thatin Europe all the pupils pay some fees. This system ought to be adoptedin Japan too. It is much better to have only a small number of assiduouspupils who value instruction enough to pay for it, than to have a largenumber of non-paying pupils. This does not prevent establishing freescholarships in exceptional cases.

The above is meant only to explain the main features and the objectsof such a school. Further details must be the object of minute deliberationwhen such an institution will have been decided upon. It is much to bedesired that that such a plan will find favour with the manufacturers andweavers of some of the great textile centres. If properly managed theinfluence of such a school workshop will extend far beyond its limits,not only as a place of teaching and the centre of a lively progressivemovement, through the combine efforts of all those interested in the sameindustry. Such an association of similar interests is the most powerfulengine of progress.

(Wagener, Tokyo, 16th December 1888)

After the progressive elevation of the Meiji trade school through highertechnical school to university status by the 1920s, the next turning point forTIT came during the occupation period. The tranisition through the precariouspost-war reforms to the contemporary Tokyo Institute of Technology wasoverseen by Wada Koruko, who became president in 1944 and stayed throughseven years of post-war reconstruction. He had graduated from the TokyoImperial University in naval architecture to become a leading aeronauticalengineer in the 1920s and 1930s. Prior to his appointment to TIT, he had beenin government service as deputy director of the Bureau of Technology. ThroughSeptember 1945 to January 1946, Wada led the faculty and administrators in aseries of conferences, championing the reform and restructuring of higher


education, especially in science and technology, to achieve a better balancebetween purely technical studies (the previous focus) and broader studies inthe humanities. Wada’s ambition to put TIT among the premier technologicaluniversities of the world might be guessed from his involvement in aeronauticaltechnology, the ko-ken-ki (KoKu-KenKyujo) machine and the quest for worldspeed records. It is also evident in his notebooks with their details of MIT andLondon’s Imperial College of Science and Technology in the late 1940s. Yet,his notebooks indicate the magnitude of the task ahead. In addition tocurriculum, teaching and research activity details, Wada calculated MITexpenditure on its 5,172 students at 1,196,000 yen per head in 1946/7 against153,000 per head in TIT. While MIT’s 5,172 students were divided 74:26between undergraduates and graduates, TIT’s quota of 1,200 student placeswere concentrated in undergraduate studies, until the graduate school ofengineering was created in 1953.

The present eel-like strip of the main campus marks out the great stridesmade at TIT since the 1920s. From the gleaming aluminium, steel and glass ofthe eye-catching and controversial Centennial Memorial Hall by the Ohokayamagate, an avenue of cherry trees leads to the main building. Here, the coreFaculties of Engineering and Science are housed beneath the light tiles of thesturdy clock tower. This structure marked a new beginning for an institutionwhich had been ravaged by the 1923 earthquake. The Higher Technical Schoolmoved in 1924 from the severely damaged Kuramae area, in company withmany small businesses, shops and residents. The small lane which runs alongsidethe campus from Oh-okayama to Ishikawadai provides a more traditionalbackcloth of small businesses and shops (such as a rice shop, a biscuit shop, atofu-maker, tailor, and so on) for the towering blocks of science and engineeringdepartments. The 1987 Centennial Hall was designed by the architect ShinoharaKazuo, with bold, simple shapes to reflect the historic character of the centenaryand to provide a striking contrast with the more traditionally, densely packed,low-storied buildings of the surrounding streets. However, tradition wasrespected with the orientation of the massive semi-circular tube at the top ofthe building to give fine views of Mount Fuji from the lounge and restauranton clear days. While there is a functional air and grubbiness to many of theselarge concrete block buildings of science and engineering departments in themiddle of the campus, the tail of the campus is being filled with the new‘intelligent buildings’ of the contemporary era. The space, comfort and grandeurof these buildings, coupled with the speed at which they are being built in the1990s, is testimony to the support which the educational bureaucracy and astrong economy have been able to provide for leading national universities.On the other hand, the recent reorganisation of university departments into anew faculty to occupy some of the new space provided an insight into theproblems of close linkages to central controls, the bureaucratic constraints ona national university and the ramifications of the strife of Japan’s financial andeconomic difficulties in the 1990s.


The creation of a new School of Decision-Making Science and Technologyin 1996 became caught up in the jusen controversy and the blockage of theMarch budget. TIT had been keenly supported by Monbusho when it appliedto regroup three departments into a new school, to reflect the changing role ofthese departments and build a stronger critical mass of researchers linkingtechnology and social sciences. Yet approval and financing for the new schoolwas dependent on the passage of the March budget which became blocked bythe Diet sit-in opposition politicians. The opposition objected to the budget’sproposed use of public funds to rescue jusen, the housing loan organisationswhich were in severe difficulties with bad debts acquired by risky loans in the‘bubble’ period of the late 1980s. Opposition politicians reflected much publicanger about the use of public funds not merely because the companies werejudged culpable but because of their alleged links with criminal gangs. Afterbeing caught up in the knock-on effects of the budget process and the politicalcontroversies, the net effect for TIT was a period of uncertainty and theadministrative inconvenience of admitting April’s new student entry to the oldschool structures with the understanding that they would be transferred to thenew school if and when the budget was approved, as it was by the politicalcompromise later in April.

By 1994, 5,552 students were taught on this main campus (and a BiologicalSciences Faculty in Yokohama) together with 2,366 master’s course studentsand 953 doctoral course students. Thus graduate students made up 37.4 percentof the total of 8,871 students. The faculty:student ratio was 1:15.1 (based onregular faculty staff only and including the cumulative total of all studentsfrom bachelor’s, and doctoral courses), or 1:8.7 (if associates are added to thefaculty strength). The total of 619 foreign students were only a small proportionof the total (7.0 percent). While there is strong encouragement for a nationaluniversity to increase its intake of foreign students to complement Japan’seconomic role and overseas aid programmes, particularly in east Asia, theforeign student issue has some complications and underscores the problems intaking faculty:student ratios at face value. Within the Japanese academichierarchy, the pattern of responsibility has been extended downwards like aseries of overlapping fish scales as the full professor has been responsible forthe associate professor, who is in turn responsible for the assistant professor,who is in turn responsible for the doctoral course, and so on, through themaster’s course to each year of bachelor’s students. Extensive support for thispattern of expectations and responsibilities in the academic hierarchy can befound in Japanese culture, and the readily understood relations of senpai-kohai(leader-follower). In this dyadic role structure, the leader has the duty to showthe way, and the follower to follow. Simply looking at faculty:student ratiosdoes not tap this dimension of support in student learning. However, overseasstudents do not readily fit into this structure by either skill or inclination.Therefore any large-scale efforts to boost their numbers are likely to involve asomewhat different approach to teaching and supervision for them, and knock-on effects for the pattern of supervision in a department.


We can see another revealing insight into the workings of the Japaneseeducation system and the nature of technical education by looking at the linksof the university with the Technical High School, attached to TIT in 1951. Thisschool performs the role of a flagship school in the vocational senior highschool system, playing host to teachers and administrators from Hokkaido toKyushu. With a good deal of splendour and ceremony, the school, universityand Monbusho combine as hosts for exhibitions and demonstrations at theSenior High School to disseminate ‘best practice’ developments through thevocational school sector. The strong emphasis on project work in the curriculumis evident in lively student demonstrations, expositions and in-service eventsand underlines the strong claims of a sound practical approach to technologicaleducation. Yet, few of the Technical High School students who look at theleague table of hensachi scores on the Recruit magazine poster are likely toachieve those required for TIT. Despite the formal attachment of school anduniversity, the school’s graduates are more likely to go to a lower rankeduniversity. One plausible explanation for the low transition rate to the universitycould lie in the amount of project work whose absorbing character distractedpupils from the serious business of honing entrance exam skills.3

Of the 1,154 students who graduated at the bachelor’s stage in 1993, only aminority (23 percent) went into employment, while 77 percent went on to fartherstudy. Whilst, at the bachelor’s level, the proportion entering ‘business’ (12percent) was higher than that entering ‘manufacturing’ (7 percent), at themaster’s stage, the largest slice of the 1993 cohort went into manufacturingindustry (52 percent), with 20 percent entering ‘business’ and 11 percent goinginto ‘further study’. Nevertheless, the proportions of graduates from such aleading technological university entering the business sector rather thanmanufacturing industry were sufficient to trigger MITI to convene the committeeon promoting the attractions of manufacturing industry.

Just as graduate students have become an increasing proportion of the studentbody, so doctoral courses and research have become targets for reform. Thelong-standing view of the engineering doctorate as a slow track to academiarather than industry has been modified by the availability of shortcuts by whichthe path through the fourth year of the bachelor’s course can be acceleratedinto the master’s course, and the master’s course partially incorporated intothe doctoral course. Thus while the master’s course has typically lasted twoyears and the doctoral course typically lasted five years (including the twoyears of the master’s course), Monbusho sets minimum requirements of onlyone year for the master’s course and three years for the doctoral course whichpermit the accelerated path. There is increasing financial support for master’scourse, previously wholly dependent on parents. The looser grip of Monbushoon the credit system has enabled the extension of professional studies into thefirst two years. Meanwhile, TIT has regrouped many of its social scientists andsome related engineering disciplines into a School of Decision Science andTechnology. Together with the informal discussions with HitotsubashiUniversity (the commercial school counterpart to TIT’s technical school


forerunner in the Meiji era) these developments might enable the complementarystrengths of these two universities in technology and social science to challengethe pre-eminence of Tokyo University.

Conclusions

In this chapter, I have examined institutional innovation in advanced engineeringeducation, attempting to explain its origins, to account for the forms which ithas taken and to assess its subsequent impact. On the one hand, I have beenlooking at why and how it occurred in Meiji Japan and how it was subsequentlymodified. On the other hand, I have examined why institutional innovation didnot occur in such dramatic form in Britain. However, the main interest hasbeen in the legacy for present-day engineers of these institutional developmentsat formative stages in each country’s economic development.

To some extent explaining why a new form of engineering educationalinstitution was developed in Japanese was relatively straightforward. If Japanwas to avoid Western encroachment, there was little choice but to acquireWestern technology and to create the social infrastructure which could enableit to produce the cohorts of elite engineers to direct technological development.Of course, while the issue was clear, the process of acquiring a technologicalcapability required considerable skill and effort. In explaining the form thatthe new college took, I suggested that it reflected a mix of original design, off-the-peg borrowing and institutional adaptation carried out by British advisersand Japanese hosts, and subsequently meshed with other similarly eclecticinstitutional developments in the creation of the first Imperial University.4

Posing the counterfactual question of whether the College of Engineering wouldhave been created in Tokyo without Dyer is a challenging way of attempting toassess Dyer’s contribution. However, answers do not seem clear-cut. While itmight seem reasonable to argue that the Japanese hosts had a clear view ofwhat they wanted, it is more doubtful that the vision could have beenimplemented without the engineering and administrative ability to lead theother teachers and deliver the curriculum. For Britain, the pattern of opportunity,incentive and constraint was more complicated. Britain did not face so dramatica challenge as Meiji Japan and its economy appeared to build on a successfulinstitutional framework. Although some distinguished British contemporaries,such as Norman Lockyer in Nature, looked in admiration at the establishmentof the Kobu Daigakko in Japan and urged a similar institutional innovation forBritain, there were a variety of well-established interests ready to argue foralternative paths of development which ranged all the way from maintenanceof the status quo of apprenticeship to adoption of the European model, with ahost of intermediary compromises (Lockyer 1877).5

The College of Engineering (Kobu Daigakko) established by the Ministryof Public Works was certainly important in marking the determination of theJapanese state’s bid to cope with technological development. It should not beseen simply as either a wholly British creation, or as a British translation of a


Technische Hochschule. It was the outcome of the negotiations between theJapanese hosts, including a minister who had experienced engineering educationin Glasgow, and their hired advisors. Subsequently it was incorporated into theuniversity system with the creation of the first Imperial University, and thesubsequent Imperial Universities continued to hold engineering education inhigh esteem. However, to compare Tokyo, Kyoto or Tohoku with ‘Oxbridge’has been misleading. Oxford and Cambridge have been very differentinstitutions, with Cambridge attaching high priority to engineering educationand providing a refutation to the notion that Britain’s elite educationalinstitutions were hostile to engineering. However, it is clear that the criticalmass of elite institutions accommodating engineering has been greater in Japan.Low prestige and diffidence about education for industry in Britain have beenmore evident in the status of the technical education sector and provision forintermediate technical qualifications, rather than in the engineering educationsector.

The closer look at two institutional histories—two of the leading engineeringuniversities in each country, UMIST and TIT—served three useful purposes.First, it offered a useful counterweight to our many references to Henry Dyerand his arrival in Tokyo. These references tend, among a British readership, tocultivate a one-dimensional view of international influences on engineeringeducation in Meiji Japan. Tracing the development of the university of over thecourse of a century, it is clear that a variety of formative influences—from theGerman trade school to the American technological university—was mixedwith the determined vision of Japanese engineers and scientists. Moreover, thedevelopment of UMIST was marked by international influences from Scotland,France and Germany. Many of the same reflections on continental Europe couldbe seen in both institutions, but UMIST appears to have been more constrainedin educational developments by the lack of employer demand for its technicalgraduates or (at later stages) employer contentment with the curriculum.Secondly, it provided a microcosm of the issues seen at the level of the Japanesesystem, where some of the strengths and weaknesses in the close links to thenational bureaucracy were evident. Thirdly, it provided illustrations ofcontemporary change and development and a reminder of the institutionaldynamics underlying the statistics used in the snapshots of international rankingcomparisons.

One of the most important legacies alleged to flow from the College ofEngineering for present-day engineers in Japan—and a feature which allegedlydifferentiated them from British engineers—has been attributed to the Collegecurriculum. Morikawa cites a stronger emphasis on genba (the workplace), onthe importance of workplace knowledge and learning through ‘on-the-job’training, and a greater readiness to work in closer collaboration with blue-collar workers among Japanese engineers compared to British engineers andrelates them all to the practical emphasis in the College curriculum (Morikawa1991). Basing his Anglo-Japanese comparison on Dore’s account of engineersin the English Electric v. Hitachi case study in the early 1970s, Morikawa


argues that the British engineers appear anxious to escape the shopfloor andshopfloor work (Morikawa 1991:136). Yet this interpretation blurs thedistinction between workplace knowledge and skills and the context of theirapplication and it overlooks the historical continuities in Britain and the changesin Japan. Whether or not engineers ‘work smoothly’ with blue-collar workersis not simply the result of acquiring relevant knowledge and skills, but restscritically on the industrial relations context. Although the College ofEngineering lent much to the tradition of workplace learning for higher-levelengineers, the important changes in industrial relations which facilitated a moreharmonious relationship between engineers and blue-collar workers camebetween 1945– 53. The pre-war Japanese workplace was very hierarchical,with a sharp distinction between white-collar staff and blue-collar workers.The industrial relations reforms came after bitter conflict and compromise, notas the simple dawning of sweetness and light (Gordon 1993). The labour unionswhich flexed their muscles in the late 1940s were broken in the early 1950sand parallel unions created by companies. In exchange for co-operation throughthe new unions, the employers softened staff-worker distinctions throughextending the lifetime employment expectation to the regular blue-collaremployees. In return, blue-collar workers undertook flexible working practices.Engineers, such as Ohno at Toyota, were able to design the production systemswhich bore fruit through the 1980s and they were able to enter the workplaceand secure the incremental innovations for which Japanese companies becamefamous.

State interests have been important ingredients in both the Japanese andBritish accounts of engineering education. War, and fear of war, have been animportant factors in state support for engineering education. A popular view inthe post-war period has been that Britain misdirected its scientific andtechnological manpower too heavily in the defence industries, while Japanwisely concentrated on the civil sectors. Whether Britain could, and should,have shed its historic legacy as an imperial power with defence obligation toallies more readily are moot points. However, Edgerton has argued that thedefence needs underpinned the support of the British state for the aircraftindustry and promoted its significant technological feats and achievements inthe inter-war years (Edgerton 1996). In any event, there is a curious paradoxabout the impact of defence expenditure on technological development. Onthe one hand, Japan is alleged to have benefited from the stimulus of defenceneeds through the Japanese imperial navy in the early years of industrialisation.Yet, on the other hand, Japan is also alleged to have benefited from itsoccupation-enforced ban on military expenditures and later self-imposed curbs.Japan’s aeronautical engineers, denied employment in an aircraft industry,moved into other industries. Halberstam cites the case of Tanaka Minoru, oneof the most able graduates of Tokyo University in 1935 and one of the designersof the Zero fighter, who moved into Nissan in 1956 (Halberstam 1986:279–85).


If defence imperatives were a powerful stimulus to economic developmentin the earlier period, why was their suppression beneficial in the later period?The answers may lie in the respective stages of technological development andthe economic context. In the earlier period, state imperatives might have beenimportant in building Japan’s industrial infrastructure, but in the later ‘ColdWar’ era, when defence was supplied by the US umbrella and military hardwarefor Japan Self Defence Forces could be purchased overseas, Japan’s talentedengineers went into those civilian productive industries oriented to competitivemarkets. Around the same time, comparable industries and companies werestruggling to recruit scientists and engineers in Britain. Edgerton might becorrect to argue that British military R&D in the 1950s and 1960s did notreduce the volume of civil R&D (Edgerton 1996). And he might be correct inarguing that higher levels of civil R&D would have improved industrialperformance. However, the argument overlooks the quality of the respectiveinputs to military R&D and other prestigious state ventures such as the nuclearindustry and civil aircraft. The feeling that the United Kingdom Atomic EnergyAuthority (UKAEA) siphoned off the pick of Britain’s able scientists andengineers by involvement in the screening process for national serviceconscription prompted several companies to form the Industrial Fund for theAdvancement of Scientific Education (1955–63). Sensing that they could notcompete with the UKAEA, these science-based companies determined toenlarge the potential by promoting scientific education in the independentschools, on the assumption that the state should put matching capital expenditureon laboratories and equipment in the maintained sector of education(McCormick 1989). As British companies struggled to compete with a largeand prestigious public sector for a fair share of national scientific andengineering talent, Japanese companies were able to take a large share of ‘thecream’.

The central features of Japanese engineering education usually picked outin recent international comparisons have been: the relatively large numbersproduced; their recruitment from able students with high-status socialbackgrounds, the general satisfaction with their pattern of education andtraining, and their entry to high-status positions in employment. Yet thesefeatures of the contemporary Japanese engineering workforce should not besimply imputed to nineteenth-century legacies: • While Japan produces many more graduates per head of population than Britain

from institutions which are called universities, this is very much a product ofthe post-1945 period when Japan’s economy expanded and Japan moved moreswiftly towards a mass higher education system. Moreover, the statisticalcomparisons have always been complicated by Japan’s relatively small (andBritain’s relatively large) output of science graduates.

• The tradition of taking a larger slice of the higher ability male students fromhigh-status social backgrounds into formal engineering studies has a much longertradition in Japan, traceable back to the late nineteenth century Kobu Daigakko.


It reflects the ‘late development effect’, the need to build the capacity to absorbforeign technology for industrialisation, and the nature of job opportunities forthe displaced samurai.6

• The mix of education and training and the importance of genba (the factoryfloor) in training for high-level engineers in Japan has deep roots too. It reflectedthe need for graduate engineers to handle the imported Western technology, thescarcity of trained supervisory personnel in Japan’s early industrialisation, andthe traditions established in the curriculum of Kobu Daigakko (Morikawa1991:138). However, the impact of Japan’s emphasis on practical training forgraduate engineers owed much to the post-war industrial relations reforms andshould not be seen as part of a simple direct lineage without reference to thechanging employment context. For much of the period considered here, Britainrelied largely on engineers trained in the workplace through a mix of on-the-job training and evening classes and a smaller group recruited after full-timeacademic education followed by industrial training. In Japan, the division oflabour in education and training has not aroused much recent controversy becausethe division of labour between educators and employers reflected a betterestablished consensus on respective roles and leaves a relatively academiccurriculum to be complemented by employer training (McCormick 1988b).Such a consensus rests on the corporate strategies of employers and what theyseek from education and training for engineers.

• The creation of the College of Engineering and state support for engineeringeducation have been seen as symbolic reflections of the relatively greater rewardsheaped on engineers in Japan and the relatively greater ease with which Japaneseengineers have penetrated elite levels of decision-making in industry andgovernment. However, the evidence is by no means clear-cut that Japaneseengineers could—and British engineers could not—enjoy high social status.Morikawa’s data for a zaibatsu illustrates that engineers were hardly advantagedover economics or law graduates. However, Morikawa argues that thedevelopment of the lifetime employment system provided a route to the boardfor engineers which in other countries would probably have gone to an externalfinance director (Morikawa 1989). While they might have been part of the eliteeducation, it seems that engineers did not begin to reach the policy-makinglevels of bureaucratic hierarchies in significant numbers until the Second WorldWar (Sumiya and Taira 1979: 229; Nakaoka 1981:12). Increased opportunitiescame after 1945 with the dissolution of the zaibatsu, the purges of managers,and the emergence of new industries and companies which opened the way forentrepreneurs such as Ibuka, Morita and Honda and for engineers as managers.Contrary to the those who argued that the lingering grip of pre-industrial cultureheld back engineers, Watson argued that the Victorian engineer had relativelyhigh status and that the problem to be explained was a ‘fall from grace’ (Watson1976). While conceding the uneven pattern across different branches ofengineering, Edgerton has ventured a spirited case that the entry of engineers(and chemists) to leadership positions in British industry has been understatedin the past (Edgerton 1996:25–8).


One of the main implications of this chapter has been the need to look moreclosely at the links between enterprise strategy and structure and thedevelopment of education and training systems. Here a continuing contrastbetween Japan and Britain has been the market orientation of British companies,whether in buying engineering skills through the market from consultants orresearch associations or in pressing the state and students to bear the costs ofskill training in a more vocationally relevant educational system. Japanesecompanies have striven for a more enterprise specific system of training tocomplement formal education. How far increasing product market difficultiesand more open labour markets will move the Japanese manufacturing companiesto emphasise different skills and modes of training remain matters of futurespeculation. In subsequent chapters I will continue to use cross-sectoral andcross-cultural comparisons in order to explore the dynamics of employment-education linkages. As Von Tunzelmann argued, there have been a number ofdifferent national institutional patterns of engineering knowledge developmentand use in the course of industrialisation. While it is clear that the Japanesepattern proved particularly effective for manufacturing industry through the1950s to the 1980s, at a time when Britain had difficulties in establishing anation consensus on institutional arrangements, it is an open question whichnational pattern might prove most effective in the future (Von Tunzelmann1997:76).

Notes

1 The new college was initially established with the title Kogaku Ryo (Technical School), butrenamed Kobu Daigakko (College of Engineering) in 1877. Some writers translate this latter titleas ‘College of Technology’, although Dyer himself used a grander title of ‘Imperial College ofEngineering’. The sponsoring ministry, Kobusho, is sometimes translated as the ‘Ministry ofIndustry’, but here I will follow Dyer’s usage of the ‘Ministry of Public Works’.

2 Nakayama was using the College of Engineering archives, Kyu-Kobu-Daigakko Shiryo (Materialsof the Former College of Engineering).

3 However, if it were simply a matter of a high-level of efforts being put into project work, then itseems that TIT could establish a quota for these pupils. For example, Japanese children educatedabroad (returnees or kikokushijo) have been thought to have suffered ‘unfair’ disadvantage in thetraditional entrance exam competition, but powerful lobbies and an acceptance that they hadgained other valued knowledge and skills in the course of a different educational path led to thecreation of quota places at national universities (Goodman 1990:42–3). The reluctance to createsuch a parallel quota appears to reflect the depth of attachment to entrance exams and the beliefthat the more academically able have gone through the academic rather than vocational streams.

4 For a broader discussion of the processes through which Western models were introduced andadapted in novel forms see Westney (1987).

5 Lockyer was also a keen promoter of Germany as a model for scientific and engineering reformin Britain, until rivalry with Germany prompted his rejection of an unacceptable exemplar (seeMacLeod 1969).

6 See Dore’s much older discussion of a similar mix of factors in the origins of industrial relationsinstitutions in Japan (Dore 1973:375–6).

2 International rankings ofengineers

‘…Britain has only half the number of engineering graduates of West Germany, and ouryearly output of qualified engineers is only one tenth of the yearly output of engineersfrom Japan’s universities.’

(TUC 1985:12)

Introduction

Does Japan produce many more engineers than Britain? Has a large output ofengineers been a significant factor in Japan’s post-war economic success? Veryemphatic answers of ‘yes’ to both of these questions united captains of industryand labour unions in Britain in the mid-1980s and put pressure on the governmentto take policy initiatives to boost the number of engineers in Britain. Leaguetables of the numbers of engineers produced have been used like totems of nationalprowess, both as indicators of national effort and manifestations of success. Inthe early post-war years, as the ‘Cold War’ began to take shape, many of thecomparisons were between Soviet efforts and those of the Western capitalistcountries. Numbers of engineers could be counted like missiles, tanks or troopsas ‘divisions in the factory’ to make the big push in extending national industrialcapacity. As ‘peaceful coexistence’ took shape and note was taken of the economicgrowth in neighbouring European economies, more attention was paid tocomparisons of the numbers of engineers and other technical workers in Germanyand other countries of the EC. Comparisons with Japan marked a new phase ofconcern about British manufacturing industry from the late 1970s and a newawareness of Japan as a major economic power. This chapter provides a critiqueof how that awareness came to be expressed in the construction of league tablesof numbers of engineers, the ready exaggeration of the numbers of Japaneseengineers, the relative neglect of qualitative dimensions of comparison, and anaccount of the way in which the institutional framework for the education andtraining of engineers is changing in both countries, with some elements ofconvergence and divergence.

Questions about how many engineers a government should aim to producebecame important issues for many governments and their committees of advisers

International rankings of engineers 47

in the post-war heyday of manpower forecasting and educational planning. Havingseen the contribution of science and technology to national survival and believingthat they were going to be central to peacetime economic growth, governmentswere obliged to act. Governments, which had assumed more central direction oftheir wartime economies, accepted wider responsibilities for economic prosperity,full employment, social welfare and their education systems. To judge their needsfor engineers and scientists, they adopted a battery of varied techniques to forecastfuture employer demand, to estimate likely student numbers and to guideeducational planning. International comparisons provided another spur to theproduction of engineers and scientists, particularly when the spectacular successof the Russian Sputnik launch in 1957 set a challenge for the capitalist camp ofnations, for example, capturing the public imagination and stimulating discussionabout national needs for engineers in both Japan and Britain. In Britain, therewere still further echoes of national aspirations to be counted among thesuperpowers. Further into the 1960s, the comparisons began to reflect more strictlyeconomic and industrial concerns. Yet a key problem remained that, despite allthe plausible cases that could be built for manpower forecasting, the conceptsand tools remained inadequate and the advisory bodies were vulnerable totakeover and the special pleading of vested interests.

For Britain, this hiatus between the apparent need for effective manpowerforecasting and the capacity of manpower forecasters to deliver effective guidesseemed most disappointing and led to some of the sharpest debates over theadvantages and disadvantages of using manpower forecasting to guide educationalplanning (McCormick 1977). On the one hand, Britain appeared to need forecastsbecause the strong emphasis on early specialisation in the British educationalsystem meant a lengthy gestation period for educational investments and meantthat ‘shortages’ could prove extremely damaging. On the other hand, theproblematic nature of the tools for manpower forecasting (from short-runemployer surveys to long-term input-output projections, and even rate-of-returnanalyses) had been subject to much criticism. Moreover, the problems werecompounded by the structure of the forecasting bodies, their liability to becaptured by vested interests, and a propensity to advocate overproduction ofengineers and scientists. One obvious remedy to the ‘manpower problem’, thatcould be agreed by manpower forecasters and their economist critics alike, wasto reduce the degree of educational specialisation, which could be justified oneducational grounds alone, but which had the further merits of delayingoccupational choices and shortening the gestation period. Put in these terms,educational reform reinforced the case for international comparisons becausenow the purpose became a comparison of notes on institutional structures, inter-institutional relations, course design and flexibility, and so on. By the 1980s,Japan had joined the list of favoured destinations for education missionsdetermined to unravel the educational contribution to its economic success.

Many of the American and European observers were immediately drawn tothe construction of league tables of numbers of engineers with dramatic claimsfor the relatively large numbers of engineers enrolled or graduating from Japanese


universities. However, many of these numerical comparisons have proved wildlyexaggerated. The claim that Japanese universities graduated ten times as manyengineers as Britain quoted at the beginning of this chapter proves, on closerinspection, to have been widely popular and highly erroneous. Often comparisonswere built on very shaky knowledge and a poor understanding of the basicinstitutions and descriptive data—for example, using the very broad Japanesenotion of ‘gijutsusha’ compared to the narrower British conception of an‘engineer’ or contrasting very general Japanese definitions of ‘higher education’with the narrower British definition of a university.

In the next section, I will take a closer and more critical look at the comparisonsof numbers of engineers drawn by Japanese and British observers. In order to setthese comparisons in context, I will devote our third section of this chapter to asketch of the institutional framework of the two educational systems, and theway in which it has been changing. In our fourth section, I will probe furtherbehind the numbers and underneath the labels to explore some of the more implicitqualitative dimensions tucked away in the quantitative comparisons.

Controversial numbers

Many of the early British attempts at manpower forecasting for educationalplanning reflected both the ‘Cold War’ context and lingering British aspirationsto ‘superpower status’ with many references to the US and USSR and theirnumbers of ‘qualified scientists and engineers’ (QSEs). As economic recoveryprogressed in Europe and as Britain’s lofty international aspirations provedunsustainable, new league tables of educational outputs and labour force numberswere constructed around the ‘middle ranking powers’ with more Europeancomparisons. In the 1970s, more attention was paid to Japan and its seemingmassive numbers of engineers. Often, parallels were drawn between the leaguetables of economic performance and league tables of numbers of engineers bythose with vested interests in pressing the British government for increased publicsupport for science and technology. The science and engineering lobbies couldcombine in demanding an increased supply of engineers and scientists andincreased public support for science and technology programmes in the publicand private sectors. Despite the dubiousness of some of the sources, interpretationsand statistical exercises, league tables lent all the air of scientific and quantitativecertitude to weapons to beat government. The pity was that more modest and‘realistic’ statistical comparisons were quite impressive in themselves and couldhave generated a more fruitful discussion. Over-egging the pudding riskedgenerating scepticism, disbelief and a refusal to take comparison seriously.

One exaggeration which gained some adherents was the notion of a tenfoldJapanese superiority in numbers of engineers. A prominent platform for thisidea was provided by the publication of an article by Oshima Keiichi, a verydistinguished emeritus professor and engineering representative to the Japanesegovernment and international bodies, in the Journal of Trade and Industry, anEnglish-language publication edited by the Japan External Trade Organisation


(JETRO), which was an arm of the very influential Japanese Ministry ofInternational Trade and Industry (MITI). Oshima compared student enrolmentsin Japan and several European countries and his figures suggested a tenfoldJapanese advantage over Britain in enrolments (368,770 v. 35,817) by the early1980s (see Table 2.1). However, a closer reading of the table notes in the originalarticle reveals problems of overestimate of the Japanese figures (and underestimateof the British figures) through the types of institution covered, the types ofdiscipline included in ‘engineering’, and the length of course. The Japanese figuresincluded the junior colleges and the technical colleges alongside universities,whereas the polytechnics and other institutions providing degree-level studieswere excluded from the British side. The Japanese figures included architecturewith engineering, whereas architecture was put in the ‘other’ column in Britishfigures. Looking at enrolment figures produces a distortion when the typicalJapanese university bachelor’s course lasted four years, while the typical Britishbachelor-level degree course lasted only three years. If we restrict ourselves tocompare bachelor-level degree courses and if we put them on a common basis ofannual outputs then we should knock out the Japanese junior colleges andtechnical colleges, but include British polytechnic and other institution degree-course outputs, and we should exclude architecture in both countries fromengineering. The result of these adjustments is to reduce a tenfold advantage toa fivefold advantage. Once we adjust for the larger population of Japan and divideby a factor of two, we find that the annual output of Japanese bachelor-leveldegrees was roughly two-and-a-half times that in Britain. Many Britishengineering employers might well have settled for a doubling of the supply ofBritish engineers, if we leave to one side the question of the relative industrialcompetence of new graduates in Japan and the implications for Britain’s creakingindustrial training system of such an expansion of new entrants. The mind-numbing exaggeration was unnecessary.

However, throwing caution to the winds (and without any source reference),we have seen that the tenfold enrolment advantage of Oshima was representedas a tenfold annual (!) output by the British labour movement in the Trade UnionCongress (TUC) document on the state of R&D in Britain (TUC 1985: 12). Todemonstrate that exaggeration was not a monopoly of labour, a distinguishedcaptain of British industry concurred with the tenfold output comparison. SirKenneth Corfield, as Chairman and Chief Executive of Standard Telephones andCables (STC), had written a well-received (NEDO) Report on ‘Product Design’and had given the Finniston Committee of Inquiry into the Engineering Professiona good impression as a clear-sighted industrialist with cogent evidence (Corfield1979). Subsequently, he was appointed by the government to be the first Chairmanof the Engineering Council, set up following the recommendations of theFinniston Committee. Setting out a position paper for the Engineering Council,Corfield observed of Japan: ‘betweenthe years 1965 and 1977 Japan doubled the ratio of engineers to its total workforceand by 1978 was turning out ten times as many graduate engineers as Britain’(Corfield 1984:245). Again, there were no sources or bases given for the figures

Tabl

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Osh

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1983


of 6,897 British engineering graduates and 71,167 Japanese engineering graduatesin 1978. Yet Corfield’s position at the head of the Engineering Council, the bodyappointed by the government to serve as the lead national organisation to lobbyon behalf of engineering, gave him the ear of government and influence on policy.The Engineering Council pressed for a shift in the ratios of science andengineering students to arts and social studies students from 50:50 to 55:45.Within a year, the government launched the Engineering and TechnologyProgramme to increase engineering student numbers. Since it was launched in aperiod of severe restraints on other areas of education, it became nicknamed the‘switch programme’, although it had little success in changing proportions andled to empty places in polytechnics.

Britain was not alone in having debates about the numbers of scientists andengineers in the national labour force. A parallel process could be observed inthe US where disappointment about American relative economic decline hadprompted a similar interest in the Japanese educational system. Analysts drewattention to an apparent numerical superiority in the output of engineers in Japanand claimed that this was a significant factor in the success of Japanesemanufacturing industry in world trade and capturing American market share(Grayson 1983, 1984a, 1984b, 1987a, 1987b). In several trenchant critiques,Kinmonth has challenged the ostensible numerical superiority at bachelor’s andmaster’s degree levels, and associated arguments that Japanese engineers enjoyedrelatively higher social rewards, such as higher incomes and higher status, whichwere further causally related to superior economic performance. (Kinmonth 1986,1987).

Meanwhile, the British government’s Department of Education became stungby the volume of criticism directed against its bailiwick and began to co-ordinatea more critical look at comparative statistics. Some of the critical commentarycame from bodies close to government itself. The Manpower ServicesCommission (MSC) (created by the government to promote vocational educationand training and to bypass any obstructions by vested educational interest groupsand the education bureaucracy) had combined with the National EconomicDevelopment Council (a tripartite body linking employers, trade unions andgovernment) to issue a much-publicised report, Competence and Competition,which listed shortcomings in British vocational education and training comparedto the inputs, systems and outputs in Germany, the United States and Japan (IMS1984). The direct comparison of the output of graduate engineers was tuckedaway in the statistical appendices, but the figures of 74,000 bachelor graduateengineers in Japan in 1982 (or 630 per million of population) against 15,000bachelor graduate engineers in Britain in 1982 (or 270 per million of population)put the Japanese advantage nearer twofold than the tenfold of the EngineeringCouncil and TUC, even without the footnote caution that the Japanese totalincluded architects (who would have added 9,000 if included in the British total).The thrust of the NEDO/MSC critique lay, not so much in the numericalcomparisons, but in the more qualitative comparisons relating to the broadercharacter of Japanese degree studies, the readiness of employers to support


training and the Japanese superiority in numbers of intermediate skill ranges.However, the MSC appreciated that their 6,000 word limit for the country reportshad constrained them to deliver accounts in the style of bullet point headlines.Therefore the MSC commissioned a fuller study designed to ‘give a feel for theway in which the Japanese vocational and education system worked’ fromspecialists on the Japanese employment system and its interaction with theeducation system (Dore and Sako 1987, 1989).

Meanwhile, the DES went on the offensive against the Engineering Counciland the ‘Competence and Competition’ report through the InterdepartmentalWorking Group of departmental statisticians, emboldened by the new ‘switch’programme and a feeling that critical comparisons had put Britain in a poor lightby focusing on first-degree engineers. They felt that this focus neglected thelarge sub-degree element in the British system, a sector which was all the moreimportant in view of the UK selective policy on entry to degree courses and therelatively short specialised character of first degree courses. Using theInternational Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) of three levels of 5,6 and 7 corresponding to sub-degree, first-degree and postgraduate qualificationsand UNESCO sources, the Interdepartmental Working Group drew up a varietyof comparisons, including ‘engineers/population in the relevant age group’,‘engineers/population employed’ and ‘engineers/population employed in industry’(DES 1987, 1990). The statisticians conceded that when the focus was put ondegrees alone (level 6) then Britain lagged behind Japan, Germany and the US,but matched France. However, when the levels of sub-degree, first-degree andpostgraduate qualifications (i.e. levels 5 plus 6 plus 7) were added together, theUK emerged as second only to Japan in numbers of engineers per relevant agegroup. Using the cumulative totals against ‘population employed’ or ‘populationemployed in industry’ put Britain in an even better light, outshining all the othercountries, even Japan. Britain could appear as ‘number one’ in the engineeringleague tables. Having seen the recession of the early 1980s wipe out a quarter ofBritain’s manufacturing industrial capacity, it seemed ironic that Britain hadfinally solved years of alleged post-war engineering shortage—not so much byboosting supply as by reducing industrial demand.

The Engineering Council responded swiftly and vigorously, commissioningthe Research Unit of the Engineering Professors’ Conference to undertake itsown statistical comparisons and charging that the civil servants were complacent.The Engineering Council urged that Japan, as the new world centre of ‘bestpractice’ manufacturing, should be the target for comparisons. Drawing on severalstudies in progress, the Engineering Council commissioned its own study throughthe Engineering Professors’ Conference (McCormick 1988b; Dore and Sako 1989;Prais 1987). On the basis of their new study, the Engineering Council arguedthat the Working Group had seriously underestimated the output of sub-degreeengineers (level 5) in Japan (Blears and Bonnet 1988; Engineering Council1988b). The problem lay in the convention that the Japanese Ministry ofEducation, Science and Culture (Monbusho) did not include the private sectorMiscellaneous Schools (Senshu Gakko) in its returns to UNESCO, thus


understating the Japanese side of comparisons equivalent to the British Businessand Technician Higher National Certificate by a factor of three. The EngineeringCouncil went on to some further comparisons of specific Japan/UK ratios whichtold against the British output: for example, in engineering graduate disciplinesassociated with the manufacturing industry (for electrical and mechanicalengineering in 1983 the ratio was 3:1, for chemical engineering it was 5:1 andfor production engineering 9:1); in applications to places for university study inengineering (4.7:1 for Japan compared to 1.7:1 in the UK); and in the apparentlymuch larger pool of eighteen-year-olds with mathematical qualifications in Japanthan the UK.

Prais, who had done a great many meticulous comparisons of productivityand vocational education and training across different industrial sectors,particularly exploring the intermediate qualifications in Europe, added somefurther refinements to the Anglo-Japanese comparisons to suggest another aspectof Japanese advantage in advanced engineering skills (Prais 1988). While hisprevious work had underlined British shortcomings against German craft andtechnician levels, Prais argued that a gap was emerging between Britain andseveral other advanced industrial nations, especially Japan and Germany, at theequivalent of master’s level courses. Although, per head of population, Britainwas still producing double the number of engineering doctorate-level graduatesof Japan, the situation was reversed at the master’s level (see Table 2.2). In thiscomparison, the figures for Japan at the technician level appeared more modest,with a range of figures reflecting different assumptions about comparators.However, by the late 1980s, there was broad agreement about the orders ofmagnitude of the Japanese superiority in numbers of bachelor’s level engineerscompared to Britain.

Table 2.2 Engineering graduates in the UK, France, Germany, Japan and USA(units: ’000s)1

1 The table includes the numbers qualifying in engineering and technology, with the original numbersfor Japan and US reduced in proportion to UK population for 1985.

2 Note that Doctorates and Master’s degrees should not be added to Bachelor’s degrees to avoiddouble-counting.

3 These figures and those directly below include computing and data processing.4 Mechanical and electrical qualifications only (that is, excluding building); the comparable UK

total is 24,000.

Source: S.J.Prais 1988:81


Having seen the shift from the wilder hyperbole of Anglo-Japanesecomparisons of tenfold to twofold numbers of first-degree level engineers overthe decade, it is now time to look at the institutions from which engineersgraduate and how they are being reformed in the 1990s.

Outlines of the two educational systems

The most obvious contrasts between the two systems for producing engineerslie in the role of the state and the way in which reforms are changing that role.The Meiji state created a Ministry of Education ahead of industrialisation, aswe have seen in Chapter 1, and used the educational system as a directinstrument of economic and political development. Reform in Japan in the1990s has been marked by some relaxation of that central grip on the educationalsystem and efforts to introduce more variety in educational provision. Britainwas until recently quite remarkable in the extent to which the central governmentleft education matters to local authorities or relatively autonomous bodies andleft training matters to employers and trade unions. The result was a scatteringof remarkably creative initiatives and worthy endeavours set as islands in avery troubled sea. As those trembles grew more tempestuous the state began toassume more responsibility for building more secure bridges between schooling,training and work. Early signs of that growing state responsibility came withthe passage of the Industrial Training Act in 1964 and the creation of theindustrial training boards, using a payroll tax to encourage employer training.Increasing concern about economic performance has stimulated both centralgovernment and employer involvement in the educational system. During the1980s and 1990s, the pace of Government initiatives has quickened sharply,with much stronger central control exercised over universities through stateagencies.

By comparison with the English attempts to reintroduce distinctivelyvocational schools, or stimulate new experiments in vocational curricula ontop of fairly extensive examination work in vocational subjects, the compulsoryeducation system in Japan up to the age of 15 seems remarkably free ofvocational elements. Of the 1,015 school hours to be filled in each of the threeyears of junior secondary school, only 70 (less than 7 percent) are devoted to‘industrial arts and home making’ in each of the first two years, rising to 105hours (10 percent) in the third year (NIER 1988). Vocational education properbegins after the end of compulsory education. Given that over 90 percent ofJapanese youth proceed into some form of full-time education beyond 15 thereis a large potential exposure to the vocational courses in the senior secondaryschools offering both general and vocational courses, or in vocational coursesin schools offering only vocational courses, or in technical colleges, or in specialtraining schools or miscellaneous schools in the private sector.

Figure 2.1 gives an outline structure of the Japanese education system andthe progression rates between different types of institution. In 1994, at age 15and the end of compulsory schooling, the majority of Japanese students, over


two thirds, proceeded to the more academic general courses of upper secondaryschools (70.7 percent). About one quarter of the students proceeded tovocational courses in the upper secondary schools (24.9 percent). A tinyproportion (0.7 percent) entered on the five-year course offered by the technicalcolleges, which are operated mainly by national government. A somewhat largerproportion proceeded to a course in one of the Senshu Gakko ‘special trainingschools’ (1.2 percent). Only 2.5 percent of the age group were seekingemployment at this stage (1.7 percent actually finding employment and 0.8percent recorded as unemployed).

At the age of 18, over 30 percent of the age group proceeded to study at oneof the four-year universities or two-year junior colleges, while a tiny proportioncontinued into the more advanced stages of their colleges of technology. Overone quarter (28.6 percent) proceeded to shorter courses in the private-sector‘special training schools’. Thus, by comparison with British practice, theJapanese system has been remarkable for the high participation rates beyondcompulsory schooling and for the full-time nature of study.

Vocational courses at the upper secondary stage can be found in either whollyvocational schools or schools offering both academic and vocational courses.The 16 percent of upper secondary schools which offer only vocational courses

Figure 2.1 Progression routes in the Japanese educational system (1994)1

1 The statistics present a cross-section of age groups and are not strictly the progression of onecohort.

Source: H.Muta (personal communication)—based on Ministry of Education Monbu Tokei Yoran(summary of statistics on education) 1995


tend to be very specialised, either as industrial, commercial or agriculturalhigh schools. Some of these schools are trying to adapt to the very differenteconomy in which they now find themselves—for example, fishery collegesmount courses in water sports and leisure to cater for the changing employmentopportunities. These schools and the 31 percent which offer some vocationalcourses are outnumbered by the 53 percent of schools which offer only academiccourses. The academic character of much of this education, carried out beyondcompulsory schooling and at parental expense, is further emphasised bycomparing pupil numbers and noting the increasing proportion in academiccourses, from 63 percent in 1975 to 68.2 percent in 1980. This trend towardsmore academic provision has been partially offset by developments in the privatesector, for in 1976 the creation of higher standards permitted the promotion ofsome special training schools (Senshu Gakko) from among the MiscellaneousSchools (Kakushu Gakko). This means that graduates from academic streamscan proceed to acquire more vocationally oriented education after 18.

At the tertiary stages there is a mix of institutions from the universitiesoffering four-year undergraduate courses, junior colleges offering two-yearcourses, and the five-year colleges of technology (Koto Senmon Gakko), whichspan the equivalent of three years of upper secondary school and two years ofjunior college. There is a very high degree of sex-typing in these institutionsand their courses. The majority of students (almost 90 percent) enrolled injunior colleges (Tanki Daigaku) are female on courses in humanities, socialsciences, and home economics, with only 5 percent studying engineering. Inthe 1960s, there was concern of a vocational kind that the then planned highereducation would not satisfy industrial requirements. This prompted thedevelopment of two-year institutions for engineering equivalent to juniorcolleges. However, in order to escape the female home economics image ofjunior colleges, they were created as five-year technical colleges and tend tohave male students (almost 100 percent) studying engineering (Asahi 1987).In the four-year universities (Daigaku), engineering has a prominent place inthe more prestigious universities. Compared to the overall proportion of 20percent enrolled in engineering across the university system, this proportionrises to over 30 percent in the former imperial universities.

Most educational investment has been undertaken by parents and childrenin the belief that it will lead to better employment opportunities. As employmentopportunities expand and contract with labour market evidence of under- andover-supply, it is to be expected that students and their families will weighmore carefully the balance of extrinsic and intrinsic merits of particular fieldsof studies. In Japan, it is the long-term perspective which seems to pervadepupil and parent perspectives; for example, in his human capital model ofeducational expansion Kaneko found an income-elasticity of demandconsistently greater than unity through the 1960s and early 1970s, suggestingthat Japanese parents and children were not sensitive to short-term fluctuationsin employer demand for graduates (Kaneko 1987).


Japan has been unusual in the extent to which central government regulationdefined breadth in curriculum, even into universities. In the 1980s, the corecurriculum in the junior and secondary school system emphasised a spreadacross Japanese, mathematics, science, social studies, and a foreign language(typically English). In 1989, these curricula were revised for implementationin 1994. Again in the 1980s, the entrance examinations to the nationaluniversities assessed competence across the broad spread of subjects, althoughapplicants to private universities could specialise more narrowly in threesubjects. In higher education, the Ministry of Education, Science and Culturecredit requirements of 124 credits for graduation used to make explicitrequirement for breadth in undergraduate education, with the specification for36 credits in general education, eight credits in foreign languages and fourcredits in physical education. Although there had been some controversies aboutthe quality and relevance of some of the general education for engineers andscientists, this breadth was striking in comparison to the narrowness andtechnical specialism of British engineers. In studying a foreign language,Japanese engineers gained some sense of cultures beyond their own. However,various reports from the University Council, established in 1987, have proposedreforms to make qualitative improvements in higher education, including morediversity across university curricula. Therefore, since 1994, the overall 124credit requirement has remained but each university has gained discretion oversubject requirements. Inevitably, universities have been moving at differentspeeds to take advantage of the new opportunities (Monbusho 1993; Monbusho1995).

In principle and practice Britain has three education systems, but I shalldeal largely with that covering England and Wales. Historically the Englisheducational system was conceived as a ‘national service administered locally’and it tended to be portrayed as a partnership between central and localgovernment. The basic structure derived from the 1944 Education Act,subsequently amended by the 1988 Act, and distinguished primary (age 5–11), secondary (11–16) and further education. In the post-war years, the statesystem followed the European tradition of selective secondary education,providing ‘grammar schools’ with an academic education for the ‘academicallyable’, about 20 percent of the age group in the system. For the majority, ‘modernschools’ were available, while a tiny technical school sector catered for anintermediate 5 percent of the ability range. By the 1970s, these streams weredrawn together in the development of comprehensive schools on Americanlines to cater for 90 percent of the school population in the state system. Thusthe specifically technical schools tended to be submerged from view, althoughit must conceded that they were never very prominent. Outside the state system,the ‘public schools’ operate as private institutions open to state inspection andcover about 7 percent of the age group, now preferring the term ‘independentschools’ to ‘public schools’ to capture a whiff of rugged entrepreneurship ratherthan privilege.


During the early 1980s, less than 20 percent of the 16–19 year old age groupstayed within the school system. Outside the school system the routes laythrough either a college of further education, or employment (with or withoutfurther part-time study) or unemployment. At the post-secondary stageinstitutions have been distinguished into ‘higher education’ (essentially theuniversities), with the remainder (a mixture of colleges of further education,technical colleges, polytechnics, and institutes of further education), termed‘further education’. However, the availability of degree studies in polytechnicsand selected colleges blurred this distinction from the 1960s. Within ‘furthereducation’ there was a further distinction between ‘Advanced Further Education’(AFE) and ‘Non-Advanced Further Education’ (NAFE).

The academic route through schools or further education college typicallyled to the Advanced Level ‘General Certificate of Education’ (GCE A level),which has been the main qualifying examinations for entry to higher education.The routes through technical and vocational have been much more complex.Courses up to and including A level or its equivalent have been designatedNAFE, while courses above that level have been termed AFE. The NAFE sectorhas been the main provider to industry and business of vocational educationfor recent school-leavers, usually via part-time day or block release.

The NAFE sector for operator, craft and technician levels of education andtraining is overseen by a large number of examining and validating bodies.These bodies provide some co-ordination over a very varied sector. In theindustrial field, two bodies are particularly prominent: the Business andTechnical Education Council (BTEC) covers the technician level and the Cityand Guilds of London Institute (CGLI) covers the craft level.

The apprenticeship system in Britain had its roots in the pre-industrial guildsystem, as in Germany. However, there have been a number of markeddifferences in the manner in which apprenticeship developed in the industrialperiod in Britain compared to Germany (Lane 1989:71). In Britain, there hasbeen much less regulation of employers by either the state (for example, ofapprentice release for education) or other outside bodies (for example, bychambers of commerce of training plans). The terms of training were largelythe outcome of negotiations between employers and trade unions and, until the1970s, apprenticeships were based on time served rather than competencestandards. From the late 1970s to the early 1980s the apprenticeship systemsuffered a dramatic collapse in manufacturing industry, with the number ofapprentices falling from the high point of 236,000 in 1968 to barely 100,000in the early 1980s. Several factors contributed to this collapse, including themisfortunes of British manufacturing industry in the 1979–81 recession,employer discomfort with the inflexibility and narrowness of most schemes,and the relatively high levels of youth wages as a proportion of the adult wage.Since the 1980s, apprenticeship has not been revived on a wider scale. Whilethere have been some encouraging signs in the ‘Modern Apprenticeship’scheme, initiated by the Government in 1993, there are continuing weaknessestoo. On the positive side, Gospel identifies the extension of apprenticeship to


occupations not previously covered, the development of apprenticeshipagreements, and the potential for greater transparency and transferability(Gospel 1998:451). However, he notes also continuing frailties in the weaknessof demand (leading to lack of provision of places) and the lack of stateinvolvement through a legal framework. Rather than a full revival of a labourmarket route to training for ‘intermediate skills’, Britain seems more determinedon moving towards the French pattern of vocational education and training(Lane 1989:71).

Even as late as the 1960s, half the new entry to professional engineeringhad come through a non-degree route of part-time study and professionalinstitution examinations. Yet by the 1980s, the bachelor’s-level degree hadbecome the mainstay route to professional engineering in Britain. Bachelor’sdegrees were offered through 48 universities, 28 polytechnics and 12 otherinstitutions. The scale of activity varied widely, with the 18 biggest schools(those graduating over 200 students a year) responsible for about 70 percent ofthe output (Finniston 1980:82). There was some variety in course structuretoo. The ‘technological universities’ had developed ‘sandwich courses’ whichattempted to integrate periods of academic study and industrial practice, whilethe ‘new universities’ of the 1960s and some CNAA institutions had developedbroad-based engineering courses with later specialisation. However, mostcourses have been specialised with courses organised around one of the mainbranches of engineering over the three years.

Taking stock of the situation, the Finniston Committee concluded that:employers had not accommodated to the changing supply routes to professionalengineering and failed to provide appropriate continuing education and training;university courses had become overly academic and lacked sufficientapplication; graduates had uneven quality in their entry skills in maths andphysics and gained insufficient coverage of generic engineering skills;professional institutions had been ineffectual in overseeing education andtraining and should lose responsibilities for professional regulation in order toconcentrate on their role as learned societies. Therefore the Finniston Committeeborrowed the French term ‘formation’ as a comprehensive term to cover thecomplete process of producing engineers and to avoid the awkwardphilosophical and practical hiatus in the English terms of ‘education’ and‘training’. The aim was to blend theory, application and experience. TheCommittee was particularly concerned to refashion the old degree: HNC ratioof potential elite and mainstream entrants to the professional ranks in a newidiom, and conceived of a system of registration for engineers with matchingeducational courses and qualifications. Registration level Course and qualification

• Registered Engineer Diplomate • A four-year course leading to a(REng[Dip]) for those with leadership Master of Engineering (MEng),potential and ability to develop new recommended for up to 25 percent oftechnologies the cohort, but with entry determined


after the first-year performance on theBachelor of Engineering (BEng)

• Registered Engineer (RE) for the main • A three-year course leading to BEng,body of the profession with an emphasis on engineering

practice and distinct from sciencedegree courses

• Registered Engineer Associate • Educational requirements Higher(RE[Assoc]) for support engineers National Certificate (HNC) or Higher

National Diploma (HND)

The Engineering Council was established as the main government response to theFinniston Report. It became the body responsible for the twin functions of‘professional regulation’ (operating through professional institutions as ‘nominated’bodies) and acting as the central co-ordinating lobbying body for the profession(what the Finniston Committee had termed the ‘engine for change’). Far from aweakening of their powers in professional regulation, the professional institutionswere put in a stronger position. The Engineering Council undertook a review ofprofessional regulation and published a review in 1984, ‘Standards and Routes toRegistration’ (SARTOR), with proposals for full implementation in 1992. TheCouncil adopted different terminology and did not follow the proposed Finnistonlink between education and registration status. The BEng degree became themainstream route to Chartered Engineer, while the MEng came to be seen as a‘better’ route, but without any distinct advantage in formal status. Registration level Course and qualification

• Chartered Engineer is for those • A four-year course leading to MEng,engineers whose work is predominantly recommended for up to 25 percent ofintellectual and varied, requiring the cohort, but with entry determined theoriginal thought and judgement, after the first-year performance on theability to supervise and be responsible BEngfor the profitable management ofindustrial and commercial enterprises

• Incorporated Engineer is for those • A three-year course leading to BEng orwho perform technical duties of an through other pathways, for exampleestablished or novel character either HND plus further specialist learningindependently or under the direction ofmore senior engineers

• Engineering technician is for those • Educational requirements from GNVQinvolved in applying proven methods to to HNC/HNDthe solution of practical problems withan element of personal responsibility,usually under guidance

The cumulative impact of changes in course and qualifications in school andfurther education sectors, coupled with the great expansion of universityeducation, triggered deep controversies about standards in the profession andled to contested proposals for revision in the SARTOR documents in the 1990s.Critics charged that there was a drop in entry standards to higher education anda parallel drop in output standards from university. There are a number of strands


within the charges about entry standards, including the following arguments:first, that universities have a more varied intake; second, that students from themore vocational BTECH courses do not have as much maths (or as high a standardof achievement in maths) as A level students; and, third, that the old ‘gold standard’of A levels has been adulterated by changes in content and lower standards in theA-levels themselves. Alongside the argument that ‘more has meant worse’ inentry, critics have argued that there has been a drift in degree classificationstandards, with the virtual death of the old ‘ordinary degree’ and a massiveincrease in the proportions included in the higher classifications of the ‘honoursdegree’.1 From a review initiated in 1991 and a report in 1993, the Board ofEngineering Registration (BER) of the Engineering Council has draftedrecommendations for a new pattern of registration and educational qualificationswhich awaits adoption by the ‘nominated institutions’ (that is, by the variousprofessional associations such as the Institution of Mechanical Engineers or theInstitution of Electrical Engineers responsible for qualifications in their branchof engineering). Apart from recognising the greater variety in university entryqualifications, the main innovation is the specification of entry standards tocourses and qualifications leading to registration. Proposed registration level Proposed Course and Qualificationfor implementation in 1999

• Chartered Engineer • The study period should increase fromthree to four years in the educationalbase. The requirement will be metby either a three-year accredited BEnghonour’s degree plus a year of furtherlearning (described as a ‘matchingsection’) or by a four-year accreditedMEng degree. The other change is thespecification of minimum entrystandards to cover at least 80 percent ofthe entry cohort: 24 A-level points for theMEng and 18 A-level points for theBEng courses.2

• Incorporated Engineer • Study will increase from two to threeyears, involving either a two-year HNDand year of further approved study or bya three-year ordinary accredited degree.The entry requirement for degrees is10 A-level points

• Engineering Technician • Advanced GNVQ or equivalent

The specification of entry requirements is something of an interim measure inthe move to raise standards, pending more robust accreditation proceduresthrough which the professional institutions approve educational courses. Inaddition to these more stringent requirements affecting the educationalcomponent of eligibility for professional qualifications, the Engineering Councilplans to strengthen the review process which covers the second stage of


formation (termed Initial Professional Development [IPD]). This includesthe acquisition of specialist knowledge and skills and the competence topractise in a specific area of engineering and covers training andemployment in responsible experience and is judged by a ProfessionalReview.

The implicit qualitative dimensions of comparison

Implicit in the comparisons of numbers of engineers, there are a number ofissues relating to the abilities of the students who enter engineering, the typesof institutions which cater for their studies, and the types of abilities withwhich they emerge. While we have learned not to take numbers at face value,the value which we assign to the numbers of graduate engineers rests cruciallyon the assumptions we make about the nature of abilities, universities,curricula and assessment. Therefore, we need to turn back to our outline ofinstitutions to see how they work in terms of our three questions.

‘Fair shares’ of the most able students?

In both Japan and Britain, university studies in engineering are largely amale preserve. Therefore any comment about the ability levels of studententrants to engineering must be qualified by the caveat that we are speakingalmost wholly of shares of the ability distribution among male students.

One of the historical legacies of Japan’s determined bid for modernisationin the Meiji period was the creation of universities in which engineering hada prominent place. Since the former Imperial universities have retained aprominent place at the head of a pyramid of institutional prestige and havecontinued to have a high proportion of their places in engineering faculties,engineering has been able to attract a high proportion of the more ablestudents.

Another historical legacy in the Japanese educational system has been theemphasis on examinations to regulate passage from one stage to another.Severe competition for entry to university has been a major factor in shapingthe educational system for many years. Some parents have opted for private-sector secondary schooling to secure an easier passage to higher education,particularly where a private secondary school has links to private university.Even parents opting to stay within the public-sector schools are likely toinvest in supplementary ‘cram’ schooling (yobiko) which polish core skillsfor entrance examinations. In the 1980s, applicants to the national and publicuniversities took a common preliminary test (the Joint First Stage AchievementTest) followed by the university’s own test. The First Stage required acompetence across five subject areas of Japanese, mathematics, science, socialstudies and English. Thus applicants, parents and schools could devise astrategy of university applicants to include one or two national universities,a public university and several private universities.


In addition to cram school support, applicants could improve their aim bytaking ‘mock tests’ provided by private testing agencies. These agencies followup the subsequent destinations of clients and provide a guide to universityintake quality. Not only is the public sector of national and public universitiesjudged in a common scale, but the students attempting both national andprivate universities provide comparators across the university system. Someprivate universities used the Joint First Stage Achievement Test too. Withscores on the examination system standardised, the applicants could learntheir personal ‘standard deviation score’ (hensachi). Through the follow-upof past candidates’ destinations they can learn of successes and failures andof the hensachi which would give an 80-percent guarantee of entry to aparticular department. While comparisons across the similar departments ofdifferent universities can give a guide to ability levels of different universities’entrants (and of their relative prestige if we assume that the less constrainedchoices of the more able reflect more general preferences), comparisons ofhensachi across different departments within the same university can throwsome light on the question of whether engineering gets its fair share of themore able students. While medicine ranks clearly at the top by virtue of thehighest scores, the hensachi scores for physics and engineering at the twomost prestigious former Imperial universities of Tokyo and Kyoto werevirtually identical, and physics was only marginally higher at one of the mostprestigious private universities, Waseda. However, the proportion of studentsstudying natural science has been only tiny (3.2 percent) compared toengineering (19.4 percent) in Japanese universities, therefore we can supposethat engineering takes a relatively high proportion of the most able malestudents.

There have been long-standing concerns voiced in Britain that engineeringhas failed to secure its ‘fair’ share of the more able students. In the earlypostwar years, engineering was thought to suffer compared to arts subjects,particularly compared to the prestige attached to classical studies inindependent schools. Later, engineering was compared adversely to naturalscience. Comparisons of ability and performance across the full spectrum ofdiscipline in an age cohort are not particularly useful in Britain since subjectspecialisation in Britain has meant that students have not necessarily carrieda common core of exams and grades across the arts v. science range andtherefore have been noncomparable. Comparisons in the early 1970s showedthat students in degree-level engineering and technology subjects tended tohave lower A-level GCE grades compared to those in physics and chemistrysubjects (Berthoud and Smith 1980:59). Yet comparisons in the 1980s didnot reveal such strong contrasts (McCormick 1988b). However, in contrastto Japan, the proportions studying natural science in Britain have outnumberedthose studying engineering lending some substance to the notion that naturalscience subjects have provided formidable rivalry to engineering studies forable students.


More recent comparisons have contrasted the 1995 entrants to universitystudy in 96 engineering departments with entrants to 98 history departments(Barry, Bosworth and Wilson 1997:64–7). The 9,605 history students withan average A-level points score of 20.3 clearly outscored the engineeringstudents with an average score of 17.5. However, Barry, Bosworth and Wilsonshowed the wide spread of A-level academic ability among engineers wherethe highest A-level requirements were in two of the engineering departments,but many of the engineering departments had students with very low scores(see Table 2.3). The long tail of 37 institutions with an average intake of lessthan 10 A-level points is consistent with the Engineering Council reportsdiscussion cited earlier and lies behind their attempts to limit the number ofinstitutions offering courses leading to Chartered Engineer status.

Is engineering education associated with prestigious institutions?

While some might argue that the prestige of a university lies in the eye of thebeholder and is a matter of idiosyncratic preference, others try to groundjudgements in more systematic evaluations. If we track the institutionalpreferences of the more able students, on the assumption that they have theleast constrained choices, the institution with the highest proportion of ablestudents would come top of the prestige ranking and the pyramid of prestigewould be traced through descending levels of measured ability. Despite manycaveats about the manner in which ability might be measured or about howstudents choose universities, or even whether universities might earn prestigealong dimensions other than student choices, this approach has a good dealof robustness and common sense about it. Using it, we find that the universitiesmost closely linked with engineering studies in Japan tend to be near the topof the prestige rankings whereas those universities most closely associatedwith engineering in Britain have tended to be low in the prestige hierarchy.

Table 2.3 A-level points scores for British entrants to university engineering and history(1995)

Source: Barry, Bosworth and Wilson 1997:65


The emphasis on engineering in the formative period of creating theimperial universities in Meiji Japan has had an enduring legacy. Not all ofthe 461 four-year universities had engineering faculties, yet they existed inwell over half the national universities compared to only 11 percent in thesmaller public universities and less than 20 percent in private universities.This pattern was confirmed by student numbers in 1984: the 43,375 newlyenrolled engineers in private universities formed only 18 percent of all newentrants to private universities whereas the 24,494 new engineers in nationaluniversities represented 28.3 percent of all newly enrolled national universitystudents. Given that only 55 percent of the national universities haveengineering faculties, it is likely that engineering students make up over 30percent of all students in those universities—for example, 38.4 percent atTohoku University, the third of the Meiji-created former Imperial universities(Kerr 1986:307). Indeed the former imperial universities might well havebeen called ‘technological universities’ for the prominence of engineering intheir programmes.

Tables 2.4a and 2.4b show the hensachi scores for public and privateuniversities in 1988 and the clear pre-eminence of the former imperialuniversities and national universities, together with a sprinkling of some verylong-established universities. Updating these tables for the 1990s has becomemore complicated with the reform measures. The Joint Achievement Test hasbeen replaced by the National Centre for University Entrance Examination(NCUEE) and with some universities offering two test opportunities in theyear with different quotas of places on offer at each sitting, we would have totake a weighted average of two scores to establish a mean test score. Moreover,there is a more differentiated curriculum so that we have a further range ofscores. However, Table 2.5 gives the hensachi scores identified by one of themajor test agencies, the Benesse Corporation. These hensachi scores wereestablished from Benesse Corporation July 1996 mock tests for the 1997applicants. After statistical examination of the test results, each candidatewas given a deviation value. The Benesse Corporation followed up theperformance of their test clients in the actual NCUEE entrance exam. Thesehensachi scores represent the 60 percent pass deviation value. For example,60 percent of the candidates of the Benesse mock test who had the deviationvalue of 81 or more had actually passed in the second round of the TokyoUniversity I (S & E) Faculty in 1997. The pattern of hensachi scores suggeststhat the broad character of the university prestige hierarchy based on testscores has remained fairly stable since the early 1980s. The top ten rankeduniversities are still dominated by national universities and include only threeprivate universities. However, a hensachi score of 46, even down to 37, wouldstill secure a university place—

but only in one of the lower ranked universities, dominated entirely byprivate universities.


The distinguished educationist, Amano Ikuo, took a rather differentapproach to the creation of a rank order of prestige, basing it on the degree-granting powers of the universities from doctoral-level to bachelor’s-onlyuniversities. Nevertheless, engineering emerged again in a strong associationwith the more prestigious institutions (Amano 1984). Amano’s fivefoldclassification of universities into ‘research’, ‘doctorate granting 1’ (grantingdoctorates in more than one faculty), ‘doctorate granting 2’ (grantingdoctorates in only one faculty), ‘master granting’ (granting up to master’slevel degrees) and ‘bachelor-level only’ correlated closely with the age ofthe institutions and the more familiar classification by ownership into national,public and private universities; the more prestigious universities tended tohave earlier foundations and national universities tended to featuredisproportionately among the more prestigious institutions. Engineering wasstrongly associated with the more prestigious institutions; against the nationalaverage of 28.4 percent of undergraduate enrolments in engineering and science,

Table 2.4a Hensachi scores for engineering entry to public universities (1988)

Source: Fukutake Shoten (1989)3

Table 2.4b Hensachi scores for engineering entry to private universities (1988)

Source: Fukutake Shoten (1989)3


the research universities had 35.6 percent of their undergraduates in engineeringand science and the bachelor-only universities had only 22.1 percent.

Using the student qualification approach, Berthoud and Smith, in supportingpapers for the Finniston Committee of Inquiry into the Engineering Profession,fashioned a prestige hierarchy for England and Wale which put Oxford andCambridge at the top and the polytechnics at the base (Berthoud and Smith1980:60). The relatively large jumps in mean A-level scores from polytechnicsto former Colleges of Advanced Technology (ex-CATs) to other universities,to London University, and to Oxford and Cambridge suggested a five-foldclassification.

My own approach grouped the 36 English universities (responsible for over80 percent of the UK’s engineers in 1982) into seven types based on their dateof foundation and structure (McCormick 1988b). Yet the picture which emergedwhen the mean A-level scores for engineering students were related to eachtype was broadly consistent with that of the Finniston surveys. With theexceptions of Cambridge and London University, those universities with thelarger concentrations of engineering students tended to be lower in the hierarchyof prestige which ran from ‘collegiate universities’ (Oxford, Cambridge andDurham) through ‘civic universities’ (both the large nineteenth-centuryuniversities associated with the large industrial cities and the more medium-sized early twentieth-century universities associated with cities) to ‘new

Table 2.5 Hensachi scores for entry to science and engineering (1997)

1 Tokyo I, 2 refers to the University of Tokyo, the faculty, and the first or second round of the examwhere the university used two entrance exam opportunities. S, E and B refer to Science, Engineeringand Biology.

2 The university names in italics refer to private universities.

Source: ‘Zenkoku Shuyo 252 Daigaku 465 Gakubu Hensachi (Rikei-hen)’, Sandei Mainichi, 16November 1997 (List of Hensachi Value Rankings of 465 Faculties in 252 Universities in Science andEngineering)


universities’ (largely the creation of 1960s expansion) and technologicaluniversities (the former Colleges of Advanced Technology). However, therewere some interesting differences between the Finniston surveys and my ownresults. First, the improvement in A-level scores among new entrants noted inthe Finniston Report continued so that 1980s students in the samples were onaverage better qualified than those in the 1973–76 samples. Secondly, theimprovement was most marked among the less prestigious institutions so thatthe gulfs between institutions were becoming narrower, save between thecollegiate universities and the rest. Thus the charge that the universities withthe largest commitments to technology (the technological universities) had theleast prestige appeared to be becoming less true.

The elevation of polytechnics to university status has been associated withthe debates about standards in university engineering and entry to the profession.The implications of the Engineering Council discussion of revision of theStandards and Routes to Registration (SARTOR) and the prescription of entrylevels in terms of A-level points are likely to mean the restriction of MEng andBEng honours degrees to fewer institutions and the likelihood that someinstitutions will be restricted to courses of study leading only to ‘IncorporatedEngineer’ status (Brown 1998). However, after surveying the reported averageA-level intake scores among mechanical engineering departments for recentcohorts of engineering entrants, Brown argues that the shakeout amongdepartments of engineering is likely to include some of the larger and oldercivic universities as well as former polytechnic departments (Brown 1998: 47).It is possible that some employers will ignore Engineering Council prescriptionsabout engineering definitions and qualifications or that some prospectivestudents will form a market for non-accredited degree courses. However, thelikely scenarios are that engineering studies will become more concentrated infewer universities. Proponents of the proposed reforms are confident that the6,000-plus numbers applying for the elite-level entry to Chartered Status willbe sustained, and reflect a better balance between the elite Chartered Engineersand the main body of Incorporated Engineers.

A ‘fitting’ engineering curriculum?

Changing our question from ‘does Japan produce more engineers?’ to ‘doesJapan produce better engineers?’ would prove difficult to answer, since wewould have to judge abilities against expectations in employment. Sinceemployers’ expectations have differed in each country, we would be back withsome measure of ‘goodness of fit’. So, although there have been long-standingemployer complaints about excessive specialisation in British education andpraise for the breadth of Japanese education, these comments have to be setagainst the kind of occupational roles found in employment. In Britainoccupational roles are often much narrower than in Japan. If British employerssum up their hopes for graduates in colourful epithets such as ‘self-starters’ or‘people who can hit the ground running’, it is hardly surprising that students


want to focus their efforts narrowly or that educationists will be at pains tointroduce more vocationally relevant elements into the curriculum. Anotherway to answer the question might be to look at the way in which universityengineering courses facilitate later professional development.

We have seen that Japan’s Ministry of Education, Science and Culture(Monbusho) formerly insisted on breadth in the curriculum, and that thisbreadth was not confined to the school system but continued into universitystudy. However, the curriculum reforms initiated in 1989 were intended toremove criticisms that general education was simply repetitious of thesecondary school curriculum, that student subject choice was restricted bycentral patterns of required and elective subjects, that new comprehensivesubjects were needed, and that more small-group activities were needed inthe form of laboratories, practical work and seminars.

Calls for much needed reform in Japanese higher education have beenpredicated on a picture of an ‘uncompetitive university system’ (Sugiura 1995).Behind this image, Sugiura identified three contributory factors: the poor facultystructure, an inadequate infrastructure and an unproductive classroomatmosphere. The structure of the Japanese professoriate has been based on astrong hierarchical career structure which involved much internal recruitmentand little cross-fertilisation across institutions, strong control over subordinates’research by the full professors, and little incentive to try independent paths,given easy tenure once invited. Innovative research has been further crampedby poor physical facilities which ranged from libraries to laboratories andcomputer equipment. Most of the concern with quality control in Japaneseuniversities has been concentrated on the entrance examination, and there hasbeen little output control comparable to the classification system of Britishdegree results. Thus course assessment has often been left to individual facultyinitiative and few tests have been required. Students have been little encouragedto participate in class, nor have they been expected to demonstrate muchinitiative in project work in their early academic careers. In addition to thecurriculum reforms addressed to these problems, another strand of reform hasbeen the encouragement of self-monitoring and self-evaluation in universities(Monbusho 1993:78). Other proposals under consideration includeencouragement to foster open recruitment and graduates from other universitiesor with work experience. However, these changes will occur at the margins ofexisting university staff and take time to work through the existing stock ofuniversity teaching staff. Some of the problems are less acute in engineeringdepartments compared to humanities or social sciences. For example, in manyengineering departments promotion has been based on publications in refereedEnglish-language journals, reflecting the concern especially in elite institutionswith international standards.

Two questions which follow after graduation from engineering courses are:first, do engineering graduates take up engineering employment, and secondly,how does the university study of engineering influence subsequent trainingand career development?


It tends to be assumed that engineering studies are (and should be)vocationally relevant and lead to professional employment in ways that thestudy of, say history, is not necessarily expected to lead to employment as aprofessional historian. Thus, if engineers do not take up engineeringemployment then it is assumed that something is amiss. The growing numberof graduate engineers in Japan who took employment in the financial servicessector, rather than the industrial sector, prompted much debate in industry,universities and government (MITI1989; Muta 1990b). Particular concern wasexpressed about the employment patterns among master’s-course graduatesfrom the engineering and science departments of prestigious universities inTokyo (MITI 1989:9). On the one hand, some industrialists reacted with alarmto the claim that if industry did not get its fair share of the able engineers thenthe future strength and prosperity of Japan’s manufacturing industry might bethreatened. On the other hand, some observers argued that the new trend simplyreflected a maturing economy, where the growth and diversity of employmentopportunities beyond traditional outlets was coupled with technological changeas the financial services sector made increasing use of computers and neededengineers. Events after 1990 notably the Japanese stock market crash, the trailof financial scandals involving major Japanese financial institutions and thesmoothing of the ripples of financial regulation—moderated the trend(Greenlees 1993). However, the underlying trends appear to favour theincreasing attraction of a reformed financial sector in the longer run.

For those who reach employment at professional levels as engineers, thereis the second question of how well that education equipped them with theknowledge and skills to cope and develop their careers in engineering. One ofthe main benefits claimed for university education is the encouragement of thehigher order skills of learning how to learn. Thus criticisms have often beenmade that Japanese university engineering education has been heavily lecture-based, involving excessive ‘book-learning’, prompting little active engagementuntil the third year of ‘professional study’ or the fourth-year graduation thesis(Rawle 1983; Deiters 1992). However, reforms have been directed towardstackling these problems, particularly those concerned with the development ofgraduate schools, in a system where graduate education has been widelydeveloped only in the engineering field. Engineering and science have beensingled out for priority treatment (Monbusho 1995:123). Reform of theregulations covering the passage from undergraduate to master’s and doctoratecourses will speed the arrival of an engineering doctoral graduate into acompany laboratory. The standard timescale of the four-year bachelor’s, two-year master’s, and three-year doctoral course student has meant entry toemployment at age 27 for a typical graduate. It has tended to mean that thedoctoral course has been largely the reserve of intending academics. Whileanother route to a doctorate for industrially based engineers has existed(sometimes attracting praise for the industrially relevant character of worksubmitted for the doctorate) it does little to add young researchers with researchskills and fresh perspectives to industrial R&D. Monbusho has tried to increase


the appeal of doctoral research for graduates and the attractions of doctorategraduates to industry by introducing ‘fast tracks’ to graduation—for example,permitting able third-year bachelor’s students to transfer to master’s coursesand by permitting master’s course students to transfer to a doctoral courseafter one year. After pilot schemes had been introduced at the University ofTokyo, the University Council has recommended that these schemes should beextended to able students in other universities (Monbusho 1995:123–4).However, there is concern that any extension of the ‘fast track’ system shouldbe accompanied by more rigorous and more scrupulous application of coursetests to curb the student search for easy passages (Clark 1998). Other proposedreforms have been aimed at the inertia of university organisation byrecommending that external bodies conduct objective appraisal. Such proposalsfrom the University Council are intended for the national universities in thefirst instance, with the hope that they would be adopted subsequently in privateuniversities. Meanwhile the current distinctions between national and privateuniversities might become blurred if proposals for the transformation of nationaluniversities into autonomous corporations are adopted for 2005 (Atoda 1997).These proposals have been driven more by wider political and financialconsiderations, to streamline ministries and reduce public debt, than academicconsiderations. However, they might facilitate the other efforts to break downinstitutional rigidities in the universities and enable them to develop morestimulating and competitive academic environments.

Meanwhile critiques of the narrowness of British engineering educationhave been associated with admiration for the breadth of Japanese engineeringeducation. The Finniston Committee found deficiencies in both the educationand employment of engineers in Britain: the education system tended toproduce too many introspective and narrowly educated engineers who hadpoor communication skills and narrow conceptions of their role whosubsequently found a narrowly circumscribed employment. Similar commentson the narrowness of engineering curricula and the failure to encouragecommunication skills by either oral discussion or essay work have beenrepeated in other studies (Barry, Bosworth and Wilson 1997:70–4). TheCommittee’s solution was to advocate a conception of the ‘engineeringdimension’ at both the national and company levels. At the national level thisentailed a new body to act as an ‘engine for change’ in engineering and togive a more effective voice for engineering interests than that possible withthe existing professional institutions. It meant an attempt to give an enhancedrole for employers and a somewhat diminished role for professionalinstitutions in the accreditation of engineering courses. At the company levelthe Committee relied on enlightened self-interest guiding companies towardsthe design of more closely integrated operations in which engineeringconsiderations would permeate the company. The government’s response tothe Finniston Report itself in 1980, and the failure to shift from professionalself-regulation to state intervention through the establishment of a statutorybody and national register for professional engineers, has been interpreted


as an indicator of the British political system’s poor capacity for radicalinnovation (Jordan & Richardson 1984). However, these outcomes were notnecessary features of the British political system but reflect a number ofcontingent factors (McCormick 1985).

To some extent the employer complaints can be interpreted as complaintsabout the change in their labour markets and their inability, after the expansionof degree-level studies, to buy in their semi-trained staff with practical skillsfrom the old ‘practical route’ to engineering. In this particular case it hasbeen argued that the expansion of degree study opportunities meant thatstudents switched away from HNC study towards courses leading to a degree;meanwhile the use of traditional universities as models of excellence by theCouncil for National Technological Awards (NCTA) from 1955 to 1964 andthe Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) since 1964 has pulledthese institutions into the traditional mould and failed to compensate for theloss of engineers who previously came through the ‘practical route’. Theuniversity-based Conference of Engineering Professors accepted much ofthis criticism; ‘many students are pursuing engineering degree courses forwhich they are intellectually unsuited. These give them only an uncertaingrasp of the theoretical aspects of engineering science, while failing to equipthem with skills which would be more valuable in professional engineeringpractice’ (CEPC 1978:23).

The extent to which British engineering graduates are lost to industrial careershas been the subject of much speculation. One large-sample survey of recentlygraduated engineers in Britain found that although 70 percent of the respondentsplanned to enter industry, only 35 percent intended to pursue careers asprofessional engineers, and that the factors impeding the choice of engineeringcareers were largely based on direct observation and experience of industry,including disenchantment with assignments and rewards (Industry Ventures1989). Similar reports of mal-utilisation among young engineers have beenfound in other surveys too (Barry, Bosworth and Wilson 1997:92–5).

The social standing of engineers

Curiosity about the relative ‘social standing’ of engineers has been anotherprominent theme of comparative studies of engineers. However, the term ‘socialstanding’ is something of a generic umbrella term covering a variety of socialrewards (from relative monetary rewards to social prestige) and contexts (fromwithin companies to the wider society beyond the workplace). Not surprisingly,social scientists have taken a variety of approaches to study the social standingof engineers. Yet a common underlying notion is how much power and influenceengineers wield in a company or society. Thus, if engineers are highly rewarded,whether in terms of pay or social prestige, then it is assumed that their viewshold sway in boardrooms and debating chambers. Moreover, high rewards willattract the more able of a nation’s talent into their ranks. In the context ofdebates about relative economic rise or decline and the widely acknowledged


role of engineers in those processes, the ‘social standing’ of engineers hasbeen taken up as one of those key indices. Thus, comparisons of where engineersfit into the reward systems of industrial societies have been prompted by boththe intellectual curiosity of sociologists involved in their discipline’s coretradition of studies of social stratification and by more policy-oriented researchon the recruitment and retention of engineering staff. Substantively, it has beenwidely assumed that Japanese engineers enjoy high social standing and oftenasserted that British engineers suffer low social standing.

The alleged low social standing has been pictured as both the cause andconsequence of Britain’s long-standing relative economic decline: low rewardsreflect the poor regard for British engineers by industry and society, the moreable tend to be attracted to the better rewarded professions, engineering failsto secure its fair share of talent and a less talented profession fails to secure amore successful industry and its just rewards. This portrayal of lowly esteemhas become almost axiomatic in accounts of British engineers. It is oftenmatched by wistful glances at engineers in other countries and coupled withsome wishful thinking. In the 1980s, earlier comparisons with engineers inWestern Europe gave way to comparisons with Japan. Thus against the lowsalary, status and career prospects of British engineers, we were offered imagesof the high salary, status and career prospects of Japanese engineers. Coupledwith the alleged prominence of engineering studies in the Japanese educationalsystem, the picture was one of Japanese engineers rising on a virtuous circle inJapan contrasted to British engineers trapped in a vicious circle.

A further Government policy is education. Japan places a heavy emphasison all aspects of applied science and engineering. Over half of her 601universities are dedicated to science and engineering. This is matched bycorrespondingly high salary, status and career prospects for engineeringgraduates. In Britain there have been some moves in this direction butthey are at best, half-hearted.

(Lawrence and Lee 1984:184)

However, these bold images of both countries begin to fade when subjectedto precise scrutiny. The examination of Japanese higher education did not reveal600 universities, nor was there much evidence that half of the 465 identifiableuniversities were in any sense ‘dedicated’ to science and engineering. In theexaminations of pay, prestige and careers, Japanese engineers did not appearto have enjoyed historically higher relative rewards compared to graduateswith educational backgrounds in law or economics. Even in more recent paycomparability surveys in Japan (Chapter 5), private-sector engineers were notdistinguished by relatively high rewards. Whether the focus is put on startingsalaries or life-time earnings, surveys fail to support the notion of engineeringas a particularly favoured promotion path or route to high earnings differentialsin Japan (Kinmonth 1986:400–3). Attitude surveys among engineers revealthat, while the Japanese engineers are almost unanimous in feeling that they


have made a significant contribution to the development of Japanese society,the majority of engineers feel that their rewards are not commensurate withtheir contribution (Okubayashi 1989:30–1). Using a large survey of graduatesfrom a university engineering department, Okubayashi found that over half ofhis sample of engineers perceived that ‘chartered accountants’ enjoyed a highersocial status than engineers and only a small minority thought that engineershad a higher social status (Okubayashi 1989:32–3). When the focus was puton rewards within companies, a quarter of the engineers saw their rate ofremuneration and career progress as lower than that of non-engineeringgraduates in white-collar company roles, while over half of the engineersthought that they had similar rates of remuneration and career progress. Onlya tiny percentage of the engineers felt that they had higher rates of pay andprogress.

Discussions of the social status of British engineers are often treated tomuch anecdote and little precision regarding both ‘engineer’ and ‘society’.However, Okubayashi’s survey gave a clue to a more precise target for Britishengineers’ complaints when he distinguished between social status in the widersociety and social status within the company. In the company, he found thatJapanese engineers tended to feel that their opinions were taken seriously intop management, and that engineers in production departments were even morepositive in their responses than those in R&D departments. Moreover, Japaneseengineers tended to have close contact with blue-collar workers in terms offrequency of communications, but, more importantly, they held very positiveviews of blue-collar workers as co-workers, and he concluded that this closerelationship had facilitated the design of flexible working systems in Japaneseindustry.

However, if Japanese engineers have not enjoyed all of the high rewardsand social standing which some British observers have supposed, have Britain’sengineers suffered the low rewards and social status? In Chapter 1, there wasevidence of a long history of commentaries on the low social status of Britishengineers, attributing it variously to the persistence of pre-industrial culture,the timing of industrialisation, the successful capture of the educational systemby anti-industrial literary intellectuals, the opposition of craft unions, and soon (Landes 1966; Weiner 1981; Barnett 1977, 1986; Glover and Kelly 1987).However, these observers have not had it all their own way. Other observershave argued that far from a uniformly low social status throughout Britain’sindustrialisation, we have to explain the rise and subsequent fall of engineers.Two rather different versions of this approach both implicate engineers in theirown downfall. In one version, engineers oversold their wares—particularlyelectricity in the late nineteenth century—and suffered public disenchantment,while in the other version, engineers proliferated their representative institutionsand their divided house fell (Cardwell 1972; Watson 1976). Even the argumentthat British engineers have lacked championship by the state has been sharplyrebuked by Edgerton’s account of the Ministry of Supply and the aircraftindustry (Edgerton 1991, 1996). Whatever the validity of the earlier images of


the engineer as the Cinderella of British industry, there was evidence of a moreupbeat situation emerging in the early 1980s, continued in the 1990s.

Although there had been a lengthy litany of surveys reciting the low socialstanding of British engineers (Gerstl and Hutton 1966; Fores 1971, 1973), therewas evidence of improving career prospects and rewards in the late 1970s.Two central problems in the surveys—the extent to which pay surveys usedmatched properly matched samples and their interpretation—have beenvigorously debated (Child, Fores, Glover, and Lawrence 1983, 1986;McCormick 1985, 1986b). My own view is that some observers had becometoo deeply attached to the traditional images and unmindful of change amongengineers, changes affecting even those engineers working in the productionareas alleged to be the most maligned by a hostile British culture. Salary surveyscommissioned by the Committee of Inquiry into the Engineering Professionunder the chairmanship of Sir Monty Finniston showed clear evidence of animproving situation for engineers in production, while further corroborationcame in the salary surveys of the Council of Engineering Institutions(McCormick 1986b: 615–17). More recent surveys have added furtherchallenging evidence for the ‘low status thesis’. The 1997 Engineering Councilsurvey shows an engineering profession very much at ease with the image andsubstance of the engineering profession, with engineers ready to recommendengineering careers to their children (Engineering Council 1997). The notionthat ‘accountants run British industry’ and that engineers are blocked fromaccess to top management has been doubly challenged by economists’ analysesof industrial careers and economic performance (Barry, Bosworth, and Wilson1997). In their survey of British manufacturing industry, Barry, Bosworth andWilson distinguished between the ‘unqualified’ and ‘qualified’ managers. Whilehalf of the managers proved to be unqualified, that half of the managers whowere ‘qualified’ were further distinguished into ‘qualified scientists, engineersand technologists’, ‘qualified accountants’ and ‘other’ (or non-technicalgraduates). The QSETs (‘qualified scientists, engineers or technologists’)outnumbered the accountants among the 43,000 top executives by a ratio ofapproximately three to one. However, two stings in the tail of the report were:first, there has been a more rapid increase in the proportion of qualifiedexecutives who were accountants, and second, that companies headed byaccountants outperformed companies headed by scientists, engineers, andtechnologists, not just on financial indictors but on operational indicators too.Such findings do not give succour to those who argue that more engineers areneeded to transform British industry. Insofar as companies are beginning tofavour accountants, the performance evidence suggests that rational argumentis on their side.

The capacity of engineers to transform capitalist industrialism has been along-standing interest of sociologists, back to Veblen’s critique of profligatewaste in capitalism (Veblen 1921). The issue has been approached throughstudies of the location of engineers in the class structures of industrial societies.Emphasis has usually been put on the ambiguities of the engineers’ position


between capital and labour. On balance, studies have tended to portray engineersas identifying themselves with managers, the agents of capital.

The investigations and debates on the class location of engineers in Japanhave largely been conducted within a classical Marxian framework document.These accounts of social stratification in Japan demonstrate the striking changesin Japanese society and the rapid nature of those developments since 1955.The ‘peasantry’ (47 percent) was more than double the size of the ‘workingclass’ (23 percent) in the labour force in 1935 (Ohashi 1971:23). Despite thelarge movements of labour into factory production during the war and thechanges in agricultural production following land reform under the occupation,the peasantry still outnumbered the working class in 1950 (Morioka 1989:142). Yet with the burgeoning economic growth after 1955 the peasantry’s sharein the labour force fell from 37.7 percent in 1955 to 8.3 percent in 1985. Onthe other hand the share of the working class climbed up from 43.6 percent in1955 to 69.4 percent in 1985 (Morioka 1989). In very broad terms, Ohashi’ssocial statistics illustrate the transformation of Japan in the post-war periodinto an industrial economy with a waged labour force. However Ohashi’streatment of engineers proved controversial because he put engineers alongwith other professional and technical workers into the ‘working class’ as partof the ‘labour aristocracy’.

The numbers of professional and technical workers in the employed labourforce grew from 1,906,000 (4.8 percent) in 1955 to 6,097,000 in 1985 (10.5percent). Although the absolute numbers of craftsmen and production workersincreased over the same period (from 9,488,000 to 18,127,000), they fell overthe 1970 to 1985 period as a proportion of the labour force from 32.2 to 31.2percent of the labour force. Projections of the labour force to 2000 suggestthat the professional and technical labour force will continue to grow markedly.Within the census category of ‘professional and technical workers’, theengineers were the second largest group, after the medical and health workers.Over the years between 1970 and 1985 the number of engineers increasedfrom 701,040 to 1,444,900.

In contrast to Ohashi, but still within the Marxian tradition of class analysis,Steven re-worked the census data using a ‘middle class’ of those in contradictoryclass locations. In Steven’s analysis, the hallmarks of ‘technocrat’s’ involvementin the capitalist production process are their possession of above-average skillswhich enable them to gain more control of their own work situation and toparticipate in the control of the work situation of others (Steven 1983:124–5).Drawing on his own fieldwork survey Steven noted the problems in assigningthe graduate-level technocrats to class locations when the majority heldsupervisory responsibilities by the age of 30 (Steven 1983:135). Thus Stevenconcluded that it was ‘almost impossible to separate technocratic control overthe means of production from the managerial hierarchy’ (Steven 1983:136).Using a battery of questions about the control of labour power, participation indecision-making, and abilities required of their rank Steven determined thatall those at or above the rank of supervisor (shunin) should be assigned to the


bourgeoisie or capitalist class, a long way down the managerial hierarchy(Steven 1979:8).

Where Steven was critical of Ohashi’s over-generous assignment of engineersto an over-large ‘working class’, Morioka was critical of Steven’s over-generousassignment of engineers to the ‘capitalist class’ (Morioka 1989:157–8). Moriokaargued for a significant break-point at section manager (kacho) since belowthat level engineers in the managerial hierarchy would have little discretion inentertainment allowances or participation in capital accumulation. Using surveydata on compensation in private industry by occupation, Morioka sees thedivision manager (kakaricho) and supervisor (shunin) as much closer to thelabour aristocracy of the working class than Steven.

Despite their inclusion of information on authority relations, on decision-making and on rewards which shed light on class relations at the point ofproduction, the Steven and Morioka analyses are essentially static and neglectthe dynamic element introduced by considerations of context and career. Thusanticipation of career promotion and ascent in the managerial hierarchyconditions the conduct and aspirations of graduate engineers on entry to thecorporation. Graduate engineers emerge from an educational system whichemphasises theoretical knowledge and de-emphasises practical problems andspecialist identifications. They pass through engineering assignments inemployment on their way to the managerial ranks in an employment systemwhich has cultivated continuous training and the exchange of benevolence forloyalty. The career line provides the temporal thread of continuity betweenengineers’ and managers’ interests which is overlooked in more static analyses.Of course, there may be occasions and contexts in which feelings of ‘them’versus ‘us’ might be expressed in the language of a ‘class’ or an occupationalgroup, for example in the heady excitement of the annual wage round bargaining(shunto). However, the prospects for a serious and sustained critique of thecapitalist organisation of production are distinctly limited.

Other studies of engineers in the stratification systems of industrial societieshave owed more to Weber than Marx. The Columbia University team ofresearchers focused on two kinds of industry (‘low technology’ and ‘hightechnology’) and three countries (France, Britain and the US) (Silver, Zussman,Whalley and Crawford 1979). Their inquiry was stimulated by the contrastbetween two different approaches to the new technical stratum. On the onehand, the functionalist or liberal ‘professional model’ viewed the engineer-employer conflict in terms of the professionals’ stress on autonomy for technicaljudgement versus the employers’ stress on bureaucratic authority. On the otherhand, the ‘new working-class model’ viewed conflict in terms of thecosmopolitan commitments of technical workers versus the bureaucraticdemands of capitalist enterprise, and saw engineers as a new potential challengeto capitalism. Within each country, the Columbia researchers put a strongemphasis on authority at the point of production to explore the differentperspectives, selecting one company in the older metal-working industry(typified by small ratios of engineers to other employees and low levels of


R&D) and another in the electronics industry (with high ratios of engineersand high levels of R&D). At each site, the researchers interviewedapproximately 40 engineers, conducted field observation and gatheredcontextual information on the companies. In the British study, Whalley foundthat engineers in Computagraph, the high technology site, characteristicallywere often recruited from the external labour market, worked in teams, enjoyedhigh status and pay, were involved in their work, and watched the externallabour market for nature career opportunities. By contrast, engineers in Metalco,the low technology site, could be drawn through an internal labour market thatpermitted skilled manual workers to advance into more advanced technicalroles and management and, characteristically, they had less autonomy, lowerpay and status. However, engineers in both sites identified with companies andhad little solidarity with manual workers (Whalley 1986:148–50). Whalleyconcluded that engineers were part of the ‘service class’, although he preferredhis own terminology of ‘trusted workers’ for those who exercised a high levelof discretion, were paid monthly salaries, and enjoyed relatively secure positionswith the prospects of careers. In looking at the contrasts between the Britishengineers with their American and French counterparts, Whalley emphasisedthe strength of employer control over the system of recruitment and training ofBritish engineers, whether the new entrants come as school-leavers and enterthe mix of employment and part-time education or as graduates into low-leveltechnical job (ibid.: 187). The uncertain public image of engineers in Britainwas attributed to the low differentiation from other technical workers, whileengineers were seen as belonging to the same labour market as managers. Bycontrast, French engineers were more sharply distinguished by their educationin elite engineering schools and their entry to a career in the cadre. Thus Frenchengineers began their careers higher up the ladder, typically supervisingtechnicians, and with better long-term prospects than British engineers (Whalley1986:188–90; Crawford 1989). The American system was mid-way betweenthe French and British, for although positions were more strictly bounded thanin Britain, mobility could be achieved through education courses andqualifications (Whalley 1986: 190–1; Zussman 1985). Whalley traced thesedifferences in the organisation of engineering recruitment and careers to thehistorical context and terms on which employers in the three countries hadbeen able to recruit their engineers as ‘trusted employees’. In France, earlystate support for elite engineering institutions with their theoretically orientedcurricula encouraged recruits from the middle class, whose background meantthat they could be trusted. In the US, employer influence over the professionalengineering school produced curricula infused with business values andpractical orientations. Unable to secure broad middle-class support, Whalleyargues that British employers used in-house education and training schemes tosecure their ‘trusted’ engineers, and so retained an emphasis on the ‘craft’ model.However, Whalley conceded that the expansion of the educational route intoengineering was producing change and an erosion of this craft tradition (Whalley1986:197–8).


Conclusions

Three problems can follow from the exaggerated quantitative comparisons inbuilding national league tables of engineers. First, alarmist comparisons canlead to precipitate and ill-considered policies. Secondly, setting Japan up as aquarry for stones to throw in domestic arguments can lead to neglect of reformdebates in Japan and likely changes in the role model. Thirdly, in the longerrun, the exposure of inflated claims can discredit all comparison with Japanand, in throwing out the baby with the bath water, risk losing some of the moreinteresting comparisons.

When Japan’s economic growth first provoked the attention of interest groupsin the Western economies, the results were akin to ‘moral panic’ withexaggerated claims for the education system’s output of engineers. Japan wasrapidly put to the top of the international league tables of engineers and usedas a stick to beat governments and education systems for industrial andeconomic failings. Despite their dubious basis, some of the early and wildcomparisons appear to have been used to dramatic effect to influence educationpolicy—for example, in the ‘switch policy’ to boost engineering places inuniversities and polytechnics in Britain. However, over time, Japan appears tohave been treated to more careful scrutiny, partly because the early claimswere easy to deflate and partly because government statisticians had intereststo defend. The result has been to move attention to a range of questions aboutmore qualitative aspects of comparing the output of engineers from educationsystems.

Nevertheless, before leaving the narrow numerical comparisons, it is worthreaffirming the awesome aspects of growth in Japan’s post-war educationsystem. Producing double the number of British engineers per head ofpopulation has been an impressive achievement. It was not done at the expenseof squeezing arts and social studies numbers. It was done by moving to a masshigher education system and carrying ever larger proportions of the age groupon to higher stages of education. The large absolute numbers of engineers arethe outcome (and modest proportion) of a very large system. Moreover, despitequibbles about the maintenance of quality in universities and junior colleges,there has been little doubt about the quality of students performance whenjudged in international comparisons of school-age students.

However, there are two related aspects to note in the qualitative comparisons.Engineering education has been strongly associated with the more prestigiousinstitutions in Japan and it has attracted a relatively high proportion of themore able male students. This combination should not lead us to assume thatengineering per se attracts the more able students. It might just mean thatstudying engineering simply maximises one’s chances of entering a moreprestigious university.

One of the most striking contrasts between the two different national systemsfor producing engineers is evident in the British concern with social prestige,reflected in the concern with standards in university education, and the role of


the professional associations in pressing reform. In Japan, the prestige ofuniversities and departments is left to the workings of the education and labourmarkets. The professional associations hold no role in course accreditationand no sanction over individual engineers in registration. Ultimately, whilethere is a discussion of elite and mainstream engineers in terms of educationalstandards of master’s and bachelor’s degrees, the determination of anoccupational elite rests with employers.

One attractive feature of the Japanese system to overseas observers has beenthe apparent broad agreement on the division of labour between academicsand employers on respective responsibilities for education and training.Allowing educators to concentrate on cognitive skills permitted a broadcurriculum which laid a base for subsequent industrial training. However, Japanhas been changing. The University Council, established in 1987, has severalreports urging reform at both undergraduate and graduate levels. The mainreforms at undergraduate level have been the attempts to generate more pluraladmissions criteria for university entry and the abolition of the regulations onsubject areas. The removal of the requirements for general education, foreignlanguages and physical education will leave universities free to devise theirown curricula. How they will exercise their new discretion will be matters forfuture research. At graduate level, reforms have been aimed at achieving greaterdegrees of flexibility in graduate schools—for example, in the purpose,admission criteria and duration of study. It remains to be seen whether thepossibilities to expand ‘professional studies’ and to develop ‘fast track’ routesto postgraduate degrees will be readily taken up across Japan’s universitiesand whether they will have the result that a greater proportion of Japan’sengineers will have a pattern of engineering education more similar to that inBritain than in the past.

Notes

1 ‘Honours’ degrees in British universities are often contrasted with ‘pass’, ‘ordinary’ or ‘general’degrees, where these three latter terms are treated as synonymous. The main feature of the ‘honours’degree is the higher level of specialisation than in the pass degree. The award does not reflecthigh marks but a distinctive course with a high level of specialisation, usually entered at theoutset or at the end of the first year. Candidates for honours degrees are graded into classes ofdegree on the basis of marks, while no grading is put on the pass degree. Thus the aim of theEngineering Council is to counteract the alleged ‘grade inflation’ by setting intake quality standardsin addition to a requirement for a specified level of honours degree for membership.

2 The ‘points’ are a numerical conversion of the grades awarded on the Advanced level of theGeneral Certificate of Education (GCE A-level). The points scores for the letter grades are: A=10; B=8; C=6; D=4; E=2. Thus a score of 24 could be achieved by three grade-B passes oranother combination.

3 Fukutake Shoten is a distinguished publisher of educational materials and organiser of educationalprojects, including prepatory seminars and classes for university entrance examinations. The fulltable of university hensachi scores is included in company publications as a guide for potentialclients.

3 Engineers and the lifetimeemployment system

‘…the evidence indicates that the price paid by the Japanese for OJT and the greatcommitment they make to communication requires them to employ at least twice asmany development engineers, for any particular purpose, compared to a British company.’

(Lorriman 1986:576)

Introduction

Do Japanese companies invest more in training their engineers than Britishcompanies? What difference does the lifetime employment system make to theeducation and training of engineers? Interest in answers to these questions grewrapidly in Britain in the 1980s as part of attempts to address the complaints thatBritish companies invested too little in training their labour force and that poorlevels of knowledge and skills were important factors in the relatively disappointingeconomic performance of the British economy. It was widely expected that Japanesecompanies would be found to invest more in training, and the ready explanationwas that Japanese companies would invest more in their employees since theywould recoup the benefits from lifetime employees. On closer inspection, however,many of these discussions turned out to be circular re-statements of what werelargely assumed to be self-evident truths. It was largely an article of faith thatJapanese companies would spend more on training their employees than their Britishcounterparts (Gregory 1984:53; Coopers and Lybrand 1985). This air of plausibilitywas logically consistent with the success of Japanese companies in world marketsfor manufactured goods and what was known of the ‘lifetime employment’ system(IMS 1984; Handy 1987). It seemed intuitively obvious that employers wouldinvest more in employee skill development if they could be confident that theywould harvest the fruits of their investment. Yet attempts to test the proposition ofgreater investment and to document these international differences found thatJapanese companies recorded smaller training budgets and lower expenditures thantheir British counterparts (Dore and Sako 1987; Wersky 1986). So, if the intuitivelyobvious answer is not borne out by the available evidence, where does one turn foran explanation of the links between company training and employment systems?


One pointer, quoted above, from John Lorriman, is to look beyond the trainingbudget at the payroll. There, Lorriman contended that, for any given task, theJapanese companies would have to simply employ more people in order to covertheir favoured ‘on-the-job training’ (o-j-t). Unfortunately, Lorriman did not giveus any detailed comparative examples of tasks or analyses of labour budgets. Inthe fuller report of his visit to Japan, he only referred to conversations with Japaneseengineers and managers. The matter is just left as one of impressions, albeit thoseof an experienced British engineer and training manager from one of Britain’slargest electronics companies. However, although Lorriman did not give tangibleevidence of employment effects, his comments were useful hints at likely answersto the opening questions about relative investment in training. One needs to goback a step and re-think the nature and purpose of training in the context of adifferent employment system. If much of the training provision comes in the formof on-the-job training where it is difficult to distinguish training from job instructionand to assign costs, then one must examine the more qualitative indicators andexamine the interaction between training and several other aspects of business andemployment strategy. Once the differences in employment systems areacknowledged, we can see why differences in training effort will not be revealedby differences in training budgets (Dore and Sako 1987:60–1).

In arguing that the lifetime employment system has had a significant influenceon the way in which Japanese corporations develop their graduate-level engineeringmanpower resources, I want to advance the following propositions: • The lifetime employment system has had a major impact on the recruitment

and selection policies of companies. In particular, I shall argue that the systemencourages the concentration on entry ports to the companies immediately aftergraduation, a preoccupation with potential for development rather than readilyapplicable skills, the use of the educational system as a filter to identify suchpotential, and attempts to develop long-running relations with universities aspart of the recruitment process.

• The lifetime employment system has shaped the locus, content, mode, andagencies of training and employee development. Here I shall argue that thesystem emphasises a preoccupation with company-specific knowledge and skillsand hence a preoccupation with in-house training, that it lays stress on theimportance of making new recruits into company members and hence it laysstress on organisational skills, that it uses on-the-job training as the main modeof training and that it uses line managers as major agents in human resourcemanagement.

• The lifetime employment system has deeply influenced the pay and promotionsystem in the large Japanese corporation. Here I shall point up the links betweenthe lifetime employment system and the weight attached to seniority in the paysystem and the links with the rank promotion system.

• The lifetime employment system has reinforced the business strategies of thelarge Japanese corporations. In particular I shall argue that the commitment to

Engineers and the lifetime employment system 83

the principle provided a very strong stimulus to the strategies of organic growthand innovation.

The lifetime employment system

Most attention to the impact of the lifetime employment system on skill developmenthas tended to assume that its main impact has been to generate a larger volume oftraining and skill development without looking closely at its impact on the natureof training philosophy and practice. Before taking up these issues the character ofthe lifetime employment system must be clarified.

Lifetime employment has not meant ‘employment for life’ nor did ‘system’mean that all Japanese workers operated within its terms. The concept has causedsuch confusion that some have preferred ‘long-term employment’ rather than‘lifetime employment’ (Trevor 1983:37). The terms are not specified in any contractfor that would offend against earlier rejections of feudalism, rather they exist as amoral expectation of loyalty in exchange for benevolence. The terms and coveragehave not been static but have changed over time (Fruin 1978:273). Currently wecan say that the lifetime employment system means entry to employment directlyon graduation from school or college, a strong moral expectation of employmentfrom that sole employer until retirement, continual training, and mandatoryretirement at 60, after the increase of mandatory company retirement from 55 to60 (Inagami 1983). In the 1980s, lifetime employment covered about 85 percentof the labour force in a large corporation and at most 30 percent of the total nationallabour force. While some British company recruitment brochures have advertisedopportunities for long-term careers, in Japan a sufficient proportion of the labourforce has enjoyed the expectation of lifetime employment to justify speaking of a‘Japanese Employment System’. Moreover the small firms, which have found thepractice difficult, have recognised lifetime employment as a norm to which theyaspired.

The argument about the impact of the lifetime employment system on trainingcan be illustrated by material drawn from literature surveys and interviews withpersonnel, training and engineering managers in 15 Japanese companies andinterviews with researchers in universities and government departments concernedwith education, training and employment in the autumn of 1984. This materialwas compared and contrasted with a parallel set of interviews with personnel,training and engineering managers in nine British companies in the summer of1984. These interviews in companies ranging across the electronics, process andengineering industries focused on how the company human-resource strategiesinteracted with company business strategies in a dynamic situation (see Table 3.1).Table 3.1 illustrates the variety of Japanese companies in terms of industry, scaleof activity and R&D intensity (from the research-intensive electronics to the publicutilities), and recent financial experience (from the successful electronics companiesto the ailing chemical companies in the process sector).

Tabl

e 3.

1 Fi

nanc

ial s

truc

ture

s, c

ompa

ny p

erfo

rman

ce a

nd la

bour

for

ce d

ata

for

a sa

mpl

e of

Jap

anes

e co

mpa

nies

1 G

radu

ate

engi

neer

s.2

Fina

ncia

l da

ta f

or A

, G a

nd H

are

for

198

3.

Sour

ces:

Shi

npos

ha (

1984

); A

nnua

l R

epor

ts;

Com

pany

Int

ervi

ews


Already by the 1980s, there were strong pressures which were underminingthe capacity of companies to sustain the expectations associated with the lifetimeemployment system. These pressures have become more pronounced in the1990s. On the one hand the ageing of the labour force makes seniority-basedwages more expensive to bear, and on the other hand trade friction constrainsthe possibilities for continuing growth and promotion. As Japan has reachedthe technological frontiers in some areas and expanded the base there arepressures for a different pattern of career development, closer in style to thatavailable in the large British companies. These are issues to which we shallreturn after outlining the links between lifetime employment and the trainingof engineers in the recent past.

Recruitment and selection

The main implications of the lifetime employment system for the regularemployees of large corporations have been to: • heighten the importance of recruitment at the entry posts to the company

from the educational system• encourage a long-term perspective on recruits so that they are selected on

the basis of their potential contribution rather than their currently employableknowledge and skills

• favour the use of educational qualifications as important indices of thecapacity for learning and skill development

• facilitate the development of long-term relations between the recruiters (thecompanies) and the providers of graduate manpower (the universityprofessors).

A further consequence of the lifetime employment and the heightenedimportance of recruitment, selection, and training has been to make thepersonnel department into ‘one of the most powerful and prestigiousdepartments in a typical Japanese corporation’ (Pucik 1985:16).

In a system which has emphasised the immobility of regular employees,recruitment to the large corporations came to focus on the graduation pointsfrom the educational system. With the enormous expansion of the participationrates in the 1960s and 1970s only 5–6 percent of the age group became availableat the end of compulsory school-leaving at 15; as a result recruitment isconcentrated on the upper secondary school, the five-year technical college,and the four-year university. The scale of this regular annual activity is illustratedby the figures for the electronics company E (Table 3.1). This company recruited850 male graduates mainly from the national universities and leading privateuniversities and 80 percent of these recruits came from engineering and sciencebackgrounds. In addition they recruited a further 200 female graduates fromthe four-year universities and two-year junior colleges, mainly from scientificand engineering backgrounds, for work in software engineering. They recruited


a further 150 male engineering and science graduates from the five-yeartechnical colleges—that is, students who had completed the equivalent of thethree years of secondary schooling and two years of junior college within atechnical college. At the most junior level, that is among 18-year-olds, 500male graduates were recruited mainly from the technical streams of uppersecondary school. This scale of recruitment among 18-year-olds was unusualfor a large company since it was more usually delegated to affiliates whichundertake more of the production activities. Another unusual feature of thiscompany’s recruitment was the additional 100 experienced recruits for graduate-level posts. This aspect was attributed to business pressure in the electronicssector and the company’s success and growth. However it was regarded verymuch as a second-best option and the main disadvantage of mid-careerrecruitment was alleged to be the lack of control over quality compared to therecruitment of a fairly standard product among new graduates. This diffidenceabout external recruitment was illustrated in company J, a glassmaker, whichhad 200 engineers and scientists working in two R&D laboratories and whichhas an annual recruitment of 50 engineers and scientists (30 for R&D, 10 forproduct development, and 10 for production engineering in the productiondivisions). Despite the anxiety of this long-established company to develop itsR&D capacity, it had to be done in a manner consistent with company traditions.

One important change in the last few years has been the recruitment ofexperienced people. We expect 10 people in R&D this year and 20 morenext year. The aim is to minimise the time it takes to develop new R&D.Among the new university graduates the pattern is changing, in the pastit used to be non-organic chemists with few electrical engineers andphysicists whereas now we want organic chemists, electronics engineers,physicists and some other scientists. It might be possible to recruit fromthe aluminium company in the Group, since they are in difficulties.Recruitment from external sources or outside the Group is very sensitive.The people coming must bring no problems for us in relation with othercompanies. I do not think that the company would engage in aggressivemarketing for staff.

(Personnel Manager, Company J)

External recruitment brings not only the internal problems of kitting therecruit with local knowledge in a system organised around internal labourmarkets and a seniority pay system, but also fears of the acrimony betweencompanies which would flow from head-hunting. Nevertheless, the needs tobuild R&D capabilities, to undertake diversification programmes, and to recruitin shortage areas are prompting companies, such as the ceramics company (Kin Table 3.1), to declare their new external recruitment policies in their annualreports.


In addition to yearly scheduled recruitment of college graduates, thecompany intends to welcome capable technical minds from othercorporations and research laboratories in order to enrich the company’sresearch and development capability.

(Annual reports, Company K)

Lifetime employment means that the potential for development among recruitsis of far more importance than evidence of readily applicable skills. This impliesacceptance by companies of a much sharper division of labour between companiesand universities, with universities concentrating on the fundamentals of engineeringin the context of general education and the provision of training by the companies.The pattern of engineering education in the four-year universities has borne a strongresemblance to the American pattern. Such similarities are not surprising given thedetermination of the US occupation to democratise education through openingaccess and emphasising general education for citizenship and the subsequent visitsof American engineering educators as advisers (Hazen 1952; Dees 1997). However,the academic streams were becoming more general in the pre-war school system.There was some employer concern about vocationalism in Japan in the 1960s andthis prompted the creation of over 60 five-year technical colleges; subsequentlythe state created two more vocationally biased universities to provide more peakinstitutions for the technical stream. In the 1980s, Toyota created an industrialcollege to take only students with work experience. The point of these exampleslies mainly in their claims to be unique in swimming against the overwhelmingtide of Japanese higher education. The difficulties were so formidable that ToyotaTechnical Institute subsequently modified its recruitment policy to admit seniorhigh-school leavers without industrial experience. For most of these companiesthe main purpose of graduate recruitment even of engineers and scientists hasbeen to fill the ranks of company management. Graduate scientists and engineerswere expected to transfer into management posts in R&D or other functions duringtheir forties. Although this pattern may be changing in the electronics and chemicalcompanies the traditional pattern was still evident in the gas utility, company O(Table 3.1).

The graduates are considered essential for the responsible positions in thecompany—they are the cadre of the company. They are promoted tomanagement and therefore very few are going to be specialists in R&D forlife. They spend their time going back and forth between operations.

(Personnel Manager, Company O) The importance of potential rather than actual skills is further underlined by thestress in recruitment criteria on social acceptability and the ability to work in teamsand by the delay of allocations to first work assignments until completion of asubstantial part of the training programme. For example, in company B, with anannual recruitment of 700 to 800 graduate engineers and scientists, there was little


expectation of links between courses and projects at the bachelor’s level and earlywork assignments.

At the Bachelor level what is learned is very basic and carries very littleimplication for early assignments. We do not allocate them to specific jobassignments until after six months and they are still within the two-yeartraining programme. The Master’s level people enter the same trainingprogramme but we would expect more of their experience to be directlyuseful, perhaps a 30 percent connection. The Doctor Engineer is differentwhere research is much more important and we will recruit from 20 to 30 atDoctor level each year.

(Engineering Manager, Company B)

The use of educational qualifications as a means of occupational selection meantthat a fiercely competitive approach developed in the highly selective educationalsystem of the 1920s and 1930s (Passin 1965). The democratisation of access tohigher education advanced by the US occupation in the 1940s and the educationalexpansion of the 1960s did not reduce the competition but translated the competitionon to a much larger scale in a mass higher education system. The glittering prize ofentry to the lifetime employment system remains the driving force of an educationalsystem which produces between two and two-and-a-half times as many graduateengineers per head of population as Britain and which appears to draw on a higherproportion of the more academically able male students than Britain. Companieshave traditionally conceived the role of Japanese universities as essentially suppliersof manpower and rather than as suppliers of research. With democratisation after1945 there has been a widespread belief that the examination system has beenmeritocratic (Rohlen 1983). Confidence in the efficacy of the educational systemas a talent sorting system has reinforced the tradition of the most prestigiouscompanies recruiting at the most prestigious universities with second-rankcompanies recruiting at second-rank universities, and so on. In a system where theuniversities have operated as talent filters, complaints are not straightforwardcomplaints about shortages by discipline or specialism but shortages by universitysince the university has been the guide to skill level.

We know the relative difficulty of getting into a particular university becausethere is a uniform entry qualification to get into a national university. For Xuniversity we know that they need an 80 percent score in mathematics andthat is one kind of assurance. We know that if they have a good academicperformance they have some ability.

(Engineering Manager, Company M) Thus in company L, a company manufacturing components for the auto industry(Table 3.1), there was a strong reluctance to move down the university qualityranking in order to recruit shortage disciplines. Companies are trying various kinds


of substitution within the given ability band, for example substituting women formen in software engineering.

We do not specify the numbers rigidly by specialism because the supply isfixed. There are about 70,000 engineers each year and all the other companiesare competing for them. The Japanese universities are ranked into five groups.We try to recruit from the top two groups which produce about 12,000 of thetotal output of engineers. Sometimes we go down the universities but notmuch. In the software area the shortage is most acute so we try to increasethe number of women, both engineers and nonengineers. They are mostly atBachelor level, for example there are 60 this year (1984) of whom 40 are insoftware.

(Engineering Manager, Company L)

The sense in which supply is fixed stems in part from the inertia of the traditionalpecking order of universities, the better funding, facilities and staff-student ratiosof the national universities, and the difficulties in moving resources within thesystem from declining to growth areas. In addition, inelasticities in supply stemfrom the peculiarities of the long-term supply relationships which companies seekwith universities and the pivotal role of professors in allocating students tocompanies (Azumi 1969). These large companies used to operate a system of‘designated universities’ but this roused objections from the private universitiesand the Ministry of Labour on the grounds of equality of opportunity. Formally atleast anyone can now apply to any company. However, invitations or ‘bids’ aresent to the university engineering professors who allocate students to companies:the professors will restrict the number of introductory letters that they write andsuch letters are accepted without question in the case of the prestigious universities.In essence the professors share out their graduates to known companies.

The advantages are clear for ‘top’ companies and ‘top’ universities for theuniversities supply a standard product from a known source. There are somedisadvantages however. The homogeneous background of recruits might haveserved well for product innovation but may be less appropriate for invention andthe new direction in R&D in Japanese companies (Sakakibara and Westney 1985).The system is difficult for companies which seek to move into new technologies orseek to expand their intake of particular disciplines. For example, the chemicalcompanies had well-established recruitment channels for chemical engineers buthad few contacts with the electronics professors and so felt very restricted in theirefforts to recruit electronics engineers to aid their application of electronics totheir existing chemical technology and to aid their business diversificationprogramme. Such constraints are part of the stimulus to the growth of the externalrecruitment of experienced engineers from other companies. Of course companieshave a range of strategies to establish new relations, for example through theprovision of research grants, equipment or contacts for advice. Once contacts aremade and once some recruits trickle to the company then alumni groups are usedto make further direct contact with students directly and recruitment patterns


reinforced. For keiretsu companies, there has been another channel to securenew technologies and engineering skills through group companies well-established in their technologies either by loan or transfers agreed betweencompanies.

Large British companies also attach importance to their regular recruitmentfrom universities and colleges for it constitutes a regular and reliableconcentration of buyers and sellers of labour in the market. There is certainlya hierarchy of prestige in British universities and it is clear that the highacademic abilities of Cambridge and Imperial College intakes, as measured byA-level exams, are attractive to company recruiters in the sense of an academicfiltering system, but the hierarchies have been less clear-cut than in Japan.Moreover there are some notable differences in the way in which companiesapproach the graduate labour market. Although they offer the possibilities of acareer with the company and recruitment brochures will spell out examples ofcareers within the company, there is much more emphasis in the Britishcompanies on identifying specific jobs to be filled at recruitment (‘direct entry’is promoted both as offering the challenge of ‘real work’ after years of studyand as the best means of learning). In contrast to a graduate apprenticeshipwhere the new entrant would be on the training budget and the responsibilityof the personnel department, the direct-entry graduate becomes theresponsibility of an operating department and fills a vacancy in the departmentallabour force. Here training (whether on or off the job) is at the discretion of thedepartmental managers and their interpretation of departmental needs.Sponsorship of undergraduate scientists and engineers during their period ofstudy, unknown in Japan, has grown considerably in Britain and the advantageclaimed for it is that it offers companies an extended scrutiny of potential recruitsand it means that new recruits are already familiar with company operationson entry to full-time employment. In addition to these direct approaches bycompanies to the graduate labour market, companies have successfully lobbiedfor changes in undergraduate science and engineering education, in an attemptto make it more vocational and to equip graduates to make an effectivecontribution to companies at the commencement of their employment (Finniston1980).

Training and assignments

The training programmes of the Japanese companies varied in their scale (giventhe variations in the scale of recruitment), in their length (from one to twoyears), in their content (given variations in industry and market sector), and intheir degree of formality. Yet some common themes emerged in the emphasison making ‘organisational members’, the use of on-the-job training, and theimportance attached to line managers as trainers.

Typically all recruits started on the same day with two to four weeks ofinduction. The contents and style of these induction programmes varied, but atypical pattern included: lectures by senior management on company history,


‘company spirit’, and company operations; courses on communications,computer programming, and English conversation; and visits to establishments.The point about the senior management involvement was not the quality of theinformation imparted but their symbolic importance and visibility to the newrecruits. The bulk of the subsequent training period was organised as ‘o-j-t’. Insome cases this period of assignment to a senior engineer and supervisor wasproceeded by rotation—for example the engineers might go to productionestablishments for a month while administrative recruits went to accounts.Another variation was to include some further elements of off-the-job training—for example, one of the process companies included a week of computerprogramming, quality control, and patent procedures. In each company,however, the core of training was seen in the relationships of the trainee, seniorengineer and supervisor.

Although companies could produce elaborate charts of training provisionalong the career lines of company employees (often in English) they were atpains to emphasise that the core of training was through o-j-t, that this wasvery informal and ad hoc, and that there was no ‘grand plan’ for its conduct.This is clearly seen in the comments of an engineering manpower developmentspecialist in one of the chemical companies:

Building group skills is very important. It is mainly done through o-j-t.The supervisors give the bits and pieces—there is no organisedprogramme. The group leaders are not rewarded in any special way—itis just part of their obligation. In the Japanese working environmentengineers seldom work alone—they are usually working in groups.Therefore leadership and the human skills are very necessary, and wetend to take it for granted that these skills will be passed from seniors tojuniors.

(Engineering Manager, Company G) Although there may have been no formal plan, these comments indicate threegeneral principles which are crucial to the organisational socialisation ofJapanese engineers through o-j-t: first, the senior-junior relationship; secondly,the obligations of management towards training their subordinates; and thirdly,the importance attached to group working. From his study of organisationalsocialisation in a bank in the early 1970s, Rohlen drew attention to theimportance of ‘senpai-kohai’ (senior-junior) relations, a basic dyadic relationwhich carried the image of ‘“friends”, one ahead and the other behind, passingalong the same path of endeavour’ (Rohlen 1974:197). As an image of an idealworking relation found in the general culture it forms a strong buttress to thebeneficial support which older, senior and more experienced engineers can beexpected to give to younger, junior and less experienced engineers. In a societywhich has retained a strong sense of hierarchy, juniors can be expected to listen.In addition to the support of senior engineers the new recruit can expect theclose involvement of the supervisor. Misumi underscores the link between the


lifetime employment system and the importance of managerial responsibilitiesfor subordinate training: ‘Under the Japanese system of lifetime employment,the superior’s leadership includes not only performance-oriented leadershipbut also educational leadership in that the superior is supposed to provide hissubordinates with training’ (Misumi 1984:531).

Sakakibara and Westney went somewhat further in suggesting that the relativeweights attached to technical and performance-oriented skills and those attachedto interpersonal skills in Japanese R&D laboratories are the inverse of those inUS R&D labs (Sakakibara and Westney 1985). Attempting to highlight thescope and importance of supervisor responsibilities for training, Lorriman andWersky claim that supervisors in the large electronics corporations spend up to30 percent of their time in training subordinates (Lorriman 1986: 575; Wersky1987:71). Moreover, Lorriman expresses a British training manager’s beliefthat British line managers do not spend nearly so much effort on trainingactivities (Lorriman 1985:88). The involvement of management in training isnot exhausted at the completion of the two years’ training nor is this the end oftraining project assignments and report presentations, for these continue as afeature of ongoing up-dating and training.

The large corporations cannot take it for granted that the building of groupskills is a spontaneous process; it is an enormously time-consuming affair whichextends far beyond what might be considered normal working hours. The newrecruits live in the company dormitories. The patterns of socialising built arounddrinking parties and company recreation facilities are testimony to the effortsto build group solidarity (Rohlen 1974:190–1). Recalling his experiences as avisiting engineer attached to a Japanese company Bhasanavich noted howdifficult it was to spend any time alone or away from work colleagues(Bhasanavich 1985:73). It is tempting to accept the explanation that this issimply Japanese culture, organising work patterns consistent with the cultureof a ‘group oriented’ society (Nakane 1970). However, there is another aspectto this frantic socialising—the need to police conduct in a lifetime employmentsystem. Under a lifetime employment system the company and workgroup mustguard against the potential ‘shirker’ and ‘free rider’. Using the concept of‘mutual monitoring’, Aoki suggests that effective policing is provided by thesystem of long-run evaluation, the payment system and ostracism for offenders(Aoki 1987:66–7). Thus an important aspect of initial training lies in providingboth the cognitive skills of interpersonal relations and the internalisation ofthe norms of appropriate conduct, or ‘right attitudes’.

Large Japanese companies are well aware of the problems of passivity,complacency and the ‘tepid environment’ which might be induced by the‘lifetime employment system’ (Takagi 1985:2). Therefore Japanese companiesand management have to work very hard at delivering the full terms of thequid pro quo.

Gregory has commented that ‘in Japan corporate technical training hasbecome a surrogate for the university graduate school of engineering’ (Gregory1984:55). The context of comparison was Japan v. US and it underlines the


relative paucity of graduate study in Japan. All of the large companies hadschemes for sending staff to graduate programmes in the US, where thecompanies bought into the professionalism and high technology of Americangraduate schools and bought an international education which will be helpfulto their internationalisation plans. As indices of company investments intraining, Gregory’s statistics on company colleges or overseas postings can bemisleading as to both the form and content of that training—they are betterregarded as the tip of an iceberg of training. While the lifetime employmentsystem carries the corollary of continuous training over the working life, themain forms of training in Japan are through on-the-job rather than off-the-jobtraining and a good deal of the content consists of learning organisational skillsand not just technical updating. Through providing courses equivalent to thefinal honours year of a British undergraduate engineering course the companiescan provide an updating programme for existing staff (Gillan 1985).

In addition, self-development programmes have provided an importantavenue for training. For the most part, these programmes have not been theglamorous high tech of video-disc but have looked much more like the prosaicstyle of correspondence course texts (Dore and Sako 1987:69). Perhaps themost impressive aspect of the training system in Japan is the way in whichcompanies manage to elicit a high commitment to skill formation and the mannerin which self-improvement is pursued as a moral crusade. It is presented as thequid pro quo of the moral commitment made by companies to lifetimeemployment. Companies take on the responsibility for developing the careersof their employees and line managers bear heavy responsibility and involvementin the process of training their subordinates. While this aspect of managementbegan to attract more attention from Western observers in recent years,Hirschmeier and Yui noted that it has a lengthy tradition dating back to thevery beginning of the lifetime employment system in the period 1900–18(Hirschmeier and Yui 1981:207).

In Britain, there was a strong impression that the volume of training carriedout by employers fell during the 1970s even for engineers in manufacturingindustry. For example, the Finniston Report cited the demise of the greatengineering companies which had been famed for their apprenticeship schemes(Finniston 1980:85). The Finniston Committee saw the professional institutionsand the training board system as unable to stimulate effective training. On theother hand the electronics companies claimed that there had been a changetowards a more effective form of training through the provision of ‘direct entry’and training on the job. In addition they claimed that through vacation studentwork, sandwich course students, sponsored students, and training on the jobfor new recruits they carried a very considerable burden of training. Clearlyone of the problems to disentangle is whether the differences between the Britishdirect entry/training on the job mode and the Japanese o-j-t are semantic,perceived or real.

Training by o-j-t attempts to provide structured learning experiences: itincludes a progression of tasks from the relatively easy to the more difficult


along with experience; it links progression to internal promotion; rotation isplanned so that progression involves a broadening of the range of tasks as wellas a deepening of task complexity; and it is expected that close supervisionand support is given by supervisors and more experienced workers. This formof training is buttressed by the emphasis on group work such as ‘quality circles’or ‘ability development’ circles. It is the lack of structural support whichsuggests that all too often ‘direct entry’ offers the shadow rather than thesubstance of o-j-t.

Pay and careers

It has often been asserted that the relatively better performance of Japanesemanufacturing owes much to the higher rewards available for Japanese engineersin pay, careers and social status. These rewards were thought to enableengineering companies to attract able and highly motivated engineers. Plausiblethough the argument might sound, it is difficult to substantiate. The operationof the lifetime employment system has meant that all official wage statisticsare collected in terms of size of firm, gender, education, age and length ofservice. It is extremely difficult to identify an occupational group to back upany bold claims about the existence of high rewards, still more so their effectsas motivators. Such indirect evidence that we can find suggests that engineersare not particularly well rewarded by pay. More plausible is the argument thatcompanies, having adopted lifetime employment policies for regular workersand having tried to blur the white/blue-collar distinction, try to operate withrelatively low differentials in order to emphasise the image of the team incorporate life.

In 1984 the major Japanese electronic companies were paying a commonstarting salary of ¥136,000 per month (see Table 3.1). Despite all the complaintsof shortages of electronic engineers the companies did not compete on startingsalary. The chemical companies showed more variety and paid a somewhathigher starting salary at ¥143,000 to ¥146,000 per month (see Table 3.1). Thusthe companies tend to pay near the industry average and the common Britishvariations by class of degree, subject degree or skilful impression managementin interview are noticeably absent. Japanese engineering graduates do not claimany particular expertise—they are bright people available for companydevelopment over a working life. Even the master’s-level graduates, so eagerlysought for the R&D laboratories, tend to be paid only at the level of a bachelorwith two further years of experience. If there is a small premium it tends to bejustified on the grounds that they are bright people rather than that they haveacquired research training, although some companies concede that the master’scourse does offer further experience of project work.

The ‘seniority wage system’ has been dubbed the economic basis of thelifetime employment system. Typically, recent graduates were given relativelysmall and undifferentiated starting salaries, followed by wage increases in linewith their years of seniority or length of service. Employers were seen to be


reluctant to recruit expensive, experienced recruits compared to relatively cheapnew graduates, particularly if the much-prized organisational skills tended tobe organisationally-specific, and employees were thought to be reluctant toabandon the prospects of enhanced rewards which came with continued service,particularly when increasing rewards were likely to be needed for the increasingfamily commitments.

While seniority-based pay had an appeal to a culture which took age-gradingseriously, there was a strong economic rationale while stable importedtechnology meant that seniority and experience were good proxies for increasingcompetence. More rapid technological change has weakened the economicrationale and the increase in job-related and performance elements haveprompted speculation about the end of the seniority-based pay system (Magota1979). Marsh and Mannari gave examples of how the introduction of jobclassification began to enhance the position of the 25-year-old graduate withthree years’ service relative to the 25-year-old manual worker with 10 years’experience (Marsh and Mannari 1976:129). Thus contemporary pay systemsare a blend of ‘seniority wage’ (i.e. based on age or length of service andeducational background) and ‘ability-based pay’ (i.e. an evaluated ability gradebased on personnel appraisal of knowledge and ability) (Ishida 1986). Beyondbasic pay a number of allowances for family or housing could add a further 10percent to pay.

A further incentive to skill acquisition comes in the form of the midsummerand year-end bonus which are additional to monthly pay and can account for30 percent of annual earnings in the large corporations. Although the annualnegotiations with the enterprise union are intended to tie workers intoidentification with overall company performance, there is an individualperformance-related element. The supervisor rating of performance, which caninclude judgements about attitudes too, can count for plus or minus 20 percentof bonus pay in some companies. While there is some flexibility in this systemfor identifying potentially very able engineers through the ability element andtheir performance through the merit element of bonus, the magnitude of bothare often tied closely to enterprise union agreements. Even in 1996, senioritycould still count for 70 percent of an engineer’s contracted pay and the scale ofbonus was regulated by union agreement. It is not until kacho level, perhapsafter 10 to 15 years in the company, and leaving the union-regulated ranks,that the company has a freer hand in rewards.

Getting a fix on engineers’ salaries in Japan is very difficult: official statisticsseem designed to suppress occupational consciousness. The Ministry ofLabour’s ‘Basic Survey of Wages’ records salaries in terms of education andage, but not occupations. However, a clue to the career-linked pattern andrelative pay of engineers can be gleaned from surveys undertaken by theNational Personnel Authority (Jinji ‘in), a body which carries out comparabilitysurveys of pay in the private sector in order to guide public-sector paydetermination. By looking at job clusters and sectors, we can get an indirectguide to engineers’ pay and the two issues which are of prime interest: first,


confirmation of the age and seniority aspects of pay related to lifetimeemployment, and second, whether engineers stand out as a particularly well-paid and highly regarded occupational group.

Confirmation of the importance of age and seniority can be seen in Tables3.2 and 3.3. Table 3.2 draws on the National Personnel Authority surveys andshows job clusters by four departments in the larger private-sector companies:research departments (typically employing university graduates in engineeringand science), technical departments (typically employing university graduateengineers), office departments (with graduate white-collar workers), andmechanical departments (to illustrate typical blue-collar workers) (NationalPersonnel Authority 1996). The table illustrates job clusters along the promotionpath from basic grades (aged 32 to 35) to section manager (typically promotedaround ages 44 to 47) and department head (typically occurring around ages48 to 51); however, lifetime employment and seniority wages have meant somesmall pay increases even for non-promoted employees. Looking across therows, we can see the pay profile from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s and theeffect of age and seniority by taking the 20- to 23-year-olds as the index baseof 100 in each cluster.

Table 3.3 provides data on the significance of seniority from 1975 to 1995,by looking at blue-collar workers in manufacturing industry and two groups ofuniversity graduate white-collar workers, one group in manufacturing industryand the other in the finance and insurance industries. Taking the 20- to 24-year-olds as the base index for each group, we can see that the universitygraduates have a much steeper age-wage profile and tend to peak at a laterstage (50 to 54) compared to blue-collar workers.

The relative standing of engineers in the manufacturing industry has to beapproached indirectly through data drawn from the National PersonnelAuthority survey in Table 3.4. Here the job clusters are shown by age groupwith the university graduate office worker and career line serving as the indexbase in each age group. Engineers can be found in both the R&D departmentsand the technical departments, and their fortunes vary by department. The R&Ddepartment has topped the pay league in all age groups (except the youngest20- to 23-year-olds) and in nearly all years across the two decades, 1975 to1995. While the younger engineers (age groups 20 to 23 and 32 to 35) intechnical departments might appear to have been ahead of their humanitiesand social science graduate peers in the office departments, the later careerstages at section head (kacho) or department head (bucho) show a reversal offortunes, where at section head they fall from 99 percent in 1975 to 95 percentby 1995. The image of engineering in Japan, sometimes held up in Britain, asa particularly well-rewarded occupation in Japan (especially close toproduction) does not appear consistent with this salary data (Rebick 1990).

While we cannot isolate engineers as an occupational group in the Ministryof Labour ‘Basic Wage Survey’, we can examine some issues relevant toengineers. Tables 3.5 and 3.6 present indices of manufacturing industry’s malewhite-collar workers who are university or college graduates in comparison

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Table 3.3 Differences in annual cash earnings (bonus included) by sector, education andage group (males)1


with two other groups; first, compared to manufacturing industry’s blue-collarworkers (Table 3.5) and to the finance and insurance industry’s white-collaruniversity or college graduate level labour force (Table 3.6). Since the twice-yearly bonus forms such a large proportion of annual income, the right side of thetables show a clearer picture of income differentials. Table 3.5 shows that bonuseffects put blue-collar employees on relatively higher incomes at the earlier stagesof working life (20- to 24-year age group), but thereafter the white-collar employeeshave much steeper profiles. However, we can see that the differentials have narrowedover the two decades when we compare the 25- to 29-year-olds and 50- to 54-year-olds in 1975 and 1995, where the differential rose to over three times theblue-collar rate in the earlier period but dropped to two-and-a-quarter times by1995. Perhaps the more interesting comparison lies with the graduate white-collarlabour force in the finance sector. While the manufacturing workers have beenbelow the finance group for most of the period, save among the 50-year-olds, thedifferential has moved even more strongly against the white-collar workers in themanufacturing sector across the whole 25- to 50-year-old groups in the late 1980s

Table 3.3 Differences in annual cash earnings(bonus included) by sector, education and agegroup (males)1 (continued)

1 Indices based on 100 for the annual cash earningsof workers in all job clusters and on the 20–24 agegroup.

Source: Rodosho 1996


and 1990s. This salary trend illustrates the relative salary issue underlying thatconcern and the debate about the tendency for increasing numbers of able engineersto join the finance sector discussed earlier in Chapter 2.

Promotion has been not only an incentive to training—it has often been theoccasion of training. Promotion comes through advances in job classification wherethe jobs are classified into ranks. The rank titles which derive from ‘nenko joretsu’(ranking by years of service) have a widely understood currency in Japanese society(Trevor 1983:49). More recently the titles have become part of an ability-basedmanagement system which has been extended from blue-collar to white-collarstaff (Inagami 1983:16). After arrival in the graduates’ entry grade, the new engineerbecomes eligible to enter the next grade after three years in the Nippon Kokansteel company. Subsequent upgrading within a rank will depend on the collectionof a target number of points in annual performance reviews. Promotion acrossranks, however, depends on meeting the minimum preparation period for upgradingand passing a screening examination by management. In this system the existenceof maximum preparation periods does guarantee some promotion for all up to themanagement levels, while the more ambitious can gauge their progress against thestandard preparation periods. At section chief (kacho) and above the links betweenrank and office-holding become quite close, but below that level, that is for thefirst 10 to 15 years of the graduate engineer’s company career, the Japanese systemof ranks permits promotion through the ranks without a necessary assumption ofoffice. There is a system in many companies through which individuals can express

Table 3.4 Differences in regular monthly salary by job cluster1

1 Indices based on 100 for the regular monthly salaries of office workers/managers in each agegroup.

Source: National Personnel Authority annual


their preferences about job assignments, rotation and off-the-job courses but theprime responsibility for career development rests with the company.

Again there is a sharp contrast between career development in these largeJapanese corporations and British policy and practice, although the contrasts tend

Table 3.5 Wage differences by job cluster: male white-collar workers (university or collegegraduates) in manufacturing industry1

1 Using the earnings of male blue-collar workers in manufacturing industry as base 100 in all agegroups.


Table 3.6 Wage differences by job cluster: male white-collar workers (university or collegegraduates) in manufacturing industry1

1 Using the earnings of male white-collar workers, university or college graduates, in finance andinsurance industry as base 100 in all age groups.



to be at their sharpest in the decentralised British electronics companies ratherthan in the chemical companies. Through the British pay system there is constantchecking that starting salaries and subsequent pay are competitive with rivalbidders for graduate engineers. With job evaluation as the basis for the gradingstructure the newcomer is advised that individual salary progression is determinedby job grade (an evaluation of the job being done) and performance rating (anannual assessment of performance by a supervisor). Company handbooksemphasise that salary is not related to age. Promotion involves a move to a newjob and its associated salary, and again the emphasis throughout recruitmentliterature and interviews is on ‘the ability of the cream to rise to the top veryquickly’. And the company literature emphasises that the onus for careerdevelopment rests on the individual, albeit with the supportive interest of thecompany.

Lifetime employment, business strategy andin-company training

It has become conventional wisdom in the human-resource development literatureto argue that firms must explore the implications for their human resources oftheir business strategies (Glinov et al 1983). Equally, it has become conventionalwisdom in the technological innovation literature to argue that firms in theadvanced industrial countries should adopt the business strategy of ‘movingupmarket’, adopting international best practice techniques and the promotion ofindustrial innovation, particularly as they lose earlier comparative advantages tofollower nations (Pavitt 1980, 1981). In the case of British engineering andengineers, the Finniston Committee of Inquiry into the Engineering Professiontried to pull these two strands together, arguing that their advocated strategies ofbusiness and technological innovation implied new structures of engineeringorganisation and that these new patterns of organisation carried furtherimplications for new skills and training among Britain’s engineers (Finniston1980:17–39). In essence, the Committee argued that companies producingtraditional products by traditional methods with traditional skills would meetincreasingly severe international competition as their earlier comparative technicaland commercial advantages were eroded. Therefore they argued that companiesshould move upmarket by paying attention to the ‘nonprice’ factors incompetition—for example, performance, reliability and ‘general fitness forpurpose’. These factors are the hallmarks of ‘design’ and the core of goodengineering at the professional level. The Finniston arguments were not simplyfor more and better engineers, however, because they recognised that the engineersneed to be organised in appropriate organisational structures. The emphasis wason the need to integrate and balance research, design, development and productionand their linkage to the company’s market strategy. Avoiding thecompartmentalisation of functions implies a market awareness and engineersequipped with a set of technical and organisational skills which enable them tocross organisational boundaries. Thus a narrow education and training might


imply a narrow role conception and a failure to develop the appropriateorganisational structures, whereas a broad education and training carries thepossibilities of broader role conceptions and better integrated structures. Thereis the further issue of where engineers might learn these broader organisationaland technical skills and develop the broad conceptions of the engineer’s role.For the Finniston Committee there was no doubt that they should be learned inthe workplace and they would involve a strong commitment to continuingeducation: ‘…flexibility in the development of engineers requires that theengineers are equipped for wide “non-technical” responsibilities and mostemployers believed that these wider skills were generally acquired most effectively“on-the-job”’ (Finniston 1980:39).

The steps in the argument are fairly clear, from business strategy to businessorganisation to skill requirements to a policy on engineering manpower resourcedevelopment strategy and practice. It is a logical flow which is even charted witharrows in the Engineering Council Consultative Document on Education andTraining (Engineering Council 1988a). Within the framework of capitalisteconomic activity it seems unexceptional that business strategy should determinehuman resource development strategy or that all undergraduate economists shouldlearn that the demand for labour is a function of the demand for the product. Inhis account of the training of Japanese engineers within their companies, Werskyopened by ‘placing the engineering formation process within the context ofJapanese industry’s commercial requirements and business policy’ (Wersky1987:3). Titled Training for Innovation, Wersky’s account emphasised that thepattern of training followed from the innovation strategies of the large electronicscompanies. He shared with the Finniston Committee a common intellectualheritage in the work of the Science Policy Research Unit on technologicalinnovation and a common didactic enthusiasm to urge British industry to adoptmore technical-innovation-based business strategies, to undertake more R&D,and to put higher priorities on the recruitment, training and deployment ofgraduate engineers in the enterprise (Wersky 1987:3; Finniston 1980; Pavitt 1980).

While this approach correctly draws attention to the influence which flowsfrom business strategy to engineering manpower resource development strategy,it neglects the reciprocal influence of employment strategies on business strategies.For example, it neglects the structural peculiarities of Japanese capitalism, inparticular the balance of interests and stakeholders in the large Japanesecorporation, which give such a strong emphasis to employment practices, andhence impetus to business strategies. Without wishing to turn conventional wisdomcompletely on its head by arguing that Japanese firms determined theiremployment practices first and that the business strategies flowed from the earlierdecisions, I want to emphasise the very powerful and positive feedback loopwhich employment practices have exerted on business strategies of growth andinnovation.

If we start from the proposition that business enterprises are coalitions ofinterest groups who act as stakeholders pressing a variety of goals on theenterprises, then we can see that the ownership and financial structure of the


Japanese enterprise, together with the practice of lifetime employment, havegiven a distinctive cast to Japanese corporate capitalism (Dore 1987). Twopoints stand out about the ownership and financial structure of the large Japanesecorporations: firstly the shares have tended to be held by other companies (oftenbusiness affiliates or associated companies) or banks and insurance companiesrather than individuals; and secondly, the companies have been ‘highly geared’,that is, they have had a high ratio of debt, typically bank loans, to equity (Table3.1) (Clark 1979, Kiyonari and Nakamura 1980; Abegglen and Stalk 1986).The net effect of these features has been that Japanese corporations are moreinsulated from shareholders than their British counterparts, and that they havehad more scope to consider the long-term view urged by advocates of theinnovation strategy. Now if the ties between shareholder and corporation areweaker in the Japanese case than in British counterparts, the ties between regularemployees and the corporation appear correspondingly closer because of thelifetime employment system. The lifetime employment practice has given apowerful stimulus to the growth objectives of Japanese corporations, to thestrategies of innovation and organic growth, and the preoccupation with marketshare as the measure of success. Three mechanisms have linked lifetimeemployment to organic growth objectives: • Board members tend to come through the management ranks of the company

as lifetime employees and strongly identify with the company (Shirai1983:374). By organisational socialisation and current structural relationsthese board members are sensitive to the pressures of their middlemanagement and regular employees (Kono 1984).

• Under the lifetime employment system the middle management and regularemployees are keenly interested in growth in order to satisfy their aspirationsfor career and salary advancement within their own company.

• Growth by acquisition is both difficult and problematic with this distinctivepattern of ownership and employment system. Table 3.1 shows two aspectsof the financial structure of the Japanese sample survey companies. Firstly,the equity or gearing ratio shows the relatively low reliance on equitycompared to loan finance in Japanese companies. Secondly, the shares tendto be held by banks or dispersed among the companies which tend to bemembers of the same group. The pattern of share dispersion makesacquisition difficult, and while acquisition might increase earnings per shareit does not necessarily increase the number of posts for employees. Moreover,there is not only the potential problem of harmonising another company’slifetime employees with one’s own, there is a possibility that the enterpriseunion can be a rallying point for opposition to an attempted acquisition(Kono 1984; Abegglen and Stalk 1986).

Japan provides many examples of companies which have grown by

diversification based on technology—for example, Casio started as amanufacturer of calculators using integrated circuit technology, then used the


same technology to enter the watch market with quartz digital watches and themusic market with electronic musical instruments (Hara 1982; 21). Somecontrasts could clearly be seen in the background to this research in thecommitment of electronics companies in Britain and Japan to link computersand telecommunications. Fujitsu started as a telecommunications company inthe 1930s, became famous in the post-war period as a computer manufacturerand now seeks to put these two aspects of its business together. While bothNEC and OKI Electric were similar broad-based electronics companies seekingto promote the computer-communications link in their business strategies, theBritish telecommunications company STC was seeking to acquire a computerexpertise through the purchase of the computer manufacturer ICL. At the sametime the GEC company was seeking to add to its telecommunications businessthrough the takeover of the Plessey company.

Historically it appears that the lifetime employment system was first adoptedas a solution to industrial relations problems in the 1920s (Dore 1973; Littler1982). This pattern became more widespread and was reinforced as an employerresponse to the very difficult and turbulent industrial relations problems of theearly post-war years. For some companies at least, resolving labour marketstrategies had priority over product market strategies, partly because productmarket problems were less pressing because of government support and partlybecause the flexed muscles of restored unionism made labour market problemsparticularly pressing. The synthesis of product market and labour marketstrategies which has come to be seen as the Japanese company model did notmature until the 1955–64 period (Okamoto 1982:41).

Japan’s success in the period of post-war recovery and the later high growthperiod (1965–75) was largely noted for the success in advancing its share ofworld trade and the pattern of company-related, incremental innovation in themass production industries (Hull, Hage and Azumi 1984a). To a considerableextent these innovations were developed in the process of buying in foreign(especially US) technology, reverse engineering it, and improving it. Giventhis context of technological development, the Japanese companies did notdevelop the specialised R&D laboratories separated from productiondepartments with all the attendant problems of co-ordination described soclearly in the British case by Burns in the 1950s (Burns and Stalker 1966).Instead the Japanese companies put their talented engineers into productionareas, whether in production R&D or in production roles either permanentlyor as part of rotation policy (Hull, Hage and Azumi 1984b). This pattern ofemphasis on production, reverse engineering and incremental innovation isgraphically described in Halberstam’s comparison of Nissan versus Ford(Halberstam 1986: 263–318). The contrasts between the Japanese and USautomakers in the relative proportions of engineers and accountants employedand location of a greater proportion of the Japanese engineers in the productionareas were supported in more quantitative studies too (Cole and Yakushiji 1984).While the absence of distractions such as aerospace or nuclear industries greatlyaided the ability of mass-production industries to recruit talented engineers,


the practice of lifetime employment was a crucial factor in enabling thoseengineers to promote incremental innovation successfully.

For Aoki, these innovations and productivity improvements rested criticallyon an organisational model characterised by horizontally co-ordinatedinformation flows and semi-autonomous and localised problem-solving. In otherwords, teams of talented generalists (engineers and operators) could takeresponsibility for the problems to hand and devise group solutions acrossdepartmental and functional boundaries (Aoki 1986). In a further developmentof this model Aoki spelt out the supporting role of the lifetime employmentsystem and the pattern of incentives based on seniority wages in fostering thecapacity of work groups to share information and achieve joint understandingson mutually relevant technology. The lifetime employment system has been adevice to encourage ‘team oriented learning by doing’ and the seniority wagesystem has encouraged the acquisition of the knowledge and skills necessaryfor communicating effectively with others, in comparison with systems basedon rewarding specific and narrowly defined job performance (Aoki 1987:63–5).

Japanese employment practices and human resource development strategiesappear to have served large companies well while the main strength of Japaneseindustry has been in incremental innovation in the national quest to catch upon the US. However, doubts have emerged about how far contemporaryorganisational patterns and human resource development strategies will sufficeas Japanese companies seek to pioneer new technologies and develop strategiesfor radical innovation.

The changing context of the lifetime employmentsystem

Although we have seen that the lifetime employment system has underpinnedsome characteristic differences in the education, training and employment ofJapanese engineers compared to their British counterparts and although wehave seen that some differences have been plausibly linked to past businesssuccesses, there are a number of pressures which are leading to modificationsin the system of lifetime employment. Moreover, these changes will carryimplications for the systems of engineering manpower resource developmentoperated by companies: • The ageing labour force, trade friction and slower growth in the world

economy mean that the lifetime employment system is becoming both moreexpensive and more difficult to maintain. Therefore companies have beenreducing the proportion of offered lifetime employment, flattening the rateof salary increase for older workers, and trying to devise alternative careerroutes to compensate for the reduced management promotion opportunities(Akaoka 1974; Kuwahara 1986). For example, in company B, new recruitscould expect their first major promotion to assistant section chief after 10


years in the high growth era, but by the 1980s it was expected to take 12 to13 years. However, in the 1990s many more middle-aged workers in a rangeof companies are being told that there is no prospect of promotion withintheir company and that they should accept transfer to another company.Employers are trying to keep faith with the notion of secure employment byorganising either temporary transfer to another company (shukko) or apermanent change of employment (tenseki). Typically, these changes aretransfers organised among groups of companies which have trading or otherbusiness relations (Sato 1996). It seems clear that lifetime employment isincreasingly being redefined in terms of long-term employment with a groupof companies rather than a particular company. Much less clear are theimplications for the moral quid pro quo between employers and employees,whether the weakening of employment security will weaken the commitmentto education and training, and acceptance of technological and organisationalchange.

• The threats to competitiveness posed by increasing protectionism and theemergence of low-cost competitors among the newly industrialising countrieshave encouraged the strong belief that Japanese corporations must redoubletheir innovative strategies with the aid of enhanced R&D facilities (Clark1984). The concomitance of these efforts are evident in the competition ofcompanies to recruit more master’s-course graduates, the attempts to promotethe role of universities in continuing education, the evident concern aboutthe capacity of the system to stimulate creativity among engineers, and effortsto improve the re-education of mid-career engineers (Oshima and Yamada1985). The increase in the proportion of R&D workers is reducing the scopefor rotation and flexible careers within the enterprise. In addition, thepremium on developing research facilities and research workers may leadto increased labour mobility and the use of external labour markets. However,the orientation of existing systems of continuing education to in-houseprovision through o-j-t for lifetime employees has meant that it has neitherencouraged nor supported the mobility of R&D staff. A fuller discussion ofthe implications of greater efforts to develop innovation and theirimplications for R&D careers are taken up in Chapter 4. One evidentimplication is that this will be an area in which there will be attempts todevelop the collaboration of universities in continuing education (Oshimaand Yamada 1985).

• As part of their strategy to penetrate international markets despite growingprotectionism, Japanese companies are becoming more overtly multinationalcompanies. Trevor described them as ‘reluctant multinationals’ in the past,reluctant to leave the social environment of Japan with its stock of institutionsso congenial to business operations (Trevor 1983). Now the companies aredeveloping educational programmes for overseas personnel to encourage‘international mindedness’ (Amaya 1983). (A fuller discussion of thecharacter of Japan’s overseas investment and the nature of Japan’s transplantsin the UK will be taken up in Chapter 7.)


• Japanese manufacturing companies are said to be engineering companies runby engineers and this thread of technological literacy permeating the largecorporations is said to be a significant factor in their innovative success. It hasnot been an unblemished record, however. Clark noted that some innovativeefforts had been insensitive to markets, reflecting ‘a predisposition to innovateby extending technology rather than adapting to markets’ (Clark 1984:75).Therefore it is likely that in the more constrained market opportunities of the1990s the companies will place a greater emphasis on marketing skills.

• The motivation of the younger generation is a topic which has excited muchconcern among Japanese managers (Amaya 1983). Clearly the willingness toengage in the rigours of the competitive educational system, the readiness to besensitive to organisational requirements and to acquire organisational skills,and the commitment to apply those skills across widely defined tasks for longhours over a working life for one employer have been hallmarks of the moralorder of a Japanese corporation. Japanese managers have exercised themselvesabout ‘shin-jinrui’ (‘the new-age people’); they have been seen as a generationwho do not know war or the struggles of the early post-war period, whoseaspirations and values are thought alien, and whose loyalty is thought suspect.While it might be wondered whether such people would ever arrive as graduateengineers, surveys of R&D workers suggest that they have two main complaintsagainst the present operation of the lifetime employment system: first, theycomplain that the pace at which engineers are promoted to responsibilitiescommensurate with their abilities is too slow in Japanese companies; and second,they claim that the weight attached to ability and performance is too small inJapanese companies (Nakajima 1985). Such complaints might be expected togrow as more American companies attempt to establish R&D facilities in Japanand as these companies and their personnel systems became reference pointsfor Japanese engineers. (A fuller discussion of the factors which generate eithercontent and discontent in R&D work is taken up Chapter 6.)

At present all these factors do not appear to add up to a change of the lifetimeemployment system, rather they appear to be changes in scale and scope, andchanges within the system. Nevertheless they indicate changes underway inthe system of education and training, and they must underline the need forcaution against those who would borrow ‘yesterday’s model’.

Conclusions

Not all the companies included in this account had glowing records of success,indeed it is evident from Table 3.1 that some of the chemical and steel companieswere in difficulties in the mid-1980s, even leading to mergers among some ofthe keiretsu chemical companies by the 1990s. Yet all of the companies remainedfirmly committed to the concept of lifetime employment. This commitment hasproduced in the past some distinctive features in the company strategies for thedevelopment of engineering manpower resources:


• A sharper division of labour between education and employers as academicsconcentrated on a broad general education and employers provided organisedtraining.

• A reliance on the educational system as a talent sorting system for theproduction of educated manpower.

• Employers recognised the need for training if their ‘permanent’ labour forcewas going to cope with change in the business and technological environment,and employees accepted the obligation to train and cope with change as thequid pro quo of security.

• The core of training has been through on-the-job training with closemanagement involvement in training.

• Considerable emphasis has been put on the acquisition of ‘organisational skillsand knowledge’.

• The pay system has supported training, but the data on pay do not supportsome of the assumptions of British observers that Japanese engineers ‘must’be relatively well-rewarded in Japanese companies.

These features are not in themselves unique to Japan. For example, Cambridge

University has long concentrated on a broad engineering science course andBritish employers have tended to prefer the more academically able universitygraduate to the more vocationally equipped polytechnic sandwich-course student.Moreover some companies have been renowned for their training schemes. Thepoint has been that these features have been so much more common in Japanthat they have become a ‘norm’ in both the statistical and sociological sensesamong the large companies, and this greater critical mass of training and learningactivity has been important in the innovative capacity of Japanese companies.The institutionalisation of the lifetime practices as part of a wider employmentsystem with profound implications for training has largely occurred in the post-war period. While scholars differ in dating the origins of lifetime empoyment(Hirschmeier and Yui [1981] cited the period 1900–18 and Dore [1973] cited the1920s), Gordon put his emphasis on the impact of the First World War as awatershed when the balance of power between capital and labour was changedand older forms of labour management were no longer sustainable (Gordon1988:121). The wider extension of this pattern of employment relations to blue-collar workers after 1945 also reflected the further strengthening of the positionof Labour.

The consequences of the ‘Japanese employment system’ for graduate engineerscan be seen in a number of beneficial effects: • The broad educational base implied a strong base on which to build subsequent

learning.• The mutual commitment of employer and employee to training meant that

the development of the concept of a ‘learning organisation’ in whichmechanisms were developed to facilitate institutional training—for example,


those sent on off-the-job training have returned with an obligation to sharetheir learning with the work group (McCormick 1986c).

• The homogeneity of training experiences has meant the building of a company-wide technological culture which leads to a closer proximity in the relativestatus of functions such as ‘Research’, ‘Development’, and ‘Production’ andhelps the integration of functions such as R&D.

• The system of rotation and the lack of identification with specialisms hasaided the movement of engineers to ease ‘bottlenecks’ and the developmentof new activities.

• The emphasis on company identifications and the spread of features of theemployment system beyond engineering and white-collar staff to blue-collarworkers has reduced the social distance between engineers and blue-collarworkers.

I have cautioned against treating training simply as a set of off-the-job training

courses in which doubling the amount spent might double the benefits in termsof knowledge and skills, or ultimately task performance. The purpose, contentand methods of training must be seen in relation to an economic and social system.Yet once training is seen as embedded in a particular economic and social system,the scope for borrowing seems more limited. Thus, even if the innovative andhigher value-added strategies of Japanese companies are similar to thoseadvocated for British companies and even if more career development policiesthrough internal labour markets echo lifetime employment policies, the scopefor implementing these business and human resource strategies will be severelyrestricted if they are dependent on the peculiar financial structure of Japanesecompanies. Similarly, the emphasis on groupwork cannot be seen as simply thelogical outcome of an internal labour market. Behind groupwork lies the supportof Japanese language and culture where the language has encouraged heavydependence on oral communication, and pre-industrial work—for example, ricecultivation—required co-operative patterns of working (Smith 1959:208–10;Hendry 1995:42–56). Quite apart from the difficulties of borrowing out of aparticular cultural context, there are the problems of avoiding unwanted sideeffects. The costs of the o-j-t, which the British engineering manager, JohnLorriman, saw in increasing numbers of engineers employed, may be seen inhours worked rather than headcount. The long working hours, the curbs onindividual liberties and the restraints on initiative associated with lifetimeemployment and the company management of careers may appear too high aprice to pay to attract increased company commitment to training. Moreoverthere are signs that Japanese companies may be moving in the direction ofincreased mobility.

The principal lessons for British engineers from these internationalcomparisons are the needs to clarify the purposes of training, to make judiciousselections of the ‘good effects’ achieved by training in other places, and to attemptto replicate those ‘good effects’ by means consistent with one’s own culture. Forthe future the main needs for training discussions in Britain appear to be:


• The funding of training and the need to achieve the functional equivalentincentive to training given by lifetime employment. If British companies areunlikely or unable to move in the direction of a ‘lifetime employment system’then this may imply that alternative systems of funding ought to be sought byother means—for example, through tax concessions (either to companies orto individuals), through revised (or revived) levy grant schemes, or throughtraining vouchers.

• The individual’s stake in the organisation and the need to achieve the functionalequivalent of ‘membership’ in the Japanese company. ‘Membership’ in theJapanese company has tended to imply the employees rather than theshareholders, in contrast to the British companies. If the reality and perceptionof a stake in the organisation underlie the training effort of companies andemployees then it raises the issue of whether this might be stimulated in theBritish case by more formal provision for industrial democracy, or by lessformal schemes of participation, or by the company management of non-financial rewards.

• The commitment of line management to training, the need to apply a morecritical intelligence to work organisation, and to stimulate the concept of a‘learning organisation’. Involving British line managers and supervisors intraining raises the possibility that the recent fashion for appraisal schemesmight stimulate a commitment comparable to that achieved under Japaneseconditions.

4 Engineering innovation

From ‘national systems’ tocorporate laboratories andprojects

‘From the engineering ranks had risen not only half of all directors of Japanese industrialenterprises, and an even higher percentage of the upper management cadre, but also theelite civil servants—half of them hold engineering-related degrees.’

(Gregory 1984:51)

Introduction

Many attempts to explain Japan’s emerging technological prowess and businesssuccess in the 1980s conjured up the image of ‘Japan Inc.’, a society where allthe central institutions from government, civil service, schools, universities,and industrial corporations were orchestrated together in the concerted pursuitof industrial growth. It had many of the hallmarks of a ‘technocracy’, whetherthat was meant as a society run strictly on technical decision rules or one whoseleading decision-makers were trained in technical disciplines. Gene Gregory,quoted above, underscored this second image of Japan as a technocratic societywhich drew heavily on engineers to man the important command posts of theeconomy and society. It is an image which has proved controversial in severalrespects, from the alleged numbers involved to the deeper implications aboutthe ways in which institutions and organisations work. Two central issues forthis chapter are: first, is it possible to identify a distinctive national approachto the organisation of engineers and scientists in the pursuit of innovation,whether at the macro level of the society or at the more micro levels of thecompany or the project team, and secondly, if there is a ‘national system ofinnovation’, what are the implications of attempts to change it?

Gregory, a close observer of Japanese industry and government, was animportant but often unattributed and misquoted source in British argumentsabout the relative numbers of engineers produced in Britain and Japan. Hisestimates of Japan’s output of engineers, which exaggerated Japan’s numericaladvantage, became even more exaggerated in the hands of several British interestgroups (as we saw in Chapter 2). They used them to press for change in Britain’seducational system. But Gregory’s thesis was about more than mere numbers

Engineering innovation 113

of engineers. He argued that the large number of engineers helped sustain awider and deeper technological literacy in Japanese society. Further, he arguedthat engineers greatly outnumbered scientists in Japanese universities, whereasin Britain and the US the respective proportions were either near parity orscientists outnumbered engineers (Gregory 1984:53). Gregory’s explanationthat engineers were seen in Japan as the practical people needed to solveindustry’s problems, whereas scientists were theorists, and something of aluxury, was music to the ears of those lobbyists for the engineering professionand who complained that British culture devalued engineers and that Britishindustry suffered in consequence. His numbers supported their calls for a changein the proportions of engineers vis-à-vis science and arts students:

…the lower number of physical science students has some rathercompelling economic explanations…To meet their priority targets, neitherJapanese industry nor government requires the theoretical training of thesescientists. Engineers, not scientists provide the technological andmanagerial backbone of Japanese industry.

(Gregory 1984:53)

However, Gregory drew attention to another aspect of the utilisation ofengineers, arguing that engineers not only solved practical problems but hadcareers reaching up to the command posts of industry—and to top levels ofJapan’s civil service too. It was an argument adding colour to the image of theMinistry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) as the engineers’ andindustrialists’ friend in government, sharing a common perspective, empathyand language with engineers and industrialists, able to champion their causes,and able to shape and support Japan’s industrial development. However, thereare a number of problems with this account which need closer inspection.

Although I shall examine some aspects of innovative efforts at the nationallevel, the main focus for this chapter is on companies and the human resourcemanagement issues involved in the organisation of company R&D. My interestrests on the premise that Japanese companies have been putting a great deal ofemphasis on the role of technology in their competitive strategies and taking muchmore responsibility for their own development of technology. As company initiativeshave assumed greater importance and the state had less directive influence, theJapanese ‘national innovation system’ has been changing. Such changes havestimulated much discussion about the need to adapt institutions which have beenpart of past success. Those rather simplistic views of ‘engineers as practical’ and‘scientists as theoretical’ do not sit too easily with the concerns about the need todevelop more basic research in industry. Therefore I shall examine the debatesabout a changing system and go down from the macroscopic level of the debateson the ‘national systems of innovation’ to the more microscopic levels of engineersand scientists in their corporate laboratories and projects.

My starting point in the next section will be an examination of the discussionsof the respective ‘national systems of innovation’ in Japan and Britain. Much


of the illustrative empirical material on corporate laboratories will be drawnfrom the surveys of the ‘International Research Group on R&D Management’in which I was directly involved from 1988–89, a pathbreaking, collaborativeand comparative study of engineers and scientists and their careers in corporateR&D Japan (and which will be described more fully later). Before presentingthe microscopic level of the everyday working world of the individual engineerand scientist, I will summarise the intermediate level of the corporatelaboratories, their organisation and their mission in corporate R&D. I will thenmove down to the micro level and the manner in which the lifetime employmentsystem impinges on project organisation, leadership selection and patterns ofcommunication. Finally, I shall come back to the problems for companies intrying to produce institutional innovations.

National systems of innovation

The way in which engineers and scientists are organised to promote innovationcan be examined with the concept of a ‘national system of innovation’, a conceptdriven by the desire for much more systematic attempts to synthesise thecumulative body of innovation studies and to relate them to their differentnational contexts. While this concept has been used in different ways, Freeman,one of the central figures in the growth of the field, concentrated on theimportance of social and economic organisational innovations associated withtechnological innovation (Freeman 1987a, 1987b, 1992). From insights intothe support of social institutions for technological innovation, Freeman wenton to stress the importance of the respective roles and relationships between anumber of institutions such as industrial corporations, universities in theireducational and research activities, government and financial institutions. Itwas perhaps inevitable in the 1980s that much of the British attention in Anglo-Japanese comparisons would focus on the government-industry axis of theJapanese national system of innovation. The desirability and feasibility of an‘industry policy’ were often debated in Britain with reference to the very sharpcontrasts which could be seen between the historic role of the Ministry ofInternational Trade and Industry (MITI) in Japan’s technological developmentand the (then) British Conservative government’s apparent anathema foranything which smacked of ‘industry policy’. Mrs Thatcher and her colleaguesin government branded such policies as ‘corporatist’, which was intended asboth description and denunciation. Throughout the debate, the danger has beenthat British observers, anxious to debate the role of the state in Britain, haveoverplayed the role of the Japanese state (particularly MITI), underplayed therole of companies in Japan’s historical development and neglected the changingroles of both for the future.

While the concept of a national system of innovation has been used in anumber of different ways, all the writers on the subject reflect a strong beliefin the importance of technological change in economic and social developmentand an assumption that national differences in markets and institutions shape


technological innovation. Among these writers, Chris Freeman emphasised adistinction between ‘radical’ and ‘incremental’ innovation, the importance ofthe ‘goodness of fit’ between a radical technological innovation and socialinstitutions in order to exploit the full benefits of the new technology, and hetook a particular interest in Japan for its success in catching up and, in sometechnological fields, overtaking Western competitors. He defined a nationalsystem as ‘the network of institutions in the public and private sectors whoseactivities and interactions initiate, import, modify and diffuse new technologies’(Freeman 1987b:1). Freeman offered a selective list of those institutionalfeatures which had distinguished and contributed to the success of Japan’snational system of innovation:

…the exceptional Japanese progress in ‘catching up’ with the world’stechnological leaders and drawing ahead in some areas was attributableto the development of an institutional and social framework—a ‘nationalsystem of innovation’, which differed in important respects from thatprevailing in other OECD countries. Some of the main characteristicswere …the role of MITI; the role of company research and developmentstrategy in developing a new integrated approach to the design anddevelopment of production systems; the role and scale of education andtraining and controlling the labour force; and finally the development ofan industrial structure particularly favourable to long-term strategicinvestment in marketing, training and technological activities.

(Freeman 1987b:55)

Over the earlier phases of technological development Freeman outlined theimportant lessons from ‘reverse engineering’—that is, dissembling, copyingand adapting imported products. Through this technique, Japanese engineerslearned to think through the whole production process, to ‘think of thelaboratory as a factory’, to think comprehensively of assembler-supplierrelations, and to put an emphasis on quality in products and processes sincereverse engineering involved searching out systematic weakness. AlthoughFreeman noted the strong impetus given to technological development in theMeiji era by the government promotion of modernisation policies, engineeringeducation and training, the import of technology and industrial ‘best practice’and co-operation with industry, he attributed much of the post-war success tothe reforms in the Occupation era—for example, in industrial relations. Giventhat he stressed the emergence of Japan’s institutional framework over a longperiod and given that he noted a variety of factors precipitating these institutions(for example, he attributed the close relations of engineers with blue-collarworkers to the outcome of a power struggle between labour and capital ratherany technological forces), McKelvey’s charge of ‘technological determinism’seems wholly misplaced (McKelvey 1991). Freeman does not appear to putthe primacy on technological change shaping social institutions, even thoughhe comments that the institutional framework of industrial relations had benefits


for the diffusion and adoption of new technologies through engaging blue-collar workers in the innovation process. Although Freeman’s emphasis on thedistinctiveness of Japan’s education and training infrastructure incorporatesthe exaggerated contrasts between numbers of engineers in Japan and Britain(discussed in Chapter 2), the underlying points about the qualities of schooland university education and company training for engineers remain valid.

The notion of ‘engineering’ as the key route to Japan’s decision-makingelite can be readily challenged by totting up the numbers of senior administratorswith legal backgrounds in the civil service (Campbell 1989:115). Even in theheartland of technology policy at MITI, law rather than engineering is morelikely to be the educational passport to the top, while an economics educationis just as likely as one in engineering to facilitate passage to the companyboardroom, even in manufacturing industry (Kinmonth 1986). Table 4.1 showsthe university and faculty background of the senior officials in MITI in 1988.Of 21 officials at director-general or deputy director general level, all weregraduates of a former Imperial University, which certainly confirms theimportance of the elite universities, but only three of these bureaucrats had anengineering background. Law was confirmed as the most advantageous routeto a senior position. In 1997, between 30 and 40 percent of the new recruits(depending on first or second class of entry) to MITI came from a technicalbackground. Yet, if future trends in recruitment and promotion follow the past,the advantage will continue to lie with the law graduates. Meanwhile, thediscovery of a Nobel prizewinner in a Japanese university engineeringdepartment should encourage caution about the ready translation andisomorphism of labels such as ‘engineering’ and ‘science’ for graduates anduniversity departments from a Japanese to a British context (Rawle 1983).Academic titles might reflect more on formative histories and the rigidities ofacademic bureaucracies than current activities—for example, the greater easein establishing departments labelled engineering compared to other titles.Moreover, the notion of widespread satisfaction with the relative numbers ofengineers and scientists was challenged in a provocatively titled paper, ‘Wherewill the Nobel prizes come from?’, which drew attention to criticism withinJapan that the economy and society were facing a watershed which would needmore attention to science and basic research (Dore 1986).

The main controversies in accounts of Japan’s technological developmenttend to dwell on discussion of the role of the Ministry of International Tradeand Industry (MITI). In many ways it is part of an older debate about the roleof the state in Japan’s technological debate. Looking at the Meiji era, Morris-Suzuki contrasted those approaches which emphasised the significance of thestate (for example, from model factories to educational institutions) againstthose perspectives which emphasised the role of markets and entrepreneurs(Morris-Suzuki 1994). Both perspectives, she argued, were overdrawn, failingto acknowledge the strengths in the counter views. Her emphasis on ‘socialnetworks’ acknowledged the importance of state initiatives, but argued that forthe diffusion of technologies, markets and networks were important too.


Okimoto argues in similar vein on the MITI debate that contrasts between stateand market have been overdrawn and that a flexible set of relationships werecreated and that they should be viewed through an integrated political economy(Okimoto 1989). Freeman contends that much of the controversy about MITIstemmed from confusions arising from the failure to distinguish changes inthe scope and mode of MITI’s influence through different stages ofdevelopment. In his study of Japan’s computer and communications industry,Fransman puts the 1970s as a turning point in government-industry relations(Freeman 1987b; Fransman 1995). Although admitting the importance of MITIin supporting the general technological development of the Japanese companiesup to the 1970s, Fransman argues that the impact of MITI’s much publicised‘visions’ of industrial development were limited. Moreover, he argues that thecompanies would have been successful without MITI’s efforts (Fransman 1995:446–8).

In their account of the ‘Japanese system of innovation’, Odagiri and Gotowere at some pains to redress the stress on government in many accounts,depicting both the historically modest role of government in financing R&Dand stressing the very important role of the private sector and Japaneseentrepreneurs (Odagiri and Goto 1993, 1996). Looking to the future, theyanticipate that market liberalisation and deregulation will mean that governmentministries and agencies will have diminishing scope to influence and shapetechnological development. In his study of the computer industry, Cusumanosuggests that government initiatives have not been a major influence, but arguesthat the companies’ determined persistence and their application of superiorengineering and production processes to software paid dividends in businesssuccess (Cusumano 1991).

Discussion of the British system of innovation has been largely caught upin explanations of long-term relative economic decline, charges of ‘systemfailure’ stemming from the alleged failure of the financial institutions(particularly those concentrated in the City of London) to support long-termtechnological development in industry, allegations that accountants and financialcriteria held too much sway in senior management in industry, complaints ofweaknesses in technical and vocational education and training attributable tocultural hostility, and debates about the potential for an appropriate state-ledindustrial policy to reverse decline (Freeman 1987b; Walker 1993; Patel andPavitt 1993). Walker complained that Britain appeared set to become a‘technology follower’, able and content to apply other countries’ technologiessuccessfully in a number of areas, but no longer willing or able to act as one ofthe major generators of original technology, save in a few niche areas. Prospectsfor change in this posture appeared slim with the pronounced neo-liberalemphasis put on government policies and preoccupation with public expenditurereduction by Mrs Thatcher and her colleagues from the mid-1980s.

In Britain, two major sources of concern have been that industry does notspend enough on industrial R&D and that government does not spend enoughon academic science, the ‘science base’. In the mid-1980s, many of the concerns


about Britain’s R&D performance were voiced before the House of Lords SelectCommittee on Science and Technology which was examining Civil Researchand Development. Among the more prominent points which emerged fromthese debates about their report were the following: • Britain’s total R&D spending had been growing more slowly than that of

other major industrial countries—for example, it increased at a rate of only0.9 percent per annum over the period 1969 to 1982 compared with 9.8percent per annum in Japan.

• The contrasts were even more marked for civil R&D since a relatively highproportion of Britain’s R&D had been oriented to defence needs. Of thetotal UK R&D expenditure about half was funded by industry and half bygovernment, and the government portion was further divided approximately50:50 between civil and defence needs. In 1983, £3,637m was spent onR&D in private industry, of which £1,217m (33.5 percent) came fromgovernment and £2,099 (57.7 percent) from private industry.

• Industrial R&D expenditure had been very heavily concentrated inaerospace, electronics and chemicals. This concentration had lengthy historicroots—for example, in 1955–56 the aircraft, chemicals and electricalengineering industries employed three quarters of the industrial R&Dpersonnel and spent more than three quarters of industry’s R&D spending.In 1980, the Finniston Report noted the continuing dominance of theaerospace, chemicals and electronics industries in industrial R&D spending.However, they noted a concentration by company too, for 91 percent ofprivate industry R&D was concentrated in 100 companies and 52 percent inonly 10 companies, all of which were in the three industries of aerospace,chemicals and electronics. Government had an important influence on theR&D activities of the three sectors; it was an important source of funds inthe aerospace and electronics industries and as a supporter of basic scienceand postgraduate research training for the chemical industry.

• In addition to the long-standing evidence of concentration in industrial R&Dspending there was further evidence of more recent variance between sectorsand between firms. While noting the influence of the sluggish trend of overalltechnological activity in Britain, and the influence of unfavourable trendsin profits and output, Patel and Pavitt lay considerable emphasis on thediscretionary decisions of companies to increase or decrease R&Dinvestment.

• Where the House of Lords Select Committee emphasised a need for increasedgovernment support and encouragement for industrial R&D through a varietyof measures, the government response emphasised the prime need for privateindustry to fund an increase in R&D expenditure, taking commercialdecisions that reflected market forces. Noting the concern that Britain hadone of the slowest growing economies in the 1960s and 1970s theGovernment pointed out that in the 1980s Britain had one of the fastestgrowing economies, that productivity in manufacturing industry was rising


faster than in other countries, and that company profitability in 1985 was atits highest since 1964. Therefore the Government concluded that privateindustry could afford to fund more R&D: the arguments that slow growth,low productivity growth and low profitability were deterrents to industrialR&D were less valid than in the past.

Charges that financial institutions have had a baleful influence on

manufacturing industry in Britain have a long history, but have often sufferedfrom poor specification (Moorhouse 1989). Some members of the FinnistonCommittee wanted to investigate the impact of the financial system onengineering, but the Committee was advised that this lay outside its terms ofreference. The financial deregulation reforms after the ‘Big Bang’ in October1986 injected some new interest in the arguments about the existence of‘shorttermism’ and its alleged consequences for British industry (Ball 1991;Williams 1991; Moorhouse 1989). Some commentators have argued that thepreoccupation with short-term time horizons has not been imposed by the termsof external finance but developed as an internal culture within companies(McKinsey 1988). There is a large measure of agreement that Britain hasinvested too little in innovation. Contrasting the involved and supportive roleplayed by institutional shareholders in Japan and Germany, the InnovationAdvisory Board, established by the Department of Trade and Industry, proposeda number of measures to make shareholders and stockholders more aware ofR&D and, in effect, recommended that companies should consider trading somedegree of management control for greater shareholder loyalty (InnovationAdvisory Board 1990). Confirming the evidence of under-investment in themanufacturing industry in Britain, Barry, Bosworth and Wilson argue that thisfailure has stemmed from a lack of investment opportunities rather than ashortage of capital. Moreover, they pin culpability for failure to generateinvestment opportunities on the failure of company engineers and scientists togenerate sufficient worthwhile projects, whilst conceding that the difficultiesfor companies in recruiting a fair share of able graduates may be part of alarger picture of education-industry relations in Britain (Barry, Bosworth andWilson 1997).

If the argument on Britain comes back to the notion that engineers are centralto the innovation process, it is time to turn to examine their role in that processmore closely through comparative studies and to start with a review ofalternative approaches.

Comparing engineers in the innovation process

The success of Japanese companies in innovation prompted several studies ofengineers from a variety of perspectives and using different methods, rangingfrom studies that compare the outflow of graduates from universities to studieswhich focus on the inflow of graduates into companies. Some comparative


studies take the organisation as the unit of analysis, rather than the occupationalgroup, but give analyses of engineers in organisations.

Outflow studies

One path to comparisons of engineering careers in Japan and the US has lainthrough surveys of engineering graduates from matched universities. In essence,this approach attempts to follow the outflow of engineering graduates fromeducation into employment, to trace their career choices, employment and workexperiences after graduation. Clearly the first step lies in matching institutions,given the variety of types of institution and the pyramids of institutional prestigein respective countries, and the second step lies in matching the graduatesthemselves.

The study by Lynn and his colleagues tried to match reputable universitieswith strong traditions in technological education to secure comparable studentintakes and comparable career destinations. Starting from their home base inCarnegie-Mellon in the US, the researchers selected Tohoku University inSendai as a Japanese counterpart, a university with a similar strong regionalidentity and similar distance from the main manufacturing centres, and aimedfor graduates in two disciplinary areas, electrical engineers and metallurgicalengineering/materials science (Lynn, Piehler and Kieler 1993:58). This studywas exemplary for the care taken to match data-gathering instruments with atranslation of the questionnaire into Japanese and retranslation back into Englishto double-check interpretation. However, even the best laid plans can comeunstuck on contingencies, and the collapse of the dollar against the yenundermined a planned reminder mailshot among the Japanese sample. Despitethis setback, the researchers were able to secure respectable response rates(42.5 percent in the US and 24.1 percent in Japan) and well-matched samplesin terms of age (mean age 41.47 in the US and 41.49 in Japan) and gender(97.0 percent male in the US and 99.5 percent in Japan). The ability to analyseresponses in terms of age cohorts permitted comparisons against the backgroundof changes in the respective national economies. The heavy preponderance ofelectrical engineers in the American sample (75 percent compared to only 43.0percent in Japan) limited the scope for inter-industry comparisons.

While this research confirmed some popular images of the more managedcareer of Japanese engineers, it generated some surprises too. For example, incommunication patterns and professional associations, Japanese engineersappeared to use extra-company sources and to value professional bodies morehighly than anticipated. Lynn and his colleagues laid stress on the role of‘gatekeepers’ in knowledge and technology flows and showed that thesignificant differences between Japanese and American engineers and theirexperience of rotation lay in its continuing use among the more experiencedJapanese engineers and its limitation largely to the early career stages ofAmerican engineers. While the authors cautioned that their findings were nottypical of the population of engineers, since they were drawn from two high-


ranking institutions and two disciplines, their respondents were drawn fromcompanies across a number of industries and they shed further light andqualifications on some important areas of technology and human resourcemanagement.

Another major example of an outflow study was initiated by Japaneseresearchers against the background of Japanese concern about the growingtendency for able Japanese engineering graduates to avoid careers inmanufacturing industry (see Chapter 2) and reports that the Americanmanufacturing industry had suffered because American engineers gave lowpriority to careers in production (Ishii, Yokoo and Hirano 1993). Therefore theNational Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP) focused onleading engineering departments in both countries—at the University of Tokyoand the Tokyo Institute of Technology (TIT) in Japan and at the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology (MIT) in the US. The target sample was all recipientsof the Bachelor of Engineering degree in 1960, 1970, 1980 and 1985 in eachinstitution. Again, response rates were much higher in the US than Japan, witha total of 1,162 (25 percent) responses in Tokyo and 925 (45.8 percent) inMIT. Again, male respondents predominated (99.4 percent in Tokyo and 87.3percent in MIT). Although there was a wider spread of academic disciplinescovered than in the Cairnegie-Mellon/Tohoku study, there was a heavyrepresentation among electronics engineers (38.5 percent among the MITsample and 22.6 percent among the Tokyo sample—the largest disciplinarycluster in each national sample). Given the focal research problem, thequestionnaire survey was aimed to compare: first, the career distributions ofthe two samples, particularly the proportions of engineering graduates workingin manufacturing industry and with technology-related jobs, and secondly, thefactors which had influenced career choice. Under this second heading, theresearchers wanted to explore ‘individual job consciousness’, the treatment ofengineers in corporate management practice and the social status of engineers.The main findings on distribution were that a higher proportion of the Japaneseengineers were concentrated on technical activities compared to their Americancounterparts (57 percent of the Japanese sample worked in the manufacturingindustry and 68 percent were working on technology-related jobs compared to42 percent of the American sample in manufacturing industry and 55 percentin technology-related jobs). In looking more closely at the career-choice factorsfor clues to explain the distribution of engineers, the researchers noted thatAmerican respondents paid more attention to monetary rewards and they hadmore scope to find those rewards outside the manufacturing industry. Moreover,they noted that Japanese rewards shared equal standing between engineersworking in the production and R&D departments, whereas American engineerssaw higher status in R&D work compared to production work.

Despite being initiated in different countries, these outflow studies sharesome common characteristics. Both drew on elite engineering institutions, bothheavily featured electrical engineers and computer scientists, and both werestrongly oriented towards policy implications. While the two Tokyo institutions


and MIT were at the respective peaks of the pyramids of prestige in engineeringeducation in the two countries, Carnegie-Mellon and Tohoku were not far below.There is a lacuna in our knowledge of the career experiences of graduateengineers from the middle- and lower-ranked university institutions. While theCarnegie-Mellon/Tohoku study revealed some differences between electricalengineers and metallurgical engineers and the Tokyo/MIT study includedmechanical and civil engineers, both studies shared a strong emphasis onelectrical engineers and the electronics industry. By implication, both studiesprovoke some curiosity about the likely outcomes if chemical engineers andthe chemical industry had been included. The Carnegie-Mellon/Tohoku studywas initiated to check out many of the popular assertions in the US-Japanmanufacturing debates which turned out to be based on little more thantravellers’ tales and anecdote. The policy orientation of the Tokyo/MIT studywas much more direct and explicit. The Director General of NISTEP took theopportunity to deliver a piece of advice to President Clinton:

…the US needs to commit more manpower to instilling engineers with asense of craftsmanship and a willingness to work in manufacturingindustry…If the Clinton administration truly wants to build a securefuture, it will work to devise policies that enhance the scientific andtechnological prowess upon which economic strength rests.

(Sakauchi1993:3)

If the implicit secondary message was to stop indulging in negative tradefriction complaints and to put the American house in order, the emphasis onvirtuous craftsmanship and well-motivated engineers is understandable.However, the step from findings to policy advice might be judged tendentioussince the findings noted that there were different industry mixes in the Americanand Japanese samples. Thirty percent of the US engineering graduates workedin the aerospace, computer and medical technology industries where the UShad a strong advantage compared to only 12 percent among Japanese engineers,while 47 percent of the Japanese respondents worked in electrical equipment,machinery, chemical and automotive industries compared to only 20 percentof the American respondents. Moreover, the ‘willingness’ of Japanese engineersmight owe more to the constraints of the lifetime employment system than toany sense of vocation. On both of these outflow studies, the Japanese lowerresponse rates were lower than those of their American counterparts. Thiscontrasts with the more usual expectation based on inflow studies. However,the Japanese response rates in inflow studies are usually based on access torespondents via managers, and as Sakakibara and Westney noted, ‘aquestionnaire permitted by management has real “authority” in the Japanesecontext that it does not have for US employees’ (Sakakibara and Westney1985:3).


Inflow studies

Instead of locating a population and sample of engineers by university, a muchmore common approach has been to locate engineers by current employer, andin effect, to examine the inflow into employment from the education system.

One of the earliest attempts to explore similarities and differences in thetraining, careers and research organisation between Japanese and US engineerswas undertaken through the Harvard US-Japan relations and the MIT-JapanScience and Technology programmes. The reports of Westney and Sakakibaraon the two foci of research organisation and engineering careers becamepioneering templates for many subsequent cross-national studies inmethodology and findings (Westney and Sakakibara 1985; Sakakibara andWestney 1985). Data collection was based on interviews and questionnairesaimed at the corporate central laboratories and at the product division-levellaboratories of three Japanese and three American firms in the computerindustry. Since companies undertook responsibility for the distribution ofquestionnaires to a stratified sample of their R&D employees, response rateswere higher among the Japanese sample (90 to 100 percent), more accustomedto support a questionnaire permitted by management than their Americancounterparts (40 to 50 percent). While the 306 Japanese respondents could beclearly associated with central corporate laboratories (208) and product divisionlaboratories (98), it was more difficult to sub-divide the 109 US engineers.The US companies tended to use relatively small ‘advanced technology groups’in the early stages of projects (which were less critical in new productdevelopment than the Japanese central laboratories) and ‘design developmentgroups’ (which were less closely linked to manufacturing than the Japaneseparallels, whether in organisational structure, spatial location or personnelflows). Thus much of the subsequent statistical analysis of responses was basedon the 98 Japanese division level engineers and the total of 109 Americanengineers. Although the participating companies were named in researchreports, all of the analyses are conducted at the level of national rather thancompany samples. Through their analyses, the researchers demonstrated thatdifferences between the Japanese companies and their engineers were‘systematic, structural and institutional, rather than personal’ (Sakakibara andWestney 1985:2). The two central findings—that Japanese companiesmaintained a closer linkage between R&D and manufacturing than Americancounterparts in terms of the three levels of corporate structure, project teamand individual engineer and that the Japanese company bore a much greaterresponsibility than the individual engineer for guiding engineering employees’career development compared to American companies, have been supportedby much other research.

In trying to compare the process through which younger engineers enteredindustrial employment and set about complementing their academic knowledgeand skills with organisational knowledge and skills, Thurley, Lam and Lorrimanadopted an imaginative and innovative methodology (Thurley, Lam and


Lorriman 1988). Putting their focus on the learning and problem solving ofengineers in the context of employing organisations and their cultures, theygathered a sample of engineers from R&D departments in British and Japanesecompanies in the electronics and information technology industries. With theirsamples of Japanese and British engineers, they concentrated on a six-monthperiod of training and learning experiences reported through monthly diaries,supplemented by interviews and questionnaires. Again, although participatingcompanies were named, the researchers concentrated their analysis on nationalsamples. The merits of the methodology lay in the rich database gathered andthe engineers’ -eye view of the organisational context of engineering formation.Against these benefits, there were high costs on both respondents andresearchers. Respondents had to be highly motivated (or at least, their motivationhad to be sustained by the researchers) and there were heavy demands on theresearchers in data collection and analysis. As the researchers recognised, thedemands on respondents meant that respondents were self-selected as volunteersand the project risked producing an a-typical sample. Set against this potentialdifficulty, the research design has generated a rich data set and insights intothe complexities of engineering task situations through a panel study.Unfortunately, the planned completion of this demanding project washandicapped by the untimely death of the principal investigator, Thurley.Nevertheless, Lam has continued to demonstrate the merits of a close andintensive panel study (Lam 1993).

Organisational studies

Although comparative studies of organisations take the organisation as thecentral unit of analysis, rather than the occupational group as in outflow orinflow studies, they have provided another source of insights into the cross-national variations in the utilisation of engineers, and often by implication intotheir education and training.

The pioneering comparative studies of organisation and innovation in Japanand the US by Hull and Azumi using matched data sets provided early examplesof the respective strengths in different areas of innovation of different forms oforganisation (Hull, Hage and Azumi 1984a; Hull and Azumi 1989; Hull andAzumi 1991). Using data sets from the 1970s and 1980s, Hull and Azumidemonstrated the relative strengths of American companies in frontier researchand of Japanese companies in the transfer of developed technologies withinthe company. In this process, Hull and Azumi drew attention to the role ofJapanese engineers as ‘trained in-house generalists’ (Azumi and Hull 1990:9). Assessing changes in organisational structures over the decade, Hull andAzumi suggested that there was evidence of convergence attributable toJapanese companies’ needs to cope with more radical innovation and adoptorganisational structures more familiar in the US. However, they underlinedcontinuing differences between the two nations too, particularly in the positivecorrelation between size and inventiveness in Japan. Here, the authors drew on


contextual factors, particularly the big differences between the roles of largeand small firms in the innovation system in Japan.

Where Hull and Azumi’s organisational studies concentrated on hypothesis-testing at the organisational level of analysis with large sample surveys (110 UScompanies and 36 Japanese companies in the 1970s and 164 Japanese and 36 UScompanies in the 1980s), some later Franco-Japanese studies conducted by twoGovernment research institutes have relied on intensive case studies in fourcompanies (one chemical and electronic company in each country). In these studiesin the 1990s, researchers from the Japan Institute of Labour (JIL) collaboratedwith researchers based in the Aix-en-Provence Laboratoire d’Economie et deSociologie du Travail (LEST) of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique(CNRS) (Itoh et al 1991; Lanciano and Nohara 1993). The French team drew onthe ambitious theoretical framework of ‘societal effects’ designed by Marc Mauriceto explore cross-national and cross-cultural differences all the way from the macro(or societal) level down to the micro (or individual) level.

While some cross-national differences are evident, the merit of includingboth electrical and chemical companies lies in the researchers’ attention tointer-industry differences too. Comparisons of the electrical companies revealdifferent market contexts for the respective French and Japanese companies.The higher level of profitability in the French company rested on an oligopolisticdomestic market, compared to the Japanese company’s greater reliance onexport markets. While both companies spend about the same level on R&D(about 5 to 6 percent of turnover), they differ on capital investment, with amuch higher Japanese level. Different approaches to corporate growth (theJapanese company being much more dependent on internal growth and theFrench company more reliant on acquisitions and external growth) are matchedby different technology strategies and human resource management strategiesfor respective engineering labour forces. The Japanese company put greatemphasis on the role of the Central Research Laboratory in the generation ofnew technologies to spur innovation and diversification, whereas responsibilitiesfor technology acquisition were more diffused in the French company. Althoughthe French electrical company identified a higher proportion of its labour force(49 percent of the total of 8,000 employees) as technically qualified comparedto the Japanese electrical company (42 percent of 13,900 employees), whenthe focus is put on those higher-level engineers with the equivalent of fouryears or more of higher education, then the Japanese company has the muchhigher proportion (21 percent compared to 11 percent). Moreover, the contrastsare even more dramatic when their distribution is examined, with 13 percentof the Japanese higher-level engineers working in the Central ResearchLaboratory compared to only 1.5 percent in the French Central ResearchLaboratory. The corollary of the different technological strategies was thecontrast in the Japanese company’s attempted synchronisation of technologyand human resource development compared to the devolved French technologystrategy and the tensions in human resource management for the Frenchengineering labour force.


The comparisons in the chemical companies were less straightforward sincethe French chemical company was in the public sector whereas the Japanesechemical company was in the private sector. However, the research teamsidentified differences in business and technology strategies and linkeddifferences in human resource management policies and practices. Thesecontrasts in links to their environments are associated with different humanresource strategies for Japanese and French engineers. The Japanese engineers’professional skills and careers were built through sequential moves betweenclosely connected technical areas managed by the companies whereas Frenchengineers took more responsibility upon themselves across more discretespheres.

The merits of these organisational case studies lie in their attempts to link arange of company policies and practices in business and technology strategyto human resource management for engineers and to weave into the analysisboth the quantitative and qualitative aspects. Yet compared to the inflow andoutflow approaches with their foci on the occupational, these organisationalanalyses tend to draw on illustrative interview material but do not generatesystematic data of engineers’ experiences and perspectives.

The International Research Group on R&DManagement

Compared to the contrasting methodologies of the extensive survey in theSakakibara/Westney study and the intensive diary study in the Thurley/Lorriman/Lam study, the International Survey of R&D Workers by theInternational Research Group on R&D Management, in which I participatedin 1988–89 and on which I have drawn heavily in this and the following twochapters, tried to extend the survey approach in two directions.1 First, theInternational Group on R&D Management aimed to extend the samplecompanies beyond the electronics or computer industries which appeared topredominate in many earlier research reports, and secondly, it tried to go beyondthe two-country studies to include four countries (Japan, Britain, Germanyand the US). Although the electronics and computer companies are primeexamples of high-technology companies, the International Research Groupwanted to explore the more chemical-based industries and to illustrate some ofthe company variety within the same industry, since the tendency to read anddiscuss single-industry studies as typical of all ‘Japanese industry’ or ‘theJapanese company’ must be treated with circumspection. The tendency todiscuss national samples as Japan versus ‘the West’ prompted our extensionfrom the Anglo-Japanese comparisons to Germany and the US. The benefitsfrom this extended study were to demonstrate examples of ‘Britishexceptionalism’, rather than the more usual ‘Japanese exceptionalism’ thatemerges from the more usual two-country analyses.1

Thus the surveys of the International Research Group on R&D Managementin 1998 broke new ground in comparative surveys of engineers and scientists


in industrial R&D staff with a broader industrial coverage. The process ofsampling involved three stages—industry, company and individual R&D staffmember. Clearly there are a number of problems in matching industries andcompanies—for example, the British electronics industry is strongly developedin the defence field but relatively weakly represented in the consumer electronicssector, with the reverse situation in Japan.

Starting from a broad agreement to find roughly comparable companies inthe electronics and chemical industries, the British and Japanese research teamsworked in parallel to contact companies. Making contacts in parallel ratherthan in sequence made for some problems in securing matches, yet it did meanthat that data collection was closer in timing. Despite some hiccups in companynegotiations the eventual samples were remarkably well matched in terms ofbroad sectors. The surveys were completed in six Japanese and six Britishcompanies spread across five finer industrial classifications—electronics,telecommunications, chemicals, textiles, food and drink. This range ofcompanies meant that there was a spread of types of R&D undertaking andadministration. The electronics and chemicals companies provided examplesof relatively high-technology industries; R&D expenditure ran at 8 to 10 percentof sales in electronics and only a little lower across chemicals (although in thepharmaceuticals sector expenditure could run well above 10 percent per annum).The food and drink industry has been characterised by much lower relativeR&D outlays, although diversification and the potential of biotechnology haveincreased interest in the role of R&D in competitiveness for some companiesin this sector. Although R&D expenditure data were neither required nor freelyvolunteered in Britain in the 1980s, all six of the British companies (or theirparent companies) were listed in the top 100 UK companies ranked by R&Dexpenditure spenders in the UK (Company Reporting 1992).

In addition to the questionnaire survey of R&D staff, case studies were builtthrough interviews with personnel and R&D managers on recruitment, workorganisation and career development in each of the companies—electronics(two companies in Japan and one in Britain), telecommunications (one companyin each country), chemicals (one company in Japan and two companies inBritain), textiles (one company in each country), food and drink (one companyin each country).

The sampling frame targeted graduate-level engineers or scientists, aged 25to 45, and working in R&D. Further details of the companies and the sampleresponse rates are given in Table 4.1. Negotiating access through the centralpersonnel departments of some British companies meant that they were notalways au fait with the size of the total potential population, particularly incompanies which decentralised business operations. In most cases thecompanies became responsible for distributing the questionnaires to their R&Dstaff.

Given the complexities of parallel negotiations conducted thousands of milesapart, the survey yielded some remarkable similarities among the respondents.The two national samples of R&D staff were broadly comparable in terms of


age, sex and position in the authority structures of their organisations. Theaverage age of research workers in both countries was 32 and the sample wasoverwhelmingly male in both countries. Just over half of the samples in bothcountries were mainline engineers or scientists without managerialresponsibilities (52 percent in Japan and 54 percent in Britain). Of those holdingmanagerial responsibilities in Japan a slight majority were at section manageror above with the remainder at section leader. Although the majority of theBritish sample were without managerial responsibilities (54 percent), a largeproportion of these mainline engineers or scientists might be assigned assistants.Of those with managerial responsibilities, the majority were in charge of agroup of qualified staff, with only a relatively small proportion responsible forsupervising other managers.

The main differences in the two countries’ samples came in their educationalbackgrounds and their current areas of work. Over 68 percent of the Japanesesample had a postgraduate qualification, typically a two-year master’s degree(over 60 percent of the sample), with only a small percentage of doctorates(7.4 percent). In the British sample 49 percent had postgraduate qualifications;however, these qualifications were gained through a variety of routes, from

Table 4.1 Educational backgrounds of senior officials at the Ministry of International Tradeand Industry (MITI) (1988)

Source: MITI 1988

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one-year diplomas (4.5 percent) to one-year master’s degrees (13 percent) anddoctorates (27 percent). The most significant differences in area of work lay inthe much larger proportion of the Japanese sample engaged in researchcompared to development, whereas the reverse picture emerged in the Britishsample (see Table 4.1). Nearly two thirds of the Japanese sample reported thatthey were at the research end of the R&D spectrum whereas less than one thirdof the British sample were engaged in scientific or technological research. Onthe other hand less than one third of the Japanese sample were engaged indesign or development whereas half the British sample worked in this area.

However, there were large variations across the companies in proportions ofour respondents along the R&D spectrum (see Table 4.2). The proportions inresearch in Japanese companies ranged from 37.5 percent in ‘J-elec1’ to 90.0 percentin ‘J-drink’. By contrast, the research contingent outnumbered the developmentgroup in only one British company, ‘B-chem1’, with 61.5 percent in research. Onefactor associated with the size of the research effort was the number of doctorate-level staff employed in the British companies, where the two chemistry-basedcompanies had the largest concentrations of PhD holders in our samples. A largerproportion of the British sample reported that their work lay outside the strictboundaries of R&D—for example in activities ranging from industrial engineeringto information processing, or some seconded to sales or technical services. Somequirks and fuzzy edges were inevitable when sampling had to be handed over tobusy company managers. Yet these seem slight issues when set against the broadmatch in the nature of the samples, while the response rates reflected the highdegree of co-operation generated by busy managers, engineers and scientists.

For our major interest in the conduct of innovation in Japan and Britain, thecompanies and their R&D staff confirm the significance of lifetime employment.Tables 4.3 and 4.4 show that the overwhelming majority of Japanese staff joinedtheir company immediately after graduation from university, whereas the Britishcompanies had a much higher degree of mid-career recruits than the Japanesecompanies. It is worth noting that the level of retention was high among the Britishcompanies, for many surveys of graduate engineers and scientists tended to suggesthigher levels of mobility in the early years in employment. If we look more closelyat ‘company effects’, we can see in Table 4.4 that, despite variations acrosscompanies, no Japanese company had a higher degree of mid-career recruitmentthan any British company. Even when we compare ‘J-elec2’ —often cited asone of Japan’s most westernised companies and exhibiting a high degree ofmid-career recruitment among the Japanese sample (16.7 percent) —with ‘B-chem1’ —a company often singled out for its traditions of long service—mid-career recruitment is higher in the British company (23.7 percent).

Corporate R&D

In published documents and interviews, the Japanese companies present ageneral image through the 1980s and 1990s of striking out into new areas oflonger-term research with new investments and laboratory reorganisations,


whereas the main British companies appear to be more preoccupied with tyingthe R&D effort more closely and more effectively to overall business strategies.The rather different preoccupation with R&D and business strategies havetended to generate rather different concerns for human resource development.Japanese managers have been concerned with the need to develop long-termresearchers, whereas the British managers have been keenly interested in howto develop the business and market awareness of R&D staff.

Several researchers have commented on significant changes in Japanesecompany R&D in the 1980s (Imano 1990; Methe 1995). Not only did thecompanies continue to expand their R&D efforts, but the creation of manycentral R&D laboratories with the declared aim of undertaking basic research

Table 4.3 Employment mobility (percentagechanging company)

Source: International Survey of R&D Workers

Table 4.4 Percentage of the company respondents who joined the company aftergraduation and the percentage who were mid-career recruits



suggested a qualitative change (Wakasugi 1992). Japanese companies haveorganised their R&D activity into three types of corporate institution: the centralR&D research laboratory, usually established with at least 50 percent of itsfunding guaranteed as core funding from central corporate funds; the appliedR&D laboratory, usually funded largely by a business or product division; andthe production laboratory, attached to factories with the aim of improvingproduction or process technologies. Imano noted two waves of central laboratorycreation in the 1960s and the 1980s (see Figure 4.1). The first wave coincidedwith changes in Japanese government policy, especially the withdrawal ofgeneral support for imported technology in favour of support for more selectiveprogrammes. This carried the implication that companies should establish theirown central laboratory to manage their own acquisition and development oftechnology. The establishment of the basic research laboratories in the 1980shas been interpreted as a response to the arrival of Japanese companies at thetechnological frontiers after years of technological dependence on their Westernrivals.

All these events have stimulated much debate for a new generation ofresearchers, about the need for new patterns of human resource developmentfor the basic research laboratories (McCormick 1991; JPC 1987). For example,it has been argued that companies will need to add more active mid-careerrecruits in contrast to their past emphasis on life-time employment, that theywill need to consider more differentiated pay scales for specialists rather thanthe past all-embracing comprehensive scales, and to develop new dual-ladderpromotion systems along professional and managerial ladders. In sum, the newdirections for R&D prompted debates about the need for new institutionalarrangements in education, training and employment in Japan.

Electronics

The vertical structure of the electronics industry can be distinguished intocomponents, equipment, systems and applications. The basic components areincorporated into equipment. In turn, units of equipment are incorporated intosystems. In similar fashion, systems are directed to applications. The generalwisdom is that greater product diversity and greater added value comes withthe move upwards from components towards applications. This carries theimplication that an increasing proportion of R&D expenditure can be expectedto be moved towards applications and the premium skills can be expected tolie in systems and applications skills. The British-owned electronics companieshave followed this general trend. They have tended to move away fromcomponent and equipment manufacture and to rely on foreign supplies, and tomove towards the design and supply of systems and applications. By contrastthe major Japanese electronics companies have tried to maintain strengths asintegrated suppliers across the chain from components to applications. Withthe rise of the yen exchange value in the 1980s many of the Japanese companieshave been intensifying the location of their manufacturing overseas, including


in Britain. Therefore one of the ironies of present trends is that Japanesecompanies manufacturing in Britain can become the suppliers of componentsand equipment needed by the British-owned companies who are concentratingon systems and applications. One further contrast between the electronicsindustries of the two countries is that the British electronics industry has had alarger relative share of its activity linked to government and defencerequirements and a much lower proportion of its activity linked to massconsumer electronics. These differences in the development and activities ofthe electronics industries in Britain and Japan mean that exact matching ofcompanies is impossible, and this is evident in the companies sampled for the‘International R&D Workers’ Survey’, where industrial differences are reflected

Figure 4.1 Number of research institutions established by Japanese companies

Source: Imano (1990)


in the sample companies in the role of company R&D and the skills whichcompanies are seeking to develop.

‘Electronics’ has become almost synonymous with ‘high technology’ becauseof the scale, speed and scope of its influence not only among producer companiesbut also among a wide range of applications in other industries. Therefore allthree electronics companies in the survey boast proudly of their technologicalexcellence as well as their economic performance and growth rate, and refer tothe central role of company R&D in their company business strategy.

Japan’s electronics industry reflects the twin aspects of technologicaldevelopment through imported technology and indigenous development.Although Japan was a ‘late developer’, the emergence of a Japanese electronicsindustry was aided by the craft tradition of manufacture in pre-industrial Japanand the fact that the early electrical companies in the late nineteenth centurywere not so late in establishment behind the technologies being developed inEurope and the US (Odagiri and Goto 1996). The two Japanese companieswere examples of high-technology companies which spanned the range ofelectronics activities, although in different proportions. The main activities ofcompany ‘J-elec1’ spanned the three main fields of communications equipment,computers and electronics devices, while consumer electronics accounted foronly 5 percent of sales. By contrast company ‘J-elec2’ was a major producer inthe world’s consumer electronics markets with video cassette recorders, TV’sand audio equipment responsible for over 84 percent of sales. Yet althoughthey were engaged in different markets both companies are strongly committedto R&D expenditures as part of their business strategy. Over the 10 yearsbetween 1975 and 1985 in the two companies, ‘J-elec1’ and ‘J-elec2’, salesgrew by 461 percent and 347 percent, R&D investments by 657 percent and595 percent, and R&D as a percentage of sales averaged 11.5 percent and 7.8percent respectively.

Incorporated in the late nineteenth century as a joint venture to import andsell Western telephone equipment, ‘J-elec1’ was largely known as acommunications company until the 1970s. During the 1930s, the Japaneseshareholding increased and the foreign shareholding began to diminish. In thepost-war years the zaibatsu stock was sold to the Japanese public, althoughother group companies retained a substantial holding. In the 1950s, the companybegan to diversify its business lines, adding first computers and thensemiconductors to its original communications equipment interests.Communications systems were still the mainstay of the business until the late1960s, however. By the end of the 1970s, semiconductors and computers becamemore significant in both R&D and business success. For much of 1970s, growthin profitability was hampered by slower investment in the nationaltelecommunications system, the effects of the oil crisis, and the drain ofincreasing capital expenditures and R&D in computers and semiconductorswhere expansion had been inhibited by the oil shock.

At the end of the 1970s, both computers and semiconductors were makingsignificant contributions to enhanced profits and by the early 1980s the company


reorganised itself to be a well-balanced manufacturer of electronic devices,computers and communications equipment with a strong market-share positionin all three fields. In parallel it had reduced its dependence on sales to Japanesegovernment agencies—for example from 24.8 percent of total sales in 1976 to18.2 percent by 1981.

The growth of the strong market shares in each of the areas was based onthe superior R&D facilities. During the 1980s, a guiding theme has been thematch between developments in computer and communications technologies—for example in the increasing closeness and similarity between themechanisms of electronic switching systems and computers or the tendency todistribute the functions of computers using communications circuits and thecompany’s own strengths in each of these fields. Thus the company is presentingitself as a company focused on the generating, processing and relaying ofinformation. Given that the company elected not to go down the path of plug-in IBM compatibility it has had to commit itself heavily to the development ofits own software. While this has been burdensome, it has opened the possibilitythat ‘J-elec1’ might be able to overtake IBM in some areas of fundamentaltechnology. The parallels between convergent trends in technologicaldevelopments and the philosophy of integrated manufacturing operations fromelements to systems were seen as both quintessentially Japanese and consistentwith Japan’s needs for a decentralised information network as it makes thetransition from being an industrial to a post-industrial society.

R&D in ‘J-elec1’ is spread across the three main technologies insemiconductors, computers and communications and across the spectrum frombasic research to product development. Each year the image of a high technologycompany is promoted in the annual report with lists of ‘highlights of researchand development’. The company’s ratio of R&D expenses rose from 3.4 percentin 1976 to 4.8 percent (1980), 10 percent (1984) and 16 percent (1988). In theyears from 1976 to 1980 computers and industrial electronic systems wereresponsible for 47 percent of company R&D expenditures, semiconductors for26 percent and communications systems for 24 percent.

By the early 1980s, company ‘J-elec1’ employed over 6,000 engineers andscientists in R&D, about 9 percent of its total employees. They were located intwo types of laboratories: corporate research laboratories and productionengineering laboratories. The corporate research laboratories (the focus of thisresearch and the source of company sample survey respondents) were dividedinto six groups: basic technology research laboratories; opto-electronic researchlaboratories; communication and computer laboratories; the software productlaboratory; the resources and environmental protection laboratory; and thescientific computer centre. The production engineering laboratories in ‘J-elec1’are responsible for design and improvement in its own production processes.For example, they have been responsible for the application of robot assemblysystems for integrated circuits and communication equipment, laser weldingequipment, and so on.


Where company ‘J-elec1’ has been associated with Japan’s industrialdevelopment since its beginnings in the Meiji era (1868–1912), company ‘J-elec2’ is essentially a post-World War II creation. It was established by inventor-entrepreneurs amid the rubble of Japan’s immediate post-war years. From theseorigins business analysts have often labelled the ‘J-elec2’ company as an‘atypical Japanese company’ (even ‘un-Japanese’), differing from olderJapanese companies along a number of dimensions in its financial structure,business strategy and personnel policies. Yet while it is tempting to ‘explain’these inter-company differences in terms of entrepreneurial personalities, someof the differences can be attributed to the timing of its formation, the speed ofits very rapid growth and its technology intensity. Thus it can argued that toachieve success any other Japanese company facing these three factors wouldhave opted for similar policies and practices, and comments about un-Japaneseness or explanations of strategy and structure in terms of colourfulpersonalities seems to be a very partial interpretation. Technological strengthsand astute marketing have been at the core of company success in bringing astream of innovative products to world markets. Arguing that innovativeproducts need institutional supports which foster variety and difference ratherthan consensus, ‘J-elec2’ has been more reliant on private backers and the stockexchange than the large company groups, or trading companies, or the bankingsystem. Again, with rapid growth and its need for advanced technological skills,the company has recruited outside talents to a degree uncommon among theolder large corporations.

Although the ‘J-elec2’ company has been tightly focused on audio and videocommunications primarily for consumer markets and only secondarily forindustrial markets, its innovative success has been attributed to its coverageand competence in the full range of technology necessary for its products,including semiconductor devices, magnetic tapes, magnetic recording headsand cores, colour picture tubes, electronic circuitry, audio components, andrelated production equipment. The record of technological achievement andlists of ‘firsts’ in innovative products is not an unalloyed record of success,however; there are instances where obdurate commitment to a technology in aproud company led to market failures in particular product lines. For the future,the company is emphasising its competence in integrating audio and videosystem capabilities for entertainment and educational markets and R&Dexpenditure was estimated to be over 7 percent of sales for 1989.

In ‘J-elec2’, a corporate R&D laboratory was established in 1961 to examinebasic physical properties and processes, followed by an audio technologylaboratory in 1972. In the 1980s some additional R&D facilities were establishedoverseas. Despite some criticisms that Japanese electronics companies havemerely set up ‘screwdriver operations’ at their overseas sites, keeping coreR&D plants and personnel firmly with Japan, the ‘J-elec2’ can point to a naturalhistory of development for overseas operations from sales outlets to servicesupport, to manufacturing facilities, and eventually to overseas R&D. It wasone of the first Japanese companies to establish production facilities overseas


close to its markets in industrial economies in the 1960s. The move of productionoverseas has accelerated in the 1980s with the search for low-cost productionfacilities in southeast Asia as well as for locations near markets. Of the totalworld employment figure of over 40,000 employees in 1988, approximately15,000 were employed in Japan. During the mid-1980s, of these 15,000employed in Japan, approximately 1,500 were engaged in R&D. These R&Dstaff were roughly distinguished into 350 engaged in research and the majorityof 1,150 were engaged in development.

The origins of the British company ‘B-elec’ lay in a two-man partnership inthe early post-war years and it has echoes of the formation of the Japanesecompany ‘J-elec2’. From these modest beginnings in radio communications,‘B-elec’ grew by organic growth and acquisition to be a diverse company withsales across security products (31 percent), data communications (22 percent),specialised business activities (14 percent), defence, radar and avionics (10percent), radio communications (10 percent), marine and energy (8 percent),and telecommunications (5 percent). R&D activity in the company is stronglyshaped by this diversity and the underlying ‘B-elec’ company businessphilosophy. For the most part R&D is essentially advanced design anddevelopment conducted within the autonomous companies geared to providequick responses to customer requirements. Recognising its difficulties incompeting against much larger competitors in the increasingly difficult defenceindustry during the 1980s, the company devised a strategy of investing heavilyin high value-added services which could compensate for traditional products—for example, grafting more electronics on to the mechanical engineering baseof its security companies. In reviewing their core competence some of theconstituent companies were coming to define their companies as essentially‘systems design companies’, as the manufacturing companies were beingseverely rationalised and upgraded.

The British electronics company ‘B-elec’ is organised into a large numberof relatively small and compact and relatively autonomous companies. Therewere over 80 in the British group with an average size of 300 employees. Inthese companies, the R&D activity was best described as advanced development.At the research end, however, there were three centres. One company acted asa research centre offering both commissioned research and undertakingcorporate research for the whole group of companies. There were two smallercentres which offered specialist research for specialist technologies forparticular companies in the group. The research centre employed 150 staff, ofwhom 100 were professional engineers and scientists. Two thirds of the budgetcame from sponsorship by other companies in the group and one third fromcorporate funding. The two thirds was negotiated between research centretechnical management and the sponsoring company, not only in terms of costbut also for consistency with the research centre terms of reference; a potentialtrap is to avoid becoming ‘extra hands to a development effort’.

The nature of development organisation can be illustrated by two companies.The first company produces navigation systems and the total staff of 750


includes 160 in the development area, of whom about 50 are graduate-levelengineering staff. The second company produces radio products andcommunications systems and the total staff of 350 includes 150 engineers inthe development area. Design and development activity may be undertaken asprivate-venture work and some as contract work. When entering a new fieldthe development company may commission some gap-filling research fromthe research company.

Some of the most obvious contrasts between this British company and thetwo Japanese companies lies in the extent to which head office departmentscan provide a directing role in technological development and human resourcemanagement. In the British company, the centre’s controlling role is muchweaker but advantages are claimed for the capacity to foster business andtechnological innovation through the very decentralised structures.

Telecommunications

The telecommunications companies of Britain and Japan, including the samplecompanies ‘B-com’ and ‘J-com’, have been deeply affected by profoundtechnological, economic and political changes in recent years. Historically theR&D organisations of both companies have served as ‘national laboratories’,implying close links with government, other companies and universities. Neithercompany had a manufacturing arm which meant that they (and their R&Dfacilities) had a pivotal role in the development of the telecommunicationsindustry in association with other manufacturing companies. Privatisation andthe deregulation of telecommunications in both countries have brought areassessment of the role of company R&D and a search for a more market-oriented R&D with new linkages between the respective R&D organisationsand the other parts of the company and industry.

The predecessors of the R&D organisation in ‘J-com’ can be traced back tothe 1890s and the Meiji government’s determined bid to industrialise andmodernise Japan. The laboratories became a vital component in the importationand diffusion of Western technology into Japan, and it played an important ofrole in the development of an indigenous telecommunications capability forJapan. The central mission of the research laboratories is focused on thedevelopment of telecommunications-related technologies and systems for the‘J-com’ and its customers and on basic research for the long-term future. Theincreasingly closer synthesis of communications and information technologieshas shaped a medium-term R&D strategy, promoting the construction of a fulldigital network; the implementation of intelligent machine-processingtechniques; the application of nanometer and nano-second electronictechnologies; and the introduction of advanced opto-electronic technologies.

In the 1987 financial year approximately 2.8 percent of the operating revenues(¥149.3bn) was used to sustain over 5,000 researchers and support staff in the ‘J-com’ laboratories (compared to ¥136.2bn or 2.7 percent of sales in 1986). A steadyincrease in the resources committed to R&D brought the figures to ¥181.7bn in


1988 (3.2 percent of operating revenues 1988), ¥221.7bn in 1989 (3.8 percent ofoperating revenues), and¥248.0bn in 1990 (4.1 percent of operating revenues). By1990 the manpower figures had risen to 7,300 researchers and support staff.

Following privatisation there have been two major restructurings of the ‘J-com’ R&D organisation, both intended to produce a more market-orientedlaboratory system. In 1985 the four R&D locations, which reflected a regionalstructure, were regrouped into nine functionally-based technology laboratories.In 1987, reorganisation was carried further by regrouping the nine laboratoriesinto 11 laboratories defined even more closely by individual areas of technology.This second reorganisation was intended to cut the lead time between basicR&D breakthroughs and product development. With the second reorganisation,basic research was separated from applied research by the creation of a separatelaboratory, and staff were transferred to the department or service sectorcorresponding to their expertise with the aim of promoting participation in thecommercialisation of technological developments. Thus by 1990 3,000scientists, engineers and technologists were working in one of the 11functionally grouped telecommunications laboratories, while the remaining4,300 staff of the company’s total R&D staff were working in a developmentcentre or an applied research section in one of the ‘J-com’ business divisions.Two further centres were established with the aim of developing practicalnetwork systems. Further steps were taken in the reorganisation to strengthenthe co-ordination of R&D programmes. The ‘J-com’ R&D headquarters islocated within head office and attempts to provide co-ordination for the groupof laboratories to operate as a single, integrated research organisation.Consultation with the head office technical strategy office is intended to fashionlong-term R&D plans to meet the needs of ‘J-com’ divisions. These plansprovide guidelines for policies, strategies and resource allocation.

About 20 percent of ‘B-com’s R&D is carried out within one of the four operatingdivisions, mainly on short-term work to update or enhance existing systems. Themain part of the remaining 80 percent is accounted for by the central researchlaboratory. The central research laboratory received its funds from operatingdivisions (65 percent), corporate core funding (30 percent) and other organisations(5 percent). The latter includes funding through collaborative research schemes ona UK and EC basis and a small amount of contract research for other organisations.The central research laboratory spends about 60 percent of its funds internally andputs out the remainder as contracts to universities and industrial centres. A roughdistinction between the time scales of ‘R’ and ‘D’ is that ‘R’ may be five years pluswhereas development projects are two to five years.

Beneath the laboratory director of the central laboratory there are six maingroups. Grouped beneath these broad fields are the 30 divisions. These rangefrom 460 to 49 employees while the average size is about 300. The managementstructure is rather like a ‘civil service’ type of grade structure while R&D projectmanagement is matrix-based research. Some divisions operate by ‘managementby objectives’ whereas this would not work for other divisions where objectivesare too diverse.


In ‘B-com’, job assignments officially rest on project-leader nominationsto the project. Within any project there will be a list of sub-themes which arenot officially open to researchers, but which informally are open to negotiation.Staff engineers can declare their interests and the project leader will knowwhat they have done in the past.

Chemicals

Both ‘J-chem’ and ‘B-chem1’ were formed out of the chemical activities oftheir petrochemical parent companies, ‘J-chem’ in the 1950s and ‘B-chem1’ inthe 1960s. Therefore, although the two companies were relatively recent in aformal sense, their parent companies stem from the late 19th century and theirinvolvement with scientific laboratories in the oil side of their business has alengthy pedigree.

From the optimistic formation of ‘B-chem1’ in the 1960s, the 1980s becamea very bleak period with doubts about the continuing commitment of the parentcompany to its chemical offspring. With a depressed market and concern aboutover-capacity in the European chemical industry there were fears about possibledivestment. However, the parent company decided on a determined commitmentto areas of technological strength and divestment in areas in which it wasrelatively weak and in which it had little scope for growth. Therefore divestmentand exchanges of productive facilities occurred, but in the restructured companyR&D is seen as a central element in the concept of technological strength in itschosen fields of business activity.

‘B-chem2’ was the only company in the wider group to have its own R&Dlaboratories (of which there were seven) since the other group companies usedthe Central Laboratory of the petro-chemical parent company. Therefore ‘B-chem1’ had some discretion in assigning some projects to either one of its ownseven laboratories or to the corporate Central Laboratory. In addition it couldfund research in universities or other commercial bodies. The corporate groupCentral Laboratory employed 1,400 staff, of whom 450 were graduates. Twothirds of the Central Laboratory budget came from sponsorship by the operatingcompanies and one third from corporate core funds for longer-term fundamentalresearch in areas of current interest or potential for future diversification. ‘B-chem1’ originally established its own R&D laboratories to support the rapidlychanging technology of petrochemicals at production sites. From this start onproduction- and applications-oriented R&D, an increasing amount ofexploratory research was being undertaken by the 1980s. ‘B-chem1’ employed800 staff in seven laboratories spread across the UK (three), continental Europe(three), and the US (one). The UK laboratories ranged in size from 120 to 170staff. Funding for the laboratories was drawn from the businesses into whichthe company was streamed, with 80 percent of the funding sponsored by oneof the businesses, and the remaining 20 percent coming from the corporatefunds of the ‘B-chem1’.


The other chemical company in the sample, the British company, ‘B-chem2’,had its roots outside petro-chemicals and it was in essence a cluster of specialitychemical companies. With a total UK employment of 2,500, ‘B-chem2’organised around three divisions which covered the small companies whichmade up this chemical company in 1973; another 1500 employees are in theUS. The R&D effort is closely linked to production sites. The company isincreasing R&D investment in the speciality chemicals areas which havedeveloped partly by organic growth and partly by acquisition and it was movingto distinguish the original technical support functions from the new R&D.However, it appeared unlikely to establish a central R&D facility and thespeculation was ended when the parent company sold off ‘B-chem2’ to acontinental European chemical company.

The chemical industry in Japan grew rapidly in the ‘high growth era’ (1955to 1973) but it encountered a range of severe problems by the mid-1970s. Theseproblems included: the anti-pollution movements; a lack of cost-reducinginnovations; the rising cost of borrowing; the increasing ability of developingcountries to produce some of their own chemical products; and the deficienciesin resources and energy dramatically highlighted by the oil-price increases.The structure of the industry made for difficulties in adjustment. Of the 20,000chemical companies in Japan, most were operating in processing a singleproduct with fewer than 50 employees. However, the large companies beganthe business diversification from raw materials production to final productswhich is evident in the R&D programme of ‘J-chem’.

The ‘J-chem’ company was created in the mid 1950s as one of the chemicalcompanies in a keiretsu group, which in turn had been re-fashioned in the post-war world from one of the major zaibatsu. Now it operates as a comprehensivechemical company, with 20 percent of its sales coming from specialitychemicals. The initial response to the oil shocks had been to use R&D to seekprocess improvements, but later the emphasis changed to seek new productsfor diversification, particularly speciality chemicals. In 1988, it announced a15-percent increase in R&D outlays for the coming year, with a view toincreasing the share of its sales coming from speciality chemicals, particularlythose related to electronic materials. From 1987 the company planned tomaintain R&D expenditures at approximately 6 percent of net sales over thecoming five years, with 85 percent of these funds being committed to work onthe speciality chemicals. By the late 1980s, company literature was beginningto emphasise a research programme beyond petrochemicals into the biosciencesand new materials fields.

The textile companies

The textile industry was almost synonymous with the Industrial Revolution inBritain, the pioneer industry in the pioneer country. As a child on the bordersof industrial Lancashire, I saw much of that historical legacy from the 1840scotton worker’s house in which I lived to the school trips and observation of


ring spinning, even mule spinning and steam-engine power. The textile industrywas important in the industrialisation of Japan too, and the sight of 1880sMather & Platt machinery in the Kurabo Museum in Kurashiki is an eerietestimony to British involvement in Japan’s early industrialisation.

Both the textile companies had long histories intimately associated with theformative years of their respective industries. For convenience, I have used thelabels of textiles for these two companies, but the company activities covereda much broader range of activities than would normally have been understoodfrom textiles and for whom R&D has been an important aspect of diversification.Indeed, much of the R&D activity engaging our sample of engineers andscientists has been outside the textile area.

While Japan’s textile industry shows the mix of imported and indigenoustechnology evident in other industries in Japan, ‘J-fibre’ has been somewhatunusual in being strongly on the indigenous technology wing of the industryand seeking growth through organic means rather than acquisitions. It startedas a manufacturer of synthetic fibres in the early decades of the twentiethcentury, and was among the first Japanese companies to develop independentmanufacturing technologies. By the mid-1980s, the Japanese synthetic fibreindustry had a number of ills from stagnant domestic demand to severecompetition coming from Taiwan and South Korea. MITI was encouraging ‘J-fibre’ and other companies to find a remedy through mergers. However, ‘J-fibre’ and other fibre makers recoiled from the bitter pill of a merger andpreferred the route to health through product diversification.

Product diversification had been underway in ‘J-fibre’ for many years. Inthe early 1960s, the company had established a chemicals and plastics division,and later, a petro-chemical company. In the early 1970s, ‘J-fibre’ had tried arisky route to diversification through oil exploration, but a series of failuresprompted an alternative path through pharmaceuticals. Thus in the late 1980s,the company operated through five divisions. Three divisions included the threecore business activities in fibres, chemicals and plastics, and the medical andpharmaceutical division. The importance of R&D, the ‘key to “J-fibre’s”business strategy’ according to an annual report, was recognised by itsorganisation into a fourth division, while general administration accounted forthe fifth division.

The first R&D laboratory, created in the early 1950s, had become theproduction technology laboratory by the 1980s. Meanwhile, a new researchlaboratory, created in the 1960s, had become the corporate R&D centre. Eachof the divisions had its own R&D centre. The plastics and the fibre and textilelaboratories were created in the 1960s and the bio-medical research institutewas created in the 1970s.

Where ‘J-fibre’ had experienced organic growth, ‘B-fibre’ had grown fromits origins in the early nineteenth century by a mix merger and acquisition, aswell as organic growth. Determined efforts in the 1960s and 1970s had turneda collection of fibre and textile businesses into a huge, vertically integratedindustrial group covering fibres, textiles, coatings, films and packaging, with


additional activities in woodpulp, fine chemicals and advanced materials. Inthe 1980s, it was one of Britain’s largest companies, although much smaller inemployment terms at the end of the decade than at the beginning after the jobcutting in the 1980–83 recession. Yet annual reports in the late 1980s stressedthe continuing search for acquisitions which fitted existing strengths andreinforced the cohesiveness of the group’s portfolio. Cohesiveness across thegroup proved too difficult to sustain. By the close of the decade, the textileside, which had been managed independently from the chemicals side, was de-merged. The split created two companies: on one side, the textiles activities(clothing, fabrics and spinning) and on the other side, the more chemicals-based activities (fibres and films, coatings, packaging and speciality chemicals).

While the de-merger left two large companies, the chemicals company wassmall by international standards. The overall aims were to reduce the proportionof business in bulk chemicals and increase the proportion in speciality chemicalsin order to gain the benefits of higher margins, greater insulation from cyclicalfactors and more international markets with less vulnerability to UK recessions.The diversity in the range of products and businesses had prompted the adoptionof a very decentralised corporate structure. However, the company not onlyretained but continued to expand the central research and technology groupwhich had been built up in the 1980s. ‘B-fibre’ operated three centres for R&D:a central R&D facility for the group and two further centres which specialisedin particular technologies. The central laboratory had 700 staff and the twosmaller laboratories a further 300 and 120 staff. About 80 percent of the CRLfunds came from business divisions and 20 percent from corporate core funds.The size of the company shaped the R&D philosophy, expounded by theresearch director as operating in ‘shirt sleeves rolled-up style’ since it wasalways necessary to understand the fundamental processes rather than rely onempiricism, but impossible to carry a large portfolio of ‘blue-sky research’.

The food and drink companies

Both the food and drink companies in Britain and Japan have had severalcenturies’ of involvement with science and technology through the brewingindustry. From the 1980s, however, R&D began to form an important part ofthe diversification programmes of both companies. In the short run, it wasrecognised that the companies could be profitable on beer sales without R&Dand the R&D outlay appeared tiny as a proportion of total sales. On the otherhand, both companies have perceived a problematic future for their beer sales.

In Japan, the domestic beer market is seen as a relatively mature market inthe face of slower economic growth and changing consumer tastes. ‘J-drink’faced additional problems of declining market share in the face of moreaggressive new product development by competitors. Although new productssuch as soft drinks and food products were being developed, the company wasstill dependent on beer for over 90 percent of sales in the late 1980s. Therefore


future plans were developed for the expansion of overseas activities throughbold marketing in the US and Europe and diversification through new products.

Originally established on the company traditions in brewing science, theR&D department was set up in 1943, but by 1967 an applied bio-sciencelaboratory was distinguished from the brewing-science laboratory. In 1986 amajor reorganisation was undertaken to found the brewing-science laboratory,the pharmaceutical laboratory and the plant bioengineering laboratory.Meanwhile the head office involvement with R&D was consolidated with theformation of a life sciences group, a pharmaceuticals group and a seed-and-plant business group. Using overseas representative offices, attachments todomestic and overseas universities and links with foreign companies, thecompany is actively seeking to promote its pharmaceutical and life science/biotechnology activities.

In both Britain and Japan, the beer companies are sensitive to publicperceptions of their activities and the beer trade. ‘J-drink’ hitched itself toenvironmental concerns under the slogan ‘clean and green’, illustrating its roleas a ‘corporate citizen’ in the design of its production facilities, sponsorship ofsport (and hence health) and cultural activities. For its part, ‘B-drink’ is sensitiveto public concern about a range of alcohol abuse and the potential for governmentlegislation hostile to the brewers. Therefore it also projects a positive image ofits relations with society, conceived synonymously as ‘community’ and‘marketplace’, emphasising its sponsorship of community programmes, andsporting and cultural events. While these concerns might stimulate an interest innon-beer activities in themselves, it is the structure of markets which promptsthe diversification efforts of the British food and drink company. The economicand social structures of both the distribution system and the leisure industriesshape the direction of diversification and the form which it is taking —hence therole of R&D policy in support of the business strategy.

By the late 1970s, the five major British brewers had achieved a 70 percentshare of the British beer market. Given a relatively stable market for beer, theBritish brewers have taken on a twin-pronged diversification programme. Britishbrewers have controlled many of their retail outlets, the pubs, as ‘tied-houses’.Therefore the first plank of diversification has been to expand the non-beeraspects of their pub trade by selling more soft drinks and food. The secondplank of diversification has been to expand the non-pub business, typicallyinto restaurants, hotels and holidays not only in Britain but in mainland Europeand North America too. The extent of diversification means that the shares ofprofits attributable to food and to beer are 8:5. R&D forms part of thediversification programme because new sections have been added to brewingscience to enable R&D in the areas of nutrition and ventilation in order todevelop new products—in particular the menus and environment of the newpub and restaurant business.

With a total research budget of £4m set against total sales of £1,554m, ‘B-drink’ company reflects the general pattern of low research intensity in the foodand drink industry. The brewing companies would be profitable without R&D.


However, ‘B-drink’ R&D managers had clear ideas on the ways in which R&Dcan enhance profitability. A total of 60 staff were engaged in R&D, divided evenlybetween research and development and located mainly in the central technicalcentre. Further company R&D was carried out by directly employed staff locatedon a university campus, collaborative research was funded on another universitycampus, and collaborative, pre-competitive research was funded through aresearch association with other companies. Funding for the technical centre camemainly from commissioned R&D for business divisions (90 percent)supplemented by a small budget (10 percent) from corporate core funding.

Project organisation

While heroic images of the solo efforts of independent inventors still have apowerful hold on public images of engineers and scientists, most contemporaryR&D work is carried out in teams. Therefore organising and managing teamsis one of the critical areas in the pursuit of innovation by large corporations.Yet closer examination of the more micro-level of exploring project organisationin companies in our two countries (for example, staff assignments to projectsor the selection of project leaders) reveals the influence of the larger frameworkof national institutions.

The importance of teams was borne out in the International Survey of R&DWorkers where very few R&D staff members worked solo on their projects ineither country (8.8 percent in Japan and 5.8 percent in Britain). Project teamsof three to seven members were the most common size of project team in bothcountries, with very few respondents engaged in very large teams of over 50members. Although ‘teamwork’ provided the main organising principle for thedaily worklife of corporate R&D staff, there were a number of significantdifferences in the way that projects were organised and experienced amongour national samples. Many of these differences were intimately bound upwith the practice of the lifetime employment system in Japan.

The process of assigning R&D staff to projects revealed marked differencesin project organisation. Just over half the Japanese sample compared to a quarterof the British sample responded that they had been selected for the project bytheir immediate supervisor. Differences were again evident in the extent towhich the R&D staff had personal influence over these allocations comparedto assignment by the director or a senior administrator of R&D. Japaneserespondents were much more likely to claim self-selection compared to theirBritish counterparts (16.9 percent compared to only 8.9 percent). On the otherhand, it was much more likely that the individual R&D staff member had beenallocated to the project by more senior management in Britain than in Japan(29.8 percent compared to 17.7 percent). The general picture of greaterconsultation on staffing decisions in the Japanese R&D laboratories was furthercorroborated when we examined the extent to which personal R&D interestswere considered in project planning. It was much more likely that individualinterests were given considerable weight in Japanese laboratories compared to


British laboratories (32.8 percent compared to 19.6 percent in Britain). On theother hand, a much larger proportion of the British respondents (41.2 percent)compared to the Japanese respondents (11.7 percent) claimed that their personalR&D interests were given negligible weight in planning projects.

These features of project staffing are consistent with the characterisation ofJapanese management as a ‘bottom-up’ (ringi seido) process compared to moreauthoritarian ‘top-down’ processes in Western countries. However, some cautionis needed before simply contrasting the peculiarities of the Japanese with ahomogenous ‘West’. Adding the data from the US and Germany on ‘self-selection’ to project themes yields the following pattern: 23.4 percent of USstaff, 17.3 percent of German staff, 16.9 percent of Japanese staff and 8.9 percentof British staff. In this wider context of comparison, it seems more appropriateto note the ‘peculiarities of the British’ rather than those of the Japanese. TheBritish laboratories exhibited a further idiosyncrasy in the narrower range ofdepartments from which project team members were drawn compared, not onlyto Japan, but to Germany and the United States too (Yahata 1995:37–8). Itsuggests that both the British companies and their R&D staff were the deviantcases rather than their counterparts in other countries.

There is an apparent paradox in the British responses when the surprisinglylarge proportion of the British R&D staff who claim direct responsibility forproject planning (45.9 percent) is set alongside these earlier responses on projectallocation and the consideration of interests. It seems that British R&D staffare assigned to their project tasks with relatively little consultation, but thenare left relatively free in the day-to-day planning and execution for their work.Unfortunately our comparison of the two national samples on this dimensionis complicated by differences in the wording of questions. Where the Britishquestionnaire referred to ‘project planning’ the Japanese questionnaire referredto the ‘initiation of projects’, rendering the responses of the two samples notstrictly comparable. The Japanese sample responses on project initiationresponsibilities matched fairly closely their responses on the extent to whichpersonal interests are reflected in project planning. Taking together otherinterview discussions and research material the general impression is that theJapanese sample have relatively more influence over project assignments andconsideration of their personal interests than their British counterparts, butthat they have much less discretion over how they carry out their day-to-dayduties. Alternatively, the British R&D staff have relatively little say over thetasks to which they are assigned or the extent to which these tasks match theirinterests, but they are much more likely to be left to get on with their tasks intheir own way on a day-to-day basis.

In corporate laboratories world-wide, project leadership is acknowledgedto be of critical importance and appointments are widely believed to reflecttechnological ability and experience. However, in practice the influence of thelifetime employment system again marks Japan out from other countries whereit can be seen in the apparent importance attached to seniority in project leaderassignments. Using the International Survey of R&D Workers data, Yahata


showed that there was a close correlation between age and position amongJapanese R&D staff. Moreover, there was a much greater difference betweenthe average age of project leaders and team members in Japan (9 years)compared to Britain (4.1 years), or even compared to the United States (3.8years) or Germany (4.5 years) (Yahata 1995:27). In exploring perceptions ofthe criteria important in selecting leaders, Yahata suggested that Japan is againmarkedly different from the three Western countries: Britain, Germany and theUnited States. Japanese R&D staff put a high premium on the ‘ability to organiseteam members’ and evidence of ‘project planning ability’ among those selectedfor leadership in higher positions, indicating the importance of developing juniorteam members and developing R&D themes. By contrast, British, German andAmerican staff put emphasis on ‘trust and reputation among team members’,which was given little attention by Japanese respondents. For Yahata, thedifferent national responses reflect different principles of organisation adoptedin the four countries:

Organisations based on individuality and personal initiative of researchersin the United States, Britain and Germany require leaders whom teammembers can trust. In Japan, on the other hand, even a project team musthave a sense of community in which members are equal and complementeach other in making progress (to optimise the multiplication effectthrough competition when there too few members). Authority is assignedto a leader who has been selected, based on ability, after a long period ofcompetition, while a certain seniority order is maintained as well.Therefore the leader can display strong initiative in selecting themes andpromoting research activities. For these reasons, project organisations inJapan rely heavily on their leadership, and the team leader is expected todisplay initiative in his or her research and development efforts as wellas performing managerial tasks such as helping the abilities of juniorresearchers and co-ordinating with other departments.

(Yahata 1995:35) Despite showing a more widespread feeling of autonomy and discretion carryingout their project work, British R&D staff seem more likely to be involved in shorter-term formal reviews than Japanese R&D staff. In both countries the majority ofR&D staff were involved in formal reviews at least over three-monthly intervals(60.1 percent in Japan and 80.4 percent in Britain). However, a larger proportionof the Japanese sample (38.9 percent) compared to the British sample (16.7 percent)were involved in longer-term reviews at intervals of six months or longer.

Communication patterns in work show areas of similarity and dissimilarityin the two national samples. In both countries the majority of R&D staff reportregular consultations with other sections of their R&D centre (58.6 percent inJapan and 57.9 percent in Britain). However, the Japanese R&D staff are morelikely to be involved in regular consultations with either other company R&Dcentres (24.1 percent) or company headquarters R&D staff (16.5 percent) than


their British counterparts (17.4 percent and 10.9 percent respectively). On theother hand, the British R&D staff were more likely to be in regular contactwith sales (23.1 percent) and manufacturing (35.9 percent) divisions than theJapanese R&D staff (12.5 percent and 19.8 percent). Moreover the Britishscientists and engineers were more likely to have frequent consultations ordiscussions with staff in other companies (24.7 percent) than the Japanesescientists and engineers (7.9 percent). This pattern of linkages seems at oddswith popular perceptions of closely integrated departmental communicationsin Japanese companies.

R&D outputs: patents and papers

While innovative products and processes which contribute to corporate profitsare the ultimate raison d’être of R&D funding, patents and papers are amongthe more important intermediate products of R&D (see Tables 4.5 and 4.6).Since patents provide a mechanism for companies to appropriate the returns totheir R&D investment, technology management researchers have looked closelyat patent statistics as indices of R&D activity and measures of productivity.The large increase in Japanese patenting has been noted as marking a significantintensification of Japanese corporate R&D efforts. At first glance, thecomparative levels of application levels for patents and the numbers of papersproduced suggest prodigious efforts on the part of Japanese R&D staff, where78 percent of Japanese R&D staff have applied for a patent in the previousthree years compared to only 31 percent of the British group (see Tables 4.5and 4.6). Two institutional features lie behind this relative pattern of patentingactivity: the Japanese patent system and the company reward systems.

Table 4.5 Percentage of R&D staff applying forpatents by area of work and country


Table 4.6 Percentage of R&D staff with publishedpapers by area of work and country



The search for patents is widespread in Japanese companies, with a muchlower level only in the ‘J-drink’ R&D laboratories. By contrast, interest inpatenting is heavily concentrated in the two chemical-based companylaboratories in the British sample (see Table 4.8). The relatively greater overallJapanese involvement in patents reflects different philosophies and practicesunderlying the domestic patent procedures in the two countries. Japanesepatenting is based on the ‘first to apply’ principle (compared to the ‘first toinvent’ principle adopted in the US), where the aims have been to offer areadily easy accessible procedure and a rapid diffusion of inventions in asociety whose nineteenth-century and post-war modernisation were heavilybased on imported technology and its adaptation (Fukutani 1995). Reflectingthese origins and purposes, Fukutani calls the Japanese patent system a ‘utilitymodel’ and points to several factors within it which foster high levels ofpatent application: first, the scope of a patent application is restricted whichencourages additional protective fringe applications; second, small companiescan readily enter and so prompt defensive applications by large companies;and, third, the rotation and career development systems often assign formerfront-line R&D staff into patent departments and their liaison activitiesstimulate further applications (Fukutani 1995:108–12). The historic traditionshave bolstered the use of patent applications as pointers to the technologicalcapabilities of companies and individual researchers. Westney suggests that,as Japanese companies engaged in boosting R&D activity after the oil shocks,many adopted patent applications as performance measures for engineersand scientists and also used patent statistics as indicators of technologicalcompetitiveness (Westney 1993a:42– 3).

Linking salary reward and career progression to the production of patentsand papers is not a peculiarity of the Japanese employment system. Salaryappears related to patent applications in Britain too. In both countries, theInternational Survey of R&D Workers showed that staff involved in patentapplications or in publications are more highly paid than those who have not(see Table 4.11). However, the Japanese companies appear to attach much

Table 4.7 Percentage of Japanese R&D staff applying for patents by company


Table 4.8 Percentage of British R&D staff applying for patents by company



greater weight to patenting. This becomes evident in the much wider salarydifferentials in Japan for patents (36.2 points) compared to Britain (13.3 points).A similar pattern of stronger emphasis on measured outputs to guide salaryprogress in Japanese companies is repeated in differentials evident amongpublishers and non-publishers among R&D staff, where the Japanese differentialis 25.8 points and the British differential is only 15.5 points. (See Tables 4.9,4.10 and 4.11.)

The character and high level of Japanese patent applications have attractedsome sceptical comments among British engineers and scientists, evident insome of the comments of respondents in the two higher patenting Britishchemical companies:

[Japanese R&D] appears to be focused on producing a large number ofpatents.

(‘B-fibre’)

They have many patent applications the majority of which are not worthdoing. To me, this suggests that status and progression within theirresearch is related directly to the number of patent applications withoutregard to their content.

(‘B-fibre’)

Table 4.9 Percentage of Japanese R&D staff publishing papers by company


Table 4.10 Percentage of British R&D staff publishing papers by company


Table 4.11 Reward levels by patent application and publication1

1 The reward levels are based on the country average=100.

Source: Davis 1995 (International Survey of R&D Workers)


I have no detailed knowledge. One marker of Japanese R&D is the numberof patents granted. In numerical terms, the Japanese beat the UK by ahuge margin but, in my own field, I know that many of the patents grantedare of little significance or the smallest manipulation of basic ideas whichwill satisfy the examiner as to novelty.

(‘B-chem1’)

A more measured comment, noting the broad range of research effort in relevantresearch from the more long-term fundamental to the more applied developmentareas, came from the R&D department of the second chemicals-based Britishcompany:

In the fluroaromatic field, [Japan Glass] are producing original work[patents] and are clearly devoting considerable R&D resources. There isgenerally high activity in organofluorome chemistry. Some patented workis not generally new and some chemical/technological work is long-winded rather than concise. The main impression is therefore great effortand research ranging from ‘blue sky’ to basic process development.

(‘B-chem2’)

Against scepticism that trivial patent claims are driven wholly by the salarysystem, a note of caution is necessary. The growth of patenting by Japanesecompanies is not simply measured by the growth of domestic patents, but bythe growth of patents taken out in other countries such as the US and Germany.Analyses comparing the origins of patent applications taken out in the USconfirm both absolute growth and growth relative to the activities of R&Dstaff in other countries.

Conclusions

Pavitt and Patel have welcomed the concept of ‘national innovation systems’as a useful attempt to incorporate into economic analysis some of the ‘intangible’investment in technological learning activities made in business firms,universities, public and private training institutions, government agencies andother institutions, and the links between these institutions (Patel and Pavitt1993:10). In addition to these institutions, Pavitt and Patel noted the backgroundinfluence of national differences in finance and management. By looking atinstitutions, incentives and competencies, they suggest that the different patternsand mixes of the different ‘national systems’ will foster or hinder technologicalinnovation. Their measures of world rankings in basic research and industrialR&D show broad support for the old maxim about Britain’s relative strengthin basic research and Japan’s relative strength in technology; Britain standshigh in the league table of citations of scientific papers while Japan standshigh in the resources put into applied research and development in industry(see Table 4.12). However, they caution that changes in indicators of national


research lagged compared to changes in technological performance and thatJapanese scientists have achieved impressive standing in fields of basic scienceclosely related to their areas of technological excellence, and have gone beyondthe UK in highly cited papers in physics (Patel and Pavitt 1993:21).

Lynn expressed scepticism about the emphasis on ‘the national innovationsystem’ and preferred to refer to ‘systems’, arguing that much of the work inthis field has tended merely to catalogue components of a system rather thandemonstrating their effective linkages. Moreover, he argued that the way inwhich such elements are linked will vary across industries (Lynn 1994). WhileLynn proposed a research agenda to explore the generation and selectionmechanisms for new technologies among innovation communities, I havefocused on the human resource management aspects of the discussion ofinnovation systems. After reviewing some aspects of the debates about thecontemporary Japanese and British national systems, I followed therecommendation of Odagiri and Goto (1996) that more attention should bepaid to initiatives of companies in the private sector and the counsel of Lynnthat companies should be viewed across a variety of different industrial settings.

While all the companies featured in the International Survey of R&D Workerswere high spenders on R&D in both absolute terms and relative to the patternof expenditures in their own industries and countries, there were markeddifferences of emphasis in interviews and case studies. Japanese managerstended to emphasise company efforts to build long-term programmes in basicR&D, evident in the formation of new central laboratories and company annual

Table 4.12 A comparison of the world rankings in basic research and industrial R&D

Source: Patel and Pavitt 1993:20


reports. British managers tended to emphasise their priority in linking R&Dmore effectively to business streams and demonstrate more effective utilisationof R&D.

Taking the examination of the ‘national system’ concept down to the levelof corporate laboratories and project organisation illustrates some of theproblems of change for Japanese companies. Although much of the speculationabout change has dwelt on relations between MITI and the companies, it isclear that the institutionalisation of practices in human resource managementin corporate laboratories, from assignment of members to teams, selection ofteam leaders and managers, to rewards for patenting, have been developedwithin the context of corporate concerns about promoting development. Whilethe weight attached to seniority has had it strengths in building stable trustrelations in teams and laboratories, the price has been paid in tendencies towardsconservatism in outlook and a risk aversion in project selection (Yahata 1995).However, to propose changes in the criteria by which staff are promoted andrewarded is to challenge the rationale by which existing company hierarchieshave been built. So long as companies appear to have been making some success,it is not surprising that reforms have been approached cautiously and that thedebate about the need for change in Japan’s national system of innovation hasrun a long way ahead of the evidence of change among companies.

Note

1 In Tables 4.2 to 4.10, data drawn from the surveys are listed as International Survey of R&DWorkers. The basic surveys were published in three comparison sets of British Engineer-JapaneseEngineer, American Engineer-Japanese Engineer, German Engineer-Japanese Engineer by JPCin Japanese (JPC 1991a, 1991b, JPC 1991c), while some of the participants published essays injournals. A set of essays by participants was edited by Shapira (1995).

5 Building skills and careersin research anddevelopment

Introduction: skill formation and career development

This chapter puts the focus on the building of the repertoire of knowledge andskills and their use in the unfolding careers of engineers and scientists. Earlierchapters have provided relevant comparative discussions of the output ofengineers and scientists from the Japanese education system (Chapter 2) andoutputs from the company training systems (Chapter 3). Chapter 2 demonstratedhow some British industrialists became animated when reading accounts ofthe Japanese higher educational system and its numbers of engineeringgraduates. They went on to ask how they could be expected to compete withJapanese industrialists until the British higher educational system began todeliver comparable numbers of engineers to support them. However, theirpreoccupation with numbers of engineers was not only simplistic, but itneglected the chicken-and-egg character of education-employment relationswhere expectations and experiences of education are very strongly influencedby the nature of the employment system itself. My aim in this chapter is to takethe discussion forward with a focus on engineers and scientists working inR&D. Chapter 4 provided the background debate on respective ‘nationalinnovation systems’ and their alleged strengths and weaknesses, especially theconcern in Japan that the institutional frameworks outlined in Chapters 2 and 3might not serve future knowledge and skill needs for innovation at thetechnological frontiers. In addition, Chapter 4 introduced ‘The InternationalSurvey of R&D Workers’ and the data set which gives an opportunity to drawon the views of engineers and scientists themselves about education, trainingand employment experiences. The central focus of the chapter lies in examiningthe impact of different employment systems on the kinds of knowledge andskills learned, on the manner in which they are learned, on the ways in whichcareers are developed, and on graduate employee perceptions of areas ofuniversity and company education and training in need of improvement.

Using the concepts of an ‘organisation-oriented’ employment system (Japan)and a ‘market-oriented’ employment system (Britain), I will argue that Japaneseemployers have come to accept a division of labour between employers andhigher-education institutions which provides a very academic education for

Building skills and careers in research and development 155

university graduates and relies on a heavy employer responsibility for humanresource development and training. By contrast, the British higher educationand training system appears designed to move graduates very quickly intoemployment following a relatively specialised education in which theboundaries between academic and vocational elements are more overtlycontested. Moreover, the employment system appears to encourage themovement of graduates out of their technical specialities as rapidly as possible.In Chapter 2, I pointed out how these differences in career development in thetwo countries generated rather different debates about educational reform. Onthe British side, I noted an increasing tendency to see a move towards morevocationally directed higher education system as the main target for reform.On the Japanese side, I indicated less concern with vocationalism, but moreconcern with issues of ‘creativity’ and educational variety.

The concept of ‘career’ has been one of the fundamental building blocks inthe study of work organisation, allowing observers to move back and forthbetween the individual and the structural. From the viewpoint of the individual,a career carries matters held dearly such as self-image and identity, while amore a structural interest takes in the sequence of related tasks and jobs, theirarrangement in hierarchies of prestige and the pace at which individuals movethrough them. Using the concept of career to explore the responses from theInternational Survey of R&D Workers, British R&D staff views are bestcharacterised as ‘short term’ in the sense that they are typically the product ofa shorter period of full-time education, typically anticipate a shorter time onthe road to a variety of ‘career milestones’, and they expect that education andtraining is more closely geared to preparation for the next stage of careerdevelopment. By contrast, Japanese R&D staff take the long-term view, atypically longer period of full-time education, taking longer to reach careermilestones, and eschewing a less narrowly and less immediately instrumentalview of education and training. The central argument is that the relatively shortcareer phase in technical positions anticipated by the British sample derivesfrom an employment system which encourages and rewards moves out of thetechnical activities into management, and this conception of the unfolding careershapes views of education and training. In neither country can the problems ineducating engineers and scientists for industrial R&D be tackled by acting onthe educational system in isolation.

Employment systems: ‘market-oriented’ versus‘organisation-oriented’

The contrasts between institutions and practices in employment and industrialrelations in Britain and Japan evident in Chapter 3 have been conceptualisedas differences between a ‘market-oriented’ employment system and an‘organisation-oriented’ employment system (Dore 1987:28–31). The market-oriented system is predicated on the assumption of relatively easy mobilitybetween firms for employees (and the corollary of relatively easy hire and fire


on the part of employers), the notion of a ‘going rate’ for occupational skills,and employee organisations (whether unions or professional institutions) whichare based on the assumption of transferable occupational skills and which havean interest in defending or promoting that rate for the job. Dore did not arguethat all British employment is wholly marked by ‘market-oriented’ relations—for example, the public sector and some large corporations were said toapproximate the ‘organisation-oriented’ model—nor did he argue that allJapanese companies follow the ‘organisation-oriented’ model—for example,the small-firm sector (with the bulk of employment in Japan) resembles the‘market-oriented’ model. The point at issue is that along a continuum ofemployment relations the main factors influencing the large-firm sector (themain labour market for graduate-level R&D skills) put the two countries atdifferent ends of the continuum, and that this has important consequences forthe way in which education, training and a range of other institutional correlatesof employment systems are organised. For example, in these sample firms thecontrasts can be seen in the greater emphasis on recruitment directly fromgraduation in the organisation-oriented system as compared to mid-careerrecruitment, the greater emphasis on recruiting for a pool of talent as comparedto specific jobs, and the greater extent to which responsibility for managingthe transition from education to employment is seen to rest with institutions ascompared to individuals.

The conceptual contrasts between the British ‘market-oriented’ and theJapanese ‘organisation-oriented’ systems are consistent with the employmentmobility experiences of the respective national samples of R&D workers inthe International Survey of R&D Workers (in Chapter 4). Further confirmationof differences is given in employee expectations about the timing of anyanticipated future mobility. Another index of the persistence of the‘organisation-oriented system’ lies in comparisons of preferences for futureemployment. One evident contrast between British and Japanese samples isthe higher proportion of the Japanese sample which preferred to stay with itscurrent employer compared to the British sample. Yet here caution is needed,for in breaking the samples down by functional area of current work, it is clearthat the British researchers were much more likely to anticipate staying withtheir current employer than the British development staff, and the Britishresearchers were closer to the Japanese patterns (see Table 5.1). On the otherhand, looking at the organisations to which the ‘mobile’ might go in Japan, itis evident that they looked to university posts rather than to other companies,whereas the British ‘mobile’ staff anticipated moves to other companies or toestablish themselves independently. One factor inhibiting preferences for movesto other companies in Japan was likely to be the sheer difficulty of effectingsuch moves in an ‘organisation-oriented’ employment system among largecompanies where premium scarce skills must be offset against lack of localorganisational knowledge.

If closer attention is given to those employees indicating a preference for afuture move to another company, by distinguishing these respondents into age


groups in the 25–45 age range another interesting difference emerges betweenthe two national samples. For the British sample, aspirations to move weremore likely among the younger engineers and scientists, whereas such ambitionstended to be held (if at all) on a smaller scale and among older R&D staff inJapan (see Table 5.2). In the ‘organisation-oriented employment’ system,employers and employees accept that it is the employers’ responsibility to trainand develop their employees, whereas in the ‘market-oriented employment’system there is a greater onus on employees to undertake responsibility fortheir own careers and, for some, this implies moves between employers insearch of experience and career development in the early career.

Career timetables

Movement through a sequence of related jobs arranged in a hierarchy of prestigeimplies both pace and direction in career development, while the concepts of‘technical’ or ‘managerial’ careers imply that moves are ordered and sociallyrecognised. Drawing on Sato’s (1995) account of the typical moves and timeintervals between career stages for the International Survey of R&D Workers,some sharp differences are evident between the patterns of career developmentin the four major industrial countries (Table 5.3).

Table 5.1 Preferred future (type of organisation) by current work location (%)


Table 5.2 Proportion of each age group preferring a companymove by age group (%)


Tabl

e 5.

3 C

aree

r tim

etab

les

Sour

ce:

Ada

pted

fro

m S

ato

1995

:48–

9

Not

eT

he n

egat

ive

entr

ies

in c

olum

n g

refl

ect

the

high

er l

evel

s of

lab

our

mar

ket

mob

ility

am

ong

the

Bri

tish,

Ger

man

and

Am

eric

an R

&D

wor

kers

, w

here

som

e ga

ined

thei

r ex

peri

ence

in

othe

r co

mpa

nies

pri

or t

o th

eir

curr

ent

empl

oym

ent.

By

cont

rast

, Ja

pane

se R

&D

wor

kers

rea

ched

the

ir ‘

fully

fle

dged

’ st

atus

ent

irel

y w

ith t

heir

sole

em

ploy

er.


Japan stands out as the country in which companies and their R&D workersinvest heavily in skill formation. From each point of graduation (whether frombachelor’s, master’s or doctorate level), the time taken to reach the stage of a‘fully fledged engineer or scientist’ is much longer in each of the other threecountries (see column f in Table 5.3). At the ‘fully fledged’ stage the youngengineer or scientist has undergone the induction and early employment trainingand experiencewhich equips him or her to take on R&D tasks with minimal supervision. It isa career milestone readily understood among engineers and scientists eventhough it is not marked out formally with examination or formal qualification.In Britain, Germany and the US, R&D workers typically estimated this stagetook about two years from graduation at bachelor level. By contrast, this periodwas estimated at much nearer seven years by Japanese R&D workers. Moreover,responsibility for this early training period lies almost wholly with the companyentered immediately after graduation for most Japanese R&D workers, whereasthe consequences of job mobility mean that companies in the other countriesoften buy in experienced engineers trained in other companies (see column gin Table 5.3). There is a striking difference in the implication of graduate studyin Japan compared to the other countries. In each of the three countries (Britain,Germany and the US), graduates with university postgraduate qualificationssee themselves as ‘fully fledged’ on entry to industry (see column f in Table5.3). However, Japanese master’s degree holders still tend to see the need forover four years of broadening training and experience, while doctorate-coursegraduates estimate a need of three years of broadening.

The other career milestones selected were the ages on becoming a projectleader and on becoming a manager. In each case the British sample tended toreach the identified stage at a younger age than their Japanese counterparts.Comparing industrial entrants with only a first degree, the British R&D staffreach project leader almost four-and-a-half years ahead of their Japanesecounterparts (see column d in Table 5.3). For similarly qualified entrants, thegap is five years in comparing the ages on reaching managerial status. However,the variation within the British sample’s experience is much wider than theJapanese sample (standard deviation 6.5 compared to 3.28), and this variety inexperience stands in contrast to the other ‘milestones’ where the standarddeviations in the two samples are very similar. As we saw in Chapters 2 and 4,there has been a rapid growth in numbers enrolled on master’s courses, andthis level has become the standard entry level for recruits to company R&Ddepartments. Typically, Japanese graduates with master’s degrees reachmanagement rank at a faster pace and younger age than their bachelor-levelcolleagues, although it is not clear whether this is attributable to the master’scourse or to the higher ability levels of those who enter master’s coursescompared to those who enter employment at the bachelor level (see columns eand i in Table 5.3). Some benefit from courses seems evident in the belief ofmaster’s-degree holders that they become fully fledged at a faster pace thanbachelor-only degree holders (4.5 versus 6.9 in column f in Table 5.3).


Japan is not the only country to show a deliberate pace on the path to industryand management rank. German R&D workers are the oldest on average on entryto employment compared to their counterparts in the Japan, Britain and the US.Even though they feel well-equipped to cope with work requirements, to judgeby the relatively short time they feel fully fledged, they are the last to reachmanagerial ranks in the four countries (see column e). In Germany, time scaleshave been partly extended by the national requirements for military conscription.The longer periods spent in completing doctoral studies or on in-company trainingbefore reaching management ranks in Japan and Germany compared to Britainand the US do not necessarily imply more inefficient education and trainingsystems, since our inquiries leave open exactly what knowledge and skills makeup the armoury of the fully fledged R&D worker. Japanese companies have tendedto employ much broader definitions of organisational roles compared to Britishcompanies. However, in both Japan and Germany reforms have been directed togetting graduates to posts of responsibility at a faster pace.

The concept of ‘timetable’ has a rich imagery and linkages not only to paceand direction, but junctions, destinations and travel. While looking at the pastexperiences gives a sense of the career structure and at what has been possible,R&D workers can develop their dreams and aspirations for preferred career routes.Tables 5.4 and 5.5 provide some insight into the remarkable congruity of actualages and preferred ages in Britain and Japanese samples to reach the careerlandmarks of ‘fully fledged engineer or scientist’ and ‘project leader’. Only inthe case of ‘manager’ is there some discrepancy, where the modal response inBritain suggests a desire to reach manager earlier than the typical age whereasthe Japanese modal response suggests that ‘manager’ ought to be reached laterthan achieved by the managers in the sample.

Some aspirations may be the stuff of dreams when career aspirations arecontrasted with career structures, in the sense of comparing preferences againstthe probabilities of their achievement based on past evidence. Japanese R&Dworkers show a keen desire to remain in active, front-line R&D work in thefuture compared to their British counterparts (Table 5.6). The British R&D

Table 5.4 Actual age on reaching career milestones

Key: s.d.=standard deviation



workers are more likely to express a desire to be in a managerial post. Thesecontrasts hold across current locations in both research and developmentdepartments, albeit less strongly in development departments. Yet the JapaneseR&D workers are a good deal less sanguine about their prospects when askedabout the likelihood of remaining an effective front-line R&D worker regardlessof age (Table 5.7). Approximately half the Japanese sample see little prospect ofbeing effective beyond the age of 40, whereas the British sample

Table 5.5 Ideal age to reach career milestones

Key: d.n.a. = does not apply


Table 5.6 Preferred future types of work by current work location



overwhelmingly reject the relevance of age as a constraint. Given the similarityof the sample age distributions (see the mean and standard deviations in Chapter4), it is a striking contrast. However, it is consistent with the strong probabilitiesfor Japanese R&D workers where long-term research is relatively recent incompany histories and R&D departments have been recruiting grounds forfuture managers in the lifetime employment system. However, it raises theprospect of future conflict over aspirations and prospects for careers ascompanies have invested in central research laboratories (and it is an issue towhich I return in the next chapter on the contents and discontents of R&Dwork).

Building the R&D workforce: company policies andpractices

Having established the basic characteristics of two ideal types of employmentsystem and their relevance to the samples of company R&D staff in Britainand Japan, the next main task is to examine their implications for thedevelopment of higher education and for the strategies which companies useto acquire and develop skilled R&D labour.

Companies can develop the needed knowledge and skills in their workforceeither internally or by relying on external sources, and they can either use themore formal methods of off-the-job training in classrooms and laboratories orthe more informal methods of on-the-job training and experience (Koike 1988:181–2). Using these two dimensions gives us the two-by-two contingency tableof Figure 5.1.

As we have seen in the previous section, Japanese companies put muchemphasis on the first and fourth quadrants. There is little expectation thatgraduates come with readily applicable knowledge and skills even at doctoratelevel, whereas the British, German and American PhD holders and their


Table 5.7 The relation between age and effectivenessas a front-line R&D worker


employers see relatively little time needed for development into ‘fully fledged’engineers and scientists. Companies in the three Western countries expect todraw, not only on graduates with more vocationally relevant skills, but also onmid-career recruits who have gained some of their employment training andexperience in other companies. For subsequent training, the Western companiescan use a variety of external centres from universities to commercial trainingcompanies, while Japanese companies, when they have perceived a need foroff-the-job training, have tended to develop their own facilities (quadrant 3).

In Japan, the passage from university to first job is more like the managedpassage of graduates between groups and institutions than in the other threecountries (see Table 5.8). In science and engineering, companies contactuniversity professors to send invitations to their prospective graduates to jointhem. The allocation of these invitations among students resembles a share-out of the able students among prestigious companies at the professors’discretion. While contact through professors tends to be more important forpostgraduate holders in all countries, it is clearly more important at all levelsin Japan than in the other countries, and nearly three quarters of the Japanesedoctorate graduates used the professor invitation channel in reaching their firstjob after graduation, while over half of mainstream master’s-course graduatesused it. University career offices are more important in the mass highereducation systems of Japan and the US compared to Britain and Germany. InBritain and Germany, the most important single channel is the direct approachby the students on their own initiative. Japanese companies are also more activein organising their alumni contacts to spread news about the company amongthe bachelor’s- and master’s-course students.

Of course, Japanese companies vary in their markets and technologies and theseare reflected in the different weights that they attach to the different recruitmentchannels. Since recruits have tended to stay with them since graduation, we can

Figure 5.1 The organisation of skill formation

Source: Derived from Koike 1988

Tabl

e 5.

8 Jo

b se

arch

cha

nnel

s af

ter

grad

uatio

n in

fou

r co

untr

ies

(%)

Key

: B

=ba

chel

or’s

-deg

ree

grad

uate

s; M

=m

aste

r’s-

degr

ee g

radu

ates

;

D=

doct

orat

e gr

adua

tes.

So

urce

: Im

ano

1995

:19

Tabl

e 5.

9 Jo

b se

arch

cha

nnel

s af

ter

grad

uatio

n in

Jap

an (

%)

Sour

ce:

Inte

rnat

iona

l Su

rvey

of

R&

D W

orke

rs


look at the Japanese respondents to gain some further insight into these variations(Table 5.9). ‘J-elec2’, which has become a very high profile company, partly by itsconsumer products and partly by a self-styled innovative approach to recruitment,attracts far more direct approaches from student applicants and places less weighton formal university connection through university faculty. However, it is veryactive in using alumni groups and careers offices. By contrast, ‘J-drink’, whoseproducts are no doubt well-known among students, is trying to recruit for itsdiversification programmes in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology and trying torecruit chemistry and biology graduates with postgraduate qualifications. Therefore,‘J-drink’ has put a great deal of effort into building contacts with universityprofessors. With little track record in these fields, ‘J-drink’ has little scope forusing alumni contacts to reach potential recruits.

In some respects, the Japanese educational system delivers a more ‘standardproduct’ to the graduate labour market than the British system. As we saw in Chapter2, homogeneity has been underpinned by Monbusho (the Japanese Ministry ofEducation, Science and Culture) through several mechanisms including Ministrycontrol over school and university curricula, control of the secondary school syllabusthrough a textbook approval system, and the standardisation of routes from schoolto university through a joint standard achievement test as part of the entranceexamination for entry to the national universities. It is a tradition of central directionwhich stretches back to the beginnings of the determined bid to modernise Japanfrom the late nineteenth century in the Meiji era, and which was dented but notbroken during the democratisation of the post-1945 Occupation period (Amano1992). In Britain there was scant provision for a national school curriculum untilthe 1988 Education Reform Act. As yet there is no provision for similar formalcentralised control over university curricula. Monbusho issues guidelines on studycredits necessary for graduation which underpins a broad common curriculum inthe Japanese four-year universities. Of course the universities vary in theirinterpretation of these guidelines, both in their weighting and timing of professionaland general studies across the four-year degree and in their syllabuses. However,the point remains that the guidelines operate to produce a more standard engineeringeducational experience than that obtaining in Britain. The requirements ofprofessional institutions for course accreditation in Britain have exercised a muchweaker constraint on university variety in the areas of engineering and the modesof teaching covered in the university curricula and syllabuses. A further dimensionof variety in the British system lies in the routes to university since there is widerprovision for transfer from a greater diversity of types of educational establishmentssuch as schools and further education colleges, and there is relatively more provisionfor mature-student entry after employment experience. The British educationalsystem has tried to provide a system of ‘ladders and bridges’ whereas the Japanesesystem has been accurately described as a ‘one-shot’ system, catering almostexclusively for the entry of school-leavers to higher education.

However, there is another sense in which the Japanese higher educationalsystem has provided a less standard graduate product than the British systemsince there has been greater variety in the equivalent of the ‘unit of resource’


(the expenditure per student head) across national and private education, greatervariety in faculty-student ratios, greater variety in the entry qualifications ofentrants, and no attempt to control the quality of output by measures such as asystem of external examiners on university examinations. Yet while there aremarked differences between the elite national universities and the lessprestigious and smaller private universities, science and engineering studiesare relatively concentrated at the larger universities and the larger industrialcorporations concentrate their recruitment at the larger, more prestigiousuniversities. Moreover, although there are no standard final examinations, entryto graduate school and the master’s courses are competitive on studentperformance in grade-point averages.

At first sight there are many similarities in the career recruitment literatureof the sample companies in the two countries. However, closer examinationreveals significant differences. The Japanese companies do not advertisecompetition on starting salaries. There is much more emphasis on thetechnological competence of the companies, their prospects for growth, andthe prospects for long-term careers. The British companies advertised thepossibilities and prospects of long-term careers too. Yet there is much morereference to ‘direct entry’ and the competitiveness of starting salaries. In thatsense the graduates were recruited and assigned to specific jobs; the process ofannual recruitment from higher education by companies in Britain is muchmore tightly geared to the identification of ‘vacancies’ than the annualrecruitment process in Japan. By contrast with the British graduates, theJapanese graduates were recruited to companies which assumed long-termemployment. Therefore Japanese recruits were initially assigned to broad-basedtraining programmes to round out their organisational learning and the practicalskills needed by very academically educated recruits.

Knowledge and skill formation

Given their commitment to long-term employment for regular employees,Japanese companies have been determined that their labour force should beable to cope with business, technological and organisational change. Japanesehead-office personnel departments exert a stronger central influence over therecruitment process and Japanese line managers are more directly involved inthe provision of on-the-job training than their British counterparts. Beyondinduction and the phases of ‘initial training’, the methods of knowledge andskill development used by graduates in ‘mid-career training’ appear broadlysimilar. In both countries there is a strong reliance on self-developmentprogrammes, where new recruits are responsible for reading up documentationand technical papers. The R&D staff members rely heavily on on-the-jobtraining under the guidance of supervisors and senior colleagues and onexposure to a variety of R&D topics which extend their experiences.

However, there are some qualitative differences in the organisation of ‘on-the-job’ training in the two countries. Japanese companies have cultivated the concept


of ‘the learning organisation’ (McCormick 1986b). Cole has demonstrated thatwhereas American companies tend to see learning in individual terms, Japanesecompanies build individual efforts into collective efforts so that knowledge andskill is more systematically acquired and diffused through the organisation (Cole1995). While engineers and scientists in the industrial laboratories in the twocountries relied a great deal on supervisors and more experienced colleagues, thereis evidence that there are significant differences between the two countries in thesetwo sources of help and guidance. Using a panel study with respondent trainingdiaries and interviews, the LSE research team noted that their samples of Britishengineers in R&D laboratories tended to rely to a greater extent on more seniorcolleagues rather than supervisors in contrast to their Japanese respondents whorelied more heavily on supervisors than senior colleagues (Lam & Thurley 1989).Moreover, the LSE researchers identified different approaches in the orientation toon-the-job learning adopted by their British and Japanese samples: the Britishengineers were much more closely focused on learning technical skills to solveshort-term or immediate problems whereas the Japanese engineers were more likelyto be learning general technical knowledge and skills related to possible projectsand tasks in the longer term.

Another corollary of the ‘organisation-oriented’ employment system is adifferent pattern and locus of in-company training compared to that adoptedby companies in the ‘market-oriented’ employee system. The British sampleof R&D staff was much more likely to include participation in off-the-jobcourses as one of their effective methods of developing knowledge and skillcompared to their Japanese counterparts (Table 5.10), whether these were heldinside the company (43.0 v. 18.0 percent) or outside the company (40.8 v. 6.3percent). Although some of the British companies had invested heavily intraining centres, they had not developed company technical institutescomparable to those of some of the Japanese sample companies. To some extentthe greater use of in-company facilities in Japan reflects weaknesses in Japanesehigher education as much as strengths in company provision since Britishcompanies have been both more willing and more able to negotiate customisedcourses with universities and polytechnics for their staff. In that sense, theJapanese company colleges are compensation for deficiencies in Japanesegraduate education. Historically, the mission of Japanese universities has beenlargely to supply graduate manpower at the first-degree level rather than tofunction as research institutions or suppliers of postgraduate researchers. Tothe chagrin of many Japanese universities, large companies send their technicaland managerial staff to US graduate schools rather than to domestic universitiessince they can buy into advanced technical and professional courses and provideinternational experience in one package.

Within the companies, by far the most important means of knowledge andskill development are the trilogy of the work tasks themselves, the guidance ofsupervisors and senior colleagues and independent study (Table 5.10). Exposureto a variety of different R&D topics enables the build-up of knowledge andskills and the development of a well-rounded capability. While this means was

Tabl

e 5.

10 E

ffec

tive

met

hods

of

know

ledg

e an

d sk

ill d

evel

opm

ent (

%)

Sour

ce:

Inte

rnat

iona

l Su

rvey

of

R&

D W

orke

rs


prominent for the majority of R&D workers in most laboratories and countries,it was emphasised particularly by the British respondents in both research anddevelopment departments. Among the research laboratory staff in Japan, theresearchers emphasise the importance of exposure to advanced topics. Bycontrast, advanced topics were not given prominence by British R&D workersin either research or development departments. The support and guidance ofsupervisors and senior colleagues was important across all departments andacross both countries, but with a marked tendency to be more widely noted inthe development departments compared to the research departments.

In addition to the informal coaching of supervisors and the structuredexperience provided by work tasks, formal courses away from the job are widelyvalued inBritain—but not in Japan. In Britain, a variety of courses, organised outsidethe company and inside the company, appear to be widely valued. By contrastto the R&D workers in Britain, the Japanese engineers and scientists set littlevalue on courses off-the-job whether organised inside or outside the companies.

The relatively weak references to formal courses among the Japanese sampleare not altogether surprising since an emphasis on in-house and on-the-job modesof skill formation has been a distinctive feature of the lifetime employment system.Rather more surprising is the lack of strong emphasis on rotation as part of theone of the particularly effective modes of skill formation experiences amongJapanese R&D workers. Despite the oft-cited literature references to plannedrotation as one of the key elements Japanese company human resourcedevelopment strategies, it is no more cited by Japanese engineers and scientiststhan by engineers and scientists from the other countries. The most prominentcitations of benefits from rotation occur not in Japanese laboratories, but in theBritish research laboratories. It is possible that our samples understood quitedifferent things by rotations. On the other hand, it is possible that the commitmentof central research laboratory staff to longer-term projects may mean that rotationis more difficult to organise for these samples than samples largely concernedwith advanced product development. Therefore, it is less likely that thesedepartmental samples would exhibit the usual hallmarks which have distinguishedJapanese engineers from others. In their studies of Japanese and Americanengineers, Lynn and his colleagues noted that one difference in rotation practiceswas the greater likelihood of continuing rotation throughout the Japaneseengineering career compared to the American engineering career (Lynn, Piehlerand Zahray 1989). The researchers attributed this finding to the greater influencewhich American engineers enjoyed in task assignments and the likelihood thatthey settled into preferred niches at an earlier stage of their career than theJapanese engineer. Consistent with this notion, we found that Japanese R&Dworkers were more likely to anticipate the possibility of rotation in the futurethan the British R&D workers.

Research and development are so frequently coupled together in theshorthand of ‘R&D’ that the nuances of difference between these activitiesand their organisation are overlooked. The passage from research to


development can be likened to a translation process as ideas are translated intodesigns and eventually into artefacts. The ‘products’ of the different stages inthe translation process are different. Researchers are much more likely thandevelopers to be producing research papers, while developers are much morelikely to be involved in the production of designs or artefacts. Therefore wemight expect differences in the significant learning experiences of the engineersand scientists drawn from research as distinct from development departments,and our surveys confirm that researchers are much more likely to claim thattheir skill development has been enhanced by presenting papers to groups orconferences outside the companies. While this contrast is evident across allcountries, the level of activity is much lower in Britain compared to Japan. Onthe other hand, the British researchers are much more likely to report benefitsfrom formally reporting research results inside their companies than theircounterparts in the research departments of other countries.

Links with universities for study purposes can provide another source for skillformation among R&D staff. The research project inquired into contacts with bothdomestic and foreign universities. Contacts with foreign universities for studypurposes are significant only for the Japanese researchers, and involving less thanone in 10 researchers. Such links can be significant at the company and individuallevel, for Japanese companies can sponsor employees in their late twenties or thirtiesto gain advanced technical knowledge from the American graduate schools and togain an international dimension for the lifetime employee and company. Study indomestic universities is little more frequently cited by Japanese R&D workersthan study overseas, while Japanese and British researchers outnumber thedevelopment specialists claiming benefits from study in domestic universities.

Given the importance of work tasks in shaping skill formation, it is importantto examine the kinds of work experienced by the respective national samplesof R&D staff. If rotation has been an important arm of the Japanese personnelstrategy in shaping the skill formation of lifetime employees, then we expectJapanese R&D workers to have had a broader range of functional experiences.Yet the types of work situation experiences reported in Table 5.11 confoundthis impression. They suggest that rotation is less practised in Japanese R&Dlaboratories than is often supposed on the basis of extrapolation from studiesof blue collar workers. It is much more likely that the British researchers havehad experience of development work compared to the Japanese researchers.While the Japanese development workers are more likely to have experienceof research than the development workers in British companies, they are lesslikely to have had experience of production or a range of other departments.However, this leaves open the possibility that British R&D worker experienceshave been acquired in a more haphazard fashion than those of the JapaneseR&D workers (Storey, Edwards and Sisson 1997:92).

Although the Japanese scientists and engineers did not cite formal coursesas a widespread source of skill formation, rather similar overall proportions ofthem appear to have been course participants compared to their counterparts


in the other countries, although British researchers are particularly heavilyengaged in course participation (Table 5.12).

The most striking contrasts in course participation emerge in the reasonsadvanced for participation. The Japanese engineers and scientists are morelikely to note that they were directed to courses by their employing companiesrather than taking the initiative in course selection. By contrast, in Britain,R&D staff were more likely to claim that they took the initiative in securingcourse participation. The much greater sense of ‘ownership’ among the BritishR&D workers compared to their Japanese counterparts is consistent with generalpatterns of career development across samples of managers in several sectorsof the two economies from engineering to banking, retail andtelecommunications (Storey, Edwards and Sisson 1997).

For the most part, improving technical skills is the main reason advancedfor participation in off-the-job courses (Table 5.13). It is well in advance of allother purposes in all countries, except in Britain where the improvement of

Table 5.11 Forms of work experienced since entering the current company (%)

N= 312 138 149 156 Source: International Survey of R&D Workers

Table 5.12 Self-initiated versus directed participation in off-the-job training (%)



managerial skills takes first place among cited reasons for course participation.Again, promotion reasons are more keenly felt in Britain. Only in Japan, amongthe expected long-term employees does training appear to be taken with nospecific reason in mind save potential relevance. Behind the strong emphasison technical courses, scientists and engineers in R&D have a strong sense ofthe pace of technological change, the move into more advanced work and theneed for updating (Table 5.14).

Reforming education and training: industrialperspectives

The contrasting patterns of current educational and training provision and thediffering career aspirations outlined in the two previous sections are importantfactors shaping employee perceptions of the areas of needed improvement inuniversity and company education and training. In both countries there are strikingparallels between the patterns of survey response and the main national debates oneducation and training.

Table 5.13 Reasons given for participation in off-the-job training courses (%)


Table 5.14 Reasons for the need to further develop knowledge and skills (%)



During the 1980s in both Britain and Japan, there have been debates andproposals for reforms designed to gear higher education more closely to anticipatedindustrial need. The national contexts have been rather different, the earlier decadesof the 1960s and 1970s providing a background of disappointment aboutmanufacturing performance in Britain, with Japan enjoying outstanding high growthup to 1973 and even recovering from the ‘oil shock’ of 1974 in very creditablefashion by international comparisons. Japanese unease and interest in reformstemmed from changing perceptions of the Japanese economy and some doubtsabout whether the institutional arrangements which had underpinned past economicgrowth could sustain future economic needs; in essence, Japan was widely perceivedto be abandoning its past strategy of ‘catching up on the West’ and poised to becomea leader rather than a follower in many technological fields. The new role has beenthought to imply a need for a strengthening of the supply of scientific andtechnological labour related to more innovative R&D (Dore 1986).

In Britain, reform debates have tended to assume no lack of creative talent.Rather, the problem has been perceived to be a weakness in harnessing innovativeR&D effectively to manufacturing effort. Chapter 2 noted one of the morecomprehensive reviews and sets of reform proposals undertaken by the FinnistonCommittee, with a remit for engineers in manufacturing industry (Finniston 1980).The Committee argued the case for a broader-based British engineer in terms ofeducation, training and role conception, someone capable of making the cross-functional links necessary to promote and co-ordinate industry’s innovative effort.In looking at the balance in the division of labour between education and industryin the education and training of engineers, it proposed that higher education shouldundertake to provide a greater proportion of the ‘general skills’ training, so thatindustry would be prepared to invest in ‘specific skills’ training. In other words,the Finniston Committee acknowledged the inhibition to investment in traininggenerated by well-developed external labour markets and urged that the educationalsystem should be made to undertake a larger share of the investment in vocationaleducation and training. During the 1980s, many universities and polytechnics weredeveloping programmes of study incorporating elements of ‘engineeringapplications’ in the areas of fabrication and industrial organisation laid down bythe Finniston Committee.

Thus although debates about future industrial needs have inspired controversyin Britain and Japan, these similar notions have had quite different implicationsfor curriculum reform. The British reform process has concentrated on makinggraduate engineers more readily employable on graduation, more immediatelyuseful and knowledgeable, in the hope that if the state funded general training thenemployers would be stimulated to invest in specific training. The Japanese patternof higher education, which looked very academic at the outset, appears to havebeen confirmed in its academic preoccupation. Given the ‘organisation-oriented’employment system, there has been little fear about any possible decline in employerreadiness to invest in relevant company training. Reform proposals for highereducation in science and engineering have concentrated on efforts to support thepromotion of longer-term basic research in industrial laboratories through increasing


the proportions studying science relative to engineering, promoting creativitythrough efforts to reduce the dominance of the university entrance exams andthrough efforts to encourage more diverse types of university and greater varietyin curricula.

The echoes of these national debates can be seen in the views of our samples ofindustrial R&D staff, for there are very striking differences in the R&D respondents’views of university curricula (Table 5.15). The British sample wished to seeimproved provision for the development of ‘practical skills’ (59.2 percent). Thisgoal found much lower resonance among the Japanese respondents (32.1 percent)(see Table 5.9). Second priority among the British R&D staff was a need forimproved teaching of ‘business and administrative skills’ (39.6 percent) whichhad minimal support for reform in the Japanese system (2.0 percent). By contrast,the Japanese sample emphasised the need for improved provision in ‘basic science’and ‘engineering principles’ in university curricula. In essence, the British samplecalled for a more direct vocationalism in university curricula, while the Japanesesample concentrated on the more general and academic aspects of the curriculumas areas for future reform. This Japanese view is not devoid of a vocational element,since it is likely to reflect national debates about the need for greater creativity andcriticism of the influence of dull, rote learning in the examination-dominated schoolsystem. However, in discussions of the balance of vocational and academic contentthe Japanese samples reform suggestions appear more readily consistent withacademic aims and purposes.

Table 5.15 Areas needing curriculum reform in university and company education (%)



Discussion

To summarise the findings so far, we can see that compared to their Japanesecounterparts the British R&D staff have been: • largely the products of a shorter education—the typical British R&D staff

member leaves university after the three-year bachelor’s degree and entersemployment at 21 or 22 (although Britain has a higher proportion of doctorateholders), whereas the Japanese counterpart leaves university after the two-yearmaster’s course and enters employment at 24;

• the products of a narrower and more technical curriculum since the Monbushocurriculum credit guidelines have prescribed the continuation of breadth andgeneral education, not only in secondary education but in higher education too(although in Chapter 2 we noted that this may change following the 1994education reforms in Japan);

• largely seeing themselves as competent, well-rounded researchers (‘fullyfledged’) at a much younger age (23.6) compared to their Japanese counterparts(28.7);

• much more likely to see needed educational reforms in terms of needs for‘practical skills’ and ‘business and administrative skills’ than their Japanesecounterparts (who emphasised ‘basic science’ and ‘engineering principles’);

• more likely to see their career development in terms of moves into managerialposts than their Japanese counterparts; and

• more mobile than their Japanese counterparts—in the sense that a higherproportion have changed employer since graduation and that a somewhat higherproportion preferred further change.

The links between these points can be taken in reverse order in order to build an

explanation of the impact of the two different employment systems on higherprovision and graduate perceptions of it. Although the majority of this Britishsample remained with their first employer from graduation and although themajority of this sample anticipated staying with their current employer, there hasbeen significantly more mobility among the British sample than among theirJapanese counterparts. Moreover, beyond the large British companies sampled inthis study there was likely to be even more mobility (Connor 1988: 63). Thesignificance of external labour markets was reflected in the way in which Britishgraduates tended to claim that they take the initiative as individuals on a range ofdecisions from their search for initial employment to their requests for training.The perception of available career routes and rewards which was evident in theBritish responses indicated the desirability of moves out of wholly technical rolesinto managerial roles.

The pattern and the timing of career moves were directly related to theperceptions of needed educational reform. The ultimate goal was not only to arrivein managerial posts but to do so on a time scale which was far more rapid than anyenvisaged by the Japanese sample. The career milestones which marked out a


shorter degree course, a speedier path to the status of a ‘fully fledged’ R&D worker,and earlier arrival at posts of managerial responsibility implied that the educationalprovision must be both narrower and more vocational in orientation and in content.It was these perceptions of the structure of career opportunities and rewards whichshaped respondent perceptions of desirable educational reform. In sum, ‘short-termism’ abounded in the career thinking of British R&D staff and it was this kindof thinking which has been underlying many of the recommendations forimprovement in British higher education voiced by industrialists.

‘Short-termism’ has been used to characterise British industry in several otherrespects, notably in debates about the time horizons for investment planning andpayback horizons. While there is little doubt that British industry might be describedas ‘short term’ in these respects, there is a great of controversy over the origins andimplications of such thinking. While some relate short-term perspectives to thefinancial structures of British companies and the conduct of the banks and the‘City of London’ financial institutions (Williams 1991; Eltis, Fraser & Ricketts1992:13–14), others contend that the perspectives are internally generated withinindustry itself rather than externally imposed (McKinsey 1988; Ball 1991).However, the more immediate issue for this chapter is to trace the link between therelative ‘short-termism’ of R&D staff in their career and educational thinking andthe alleged ‘short-termism’ of industrial investment.

Perceptions of companies’ central problems and company reward systemsprovide the links between the two dimensions of short-term thinking, since thereward systems reward and guide employees towards tackling and resolvingsignificant problems. The central importance of capital markets and the differencesin their structures in the two countries have meant that British managers have beenencouraged to watch much more closely their share prices and earnings in theshort term in order to avoid predatory takeovers than Japanese managers. Thisimportant constraint on senior managers has a cascade effect on the nature of tasks,reporting periods and the structure of rewards through the British companies. Sincethe completion of the fieldwork, the British companies have had several examplesof restructuring: ‘B-elec’ fought off a hostile takeover attempt and restructured thecompany; ‘B-chem1’ became the subject of much speculation about a divestment;‘B-chem2’ was divested by the parent company and sold to a foreign-basedmultinational company; and ‘B-fibre’, after many years of growth through mergerand acquisition, was restructured into two companies.

This British pattern of buying and selling companies has been more difficult inJapan because of the Japanese pattern of cross-company shareholding amongbankers, insurers, suppliers, distributors, and so on. Insulation from takeover hasbeen further aided by greater reliance on debt compared to equity for companyfinance and the long-term relationship with banks. Among the Japanese samplecompanies, only ‘J-chem’ has been involved in significant restructuring through amerger with another company in its keiretsu group. The traditional pattern of growthin the Japanese companies has been through organic growth rather than acquisition;it has been a pattern in which market share has been the index of companyperformance and product innovation based on R&D has been the route to achieve


it. Staff compensation schemes in Japan still have uniformity across the functionalareas within companies and still carry a significant seniority element to encouragelong-term career commitment. In Britain, promotion and salaries are widelyperceived to reward moves out of wholly technical fields towards taking managerialresponsibilities and to be weighted towards rewarding contributions which dealwith price/earnings ratios in the short rather than the long term. One large samplesurvey of recently graduated engineers found that although 70 percent ofrespondents intended to enter industry, only 35 percent intended to pursue careersas professional engineers, and that the factors impeding the choice of engineeringcareers were largely based on direct observation and experience of industryincluding disenchantment with assignments and rewards (Industry Ventures 1989).

In recent years, some Japanese industrialists have expressed concern at the smallbut increasing proportion of the more able bachelor-level engineering graduateswho were seeking and finding employment in the financial services rather than themanufacturing sector (Muta 1990b). Industrialists voiced fears about the possibleextrapolation of these trends, of the ‘leakage’ of talent from their pool of potentialrecruits and the possible damage to Japanese manufacturing industry. However,since 1990, the Japanese stock market crash, the trail of financial scandals involvingmajor Japanese financial institutions, and the smoothing of the ripples from financialderegulation have moderated the trend towards the financial services sectoremployment of able graduate engineers from the prestigious universities.

No country will be without social critiques of its higher education-industryrelations, although Japan’s debates have been much more muted than those inBritain and, until recently, signalled unease about an uncertain future rather thangloom about relative economic performance. Given this background, it has beentempting for British observers to concentrate on the successes of other nationalhigher-education systems, particularly where there is the added temptation toindulge in some relatively simplistic ‘cause and effect’ reasoning to link educationand economic success and to provide a scapegoat in one’s own national educationsystem for economic failures. Closer examination reveals that other systems havetheir own problems and weaknesses too. Many of the past comparisons rest oncomparing statistical aggregates which simply assumed that like was beingcompared with like.

The purpose of this chapter has been to scrutinise some of the terms more closely,particularly by looking at samples of graduate scientists and engineers working inindustrial R&D in order to show how the nature of employment and careers, thesequences of tasks performed and progression through them, shape perceptions ofdesirable educational reform. It is evident that the term ‘university’ has been appliedto a wider variety of institutions in Japan and it is clear that the term ‘manager’ hasa looser usage in Britain. The British R&D laboratories appear to have been able tobuild their labour forces with a spectrum of educational qualifications fromdoctorates to bachelor’s degrees and they have been able to move their staff intoresponsible posts at relatively youthful ages. The companies have been able torecruit very high doctorate-level R&D staff who have had a large element of researchtraining in university laboratories. However, this British pattern appears to have


carried two kinds of cost: first, there has been a high degree of specialisation ineducation courses and work tasks; second, there are debates about the mis-matchbetween graduates specialisms and task requirements evident in comments about‘too many chiefs and not enough indians’ (that is, many over-qualified senior staffoverseeing activities and too few staff with intermediate qualifications to executetasks); third, the extent of the specialisms and the inflexibility mean that there arehigh costs in converting people and tasks to mitigate the problems. It is furtherapparent from this closer examination of British and Japanese companies and theirR&D staffs that the greater variety of British employment practices among largecompanies makes for a more perplexing set of signals to the British higher-educationsystem, ranging from those which reflect the pressures to equip graduates for theirfirst job, or those which want the strengthening of business studies in science andengineering degrees, to those which want a more general education as a basis for alonger-term career. On balance the shorter-term pressures appear to have had amajor influence in recent debates on higher education and appear to reflect thecareer pre-occupations of employees. Present attempts to move towards a masshigher-education system and to provide a broader-based curriculum appear to addto the dilemmas of the educational system because they attempt to make theadjustments within traditional time scales of undergraduate and postgraduate study.

International comparisons help throw into sharper relief what is often taken forgranted within national debates; in so doing the research might generate as manyquestions as answers. Looking at the career paths experienced and preferred in thetwo country samples, it does seem puzzling that so much British effort is put intochannelling people into relatively narrow specialist education in order to enterrelatively specific occupational roles as technical specialists from which they seeka relatively early escape. The contrasts raise two further questions: firstly, do Britishcompanies need as much specialist science and engineering as they get from thegraduates that they recruit; and secondly, do British companies get sufficient scienceand engineering from these R&D recruits over their company careers?

6 Research and developmentworkIts contents and discontents

Introduction

What do engineers and scientists working in industrial R&D want from theirwork? What do they find in it? Is there any mismatch between aspirations andachievements? Are there invariant universals in the hopes and joys of R&Dworkers or are there important national variations? Equally, is there manifoldvariety in the organisational arrangements regulating R&D work or do thedemands of effective and efficient performance set severe constraints? Thereference to ‘contents’ in this chapter heading is deliberately ambiguous andintended to herald our attention to both the ‘constituent parts that make up thedetail of R&D work’ and to the ‘satisfactions’ (and dissatisfactions) which canbe found in such work.

In this chapter, my interest lies in the potential for conflict betweenengineering and scientific professionals and their large corporate employersas generic features of industrial capitalism. However, capitalist industrialismhas had different starting points and trajectories in Japan and Britain, thereforeI will point up the rather different ways in which such conflicts are patternedand handled in the respective institutional structures of Japanese and Britishindustry. Following a closer look at the literature on professional scientists andengineers in industry, my next step will be an examination of the work goals ofthe R&D staff sampled in the International Survey of R&D Workers. In bothcountries, R&D staff emerge as keenly committed to the development of theirknowledge and skills and to opportunities to use them, yet concern aboutautonomy was most acutely felt by the Japanese R&D staff. By this reckoning,Japanese engineers might appear more committed to professional values thantheir British counterparts. However, these responses must be put in the contextof a world where the Japanese R&D employees’ waking hours are very deeplywrapped up in work-related activities. Having looked at the time inputs ofR&D staff to their work, I shall examine the way in which R&D projects aremanaged. The nature of the rewards for R&D staff will be examined in twosections: first, dealing with issues of pay and promotion, and second, dealingwith factors generating satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Finally, I shall turn tothe issue of collective voice and the extent to which engineers and scientists in

Research and development 181

Japanese and British industry can improve their lot through membership ofcollective organisations such as professional institutions or labour unions.

Engineers and scientists as professionals in industry

For many years after Edison’s invention of the industrial laboratory, many ofthe early American industrial R&D laboratories followed his pattern ofsurrounding an able director with talented and like-minded people. As Funkobserved, organisation and management in such laboratories rested largely onthe dynamism and co-ordination of their director, and the total employment of33,000 engineers and scientists across America’s 1,600 industrial laboratoriesimplied an average labour force of only 20 staff per laboratory in the 1930s(Funk 1992:82–3). However, problems associated with professionalism andlarger-scale administration began to attract attention after 1945.

R&D work had twin boosts from the two worlds wars in this century. Whilethe First World War has sometimes been termed ‘the chemists’ war’, the SecondWorld War was undoubtedly the ‘physicists’ war’. Both wars demonstrated theawesome power of science when used to fashion destructive technologies inmodern warfare. Attempts to harness some of the new knowledge and skill tomore constructive peacetime activities ushered into existence whole newindustries in the post-war era. While the atomic bomb and radar were readilyassociated with the nuclear and electronics industries and continued to beimportant in large defence industries, particularly as the Cold War took shapein the late 1940s and early 1950s, there was a wider search for applicationsfrom the host of scientific discoveries and technological inventions bred in thehot-house of war. As increasing numbers of scientists and engineers wererecruited into the laboratories of large corporations, social scientists began toexamine the terms and conditions on which this new kind of scientific andengineering labour was being employed. It was not surprising that many of thepioneering studies were initiated in the US, the new superpower with greatinvestments in military, economic and political leadership, whose industrialcorporations led the way in enlisting huge numbers of scientists and engineersfor its industrial R&D laboratories in the 1950s and 1960s.

Two factors encouraged a focus on the potential for mismatches on values,work goals, work organisation and rewards between engineers and scientistsas professional employees and their corporate employers. On the one hand,the main theoretical framework influential in the nascent field of the sociologyof science and technology derived from ‘structural functionalism’, a perspectivewhich focused on the normative structure of social institutions as the key tothe structured social relations and social institutions needed to carry out society’sfunctions. It generated an interest in the propensity for scientists and engineersto emerge from universities imbued with the values and norms of academicscience and to chafe against the constraints imposed by managerial controls inpublic and private sector bureaucracies. Robert Merton’s studies of theseventeenth-century revolutionary and heroic age of science were often taken


as a source for the academic values of science, with engineers pictured in somehalf-way house between academe and business. On the other hand, much ofthe literature on professions held out models of the liberal professions, such asthe medical doctor or the lawyer working largely in independent practice. Againthere were images of the potential for irritation over the issues of power andcontrol, career ladders, and rewards. Neither tradition envisaged open andunmitigated warfare between the professional engineers and scientists and theiremployers; both suggested scope for conflict and adaptation, as WilliamKornhauser indicated in the subtitle of his study of scientists in Americanindustry (Kornhauser 1963). Indeed much of the prescriptive literature wasaimed at accommodation and conflict resolution with designs for new socialinstitutions, particularly new organisational forms to reconcile the need forworking conditions, career structures and rewards which both fostered creativityamong scientists and engineers and yet respected the managerial need forcontrol.

Despite different origins and different research strategies, three studiesformed something of an ‘orthodoxy’ with accounts of engineers and scientistsas professionals in American industry (Kornhauser 1963; Marcson 1960; Straussand Rainwater 1963). On the one hand, they saw a normative order asfunctionally necessary to ensure the integrity of contributions to science, but,on the other hand, they charged that such an order was continually challengedby employers driven by the criteria for business success in their enterprise.While each of the authors put the term ‘scientist’ in the title, they included‘engineers’ in their samples and justified their inclusion on the grounds thatthey claimed to be ‘professionals’ and shared much in common in terms ofaspirations and experiences with the ‘scientists’. Marcson, based in an industrialrelations department, closely observed a Pacific Coast electronics laboratoryand came to the pessimistic conclusion that any adjustments in values largelyreflected concessions by the scientists and engineers. Strauss and Rainwater,commissioned by the American Chemical Society to survey members, drew onquestionnaires from seven categories of ‘member’ from academic chemist toindustrial chemical engineer. Kornhauser submerged the details of his empiricalstudies in government, industrial and academic laboratories, but produced asynthesis portraying the importance of structures to ensure expertise, autonomy,commitment and responsibility to safeguard standards of excellence in scientificperformance ‘against pressures for quick and easy solutions’ (Kornhauser 1963:1). Citing from both studies that did, and those that did not, distinguish scientistsfrom engineers, he concluded that differences were of degree only, rather thanthose of kind. He concluded on an optimistic note that recognition of mutualdependence on the part of both scientists (and engineers) and industrialemployers would prompt efforts to devise new hybrid structures to secure theeffective scientific contributions necessary for organisational goals and yet grantthe autonomy necessary for creative scientists. Some examples lay in newdefinitions of ‘professional goals’ to broaden the scope of professional activity,new ‘professional controls’ to accommodate professional and organisational


controls, new ‘professional careers’ such as ‘dual career ladders’ to permitpromotion for both the ‘technically’ and the ‘managerially’ oriented scientistsor engineers and a broadening of professional responsibilities.

Against this orthodoxy, some pointed up the great variety of educationalbackgrounds, occupational locations and the limited nature of value clashes.Kaplan doubted the usefulness of a ‘profession of science’, questioned thevalidity that all scientists want to work in basic research, queried the simplisticassumption of links between autonomy and creativity, and pointed to the lackof specification of levels of supervision in the discussion of hierarchical andcollegial control (Kaplan 1964, 1965). For Kaplan, it seemed that employers,swallowing the ‘orthodox view’, might conduct an unnecessary double brain-washing exercise on their scientists and engineers, attracting them with promisesof basic research which they did not necessarily want, and then launchinginduction and counselling programmes to persuade them into the attractionsof applied research and development.

As the employment of scientists and engineers in large bureaucraticorganisations grew in Britain, the issues of new forms of employment wereexplored from a variety of standpoints. C.P.Snow’s novels portrayed the ‘newmen’ and contrasted the different outlooks of scientists and engineers withthose of administrators in government service and drew from his experience asa scientist and civil service commissioner (Snow 1954). Snow’s term, the ‘twocultures’, contrasting ‘science’ and ‘arts’, animated much popular debate oneducation, politics and culture (Snow 1959). A journalist, Anthony Sampson,located scientists, engineers, administrators and industrialists and their conflictsin an ‘anatomy of Britain’ which became a widely read guide to Britain’s effortsto come to terms with the post-war world (Sampson 1961). Meanwhile, Britishsocial scientists often borrowed from the conceptual toolkit of the Americansociologists to explore value conflicts between scientists and industry.

Cotgrove and Box (1970:26) set out to test the relevance of the Mertoniannorms of science, particularly ‘autonomy’ and ‘communality’ (which implieda commitment to publication), and commitment to a scientific career throughtwo studies. First, a questionnaire to final-year chemistry students identified‘public scientists’ (to whom all three aspects of autonomy, publication andscientific career were important), ‘private scientists’ (to whom autonomy andscientific careers were important, but not publication) and ‘instrumentalscientists’ (for whom scientific skills might be used for career advancement,but who would be ready to abandon a scientific career). A second parallel studyof company recruitment and industrial scientists suggested that through acombination of student choice and company selection most of the ‘publicscientists’ would go to public-sector employment (universities or governmentlaboratories) and companies would recruit their immediate scientific needs andthe future managers among the ‘private scientists’ and ‘instrumental scientists’.In other words, the frustrated ‘public scientist’ in industry was a recruitment/selection ‘mistake’. Barnes added to the doubts about the depth of commitmentto scientific values among final-year students through a panel study of final


year students which demonstrated the readiness of graduates to adjust theirorientations to the perceived needs of their situation on entry to industrialemployment (Barnes 1971). Methodologically, Barnes’ use of an interactionistframework cast doubt on the value of the structural-functionalist approach.1

Ellis (1969a, 1969b) initially followed the Box and Cotgrove framework in hisstudy of industrial scientists, but was influenced by the Kaplan critiques of thestructural-functionalist approach in America and Britain. He rejected the imageof science as ‘a socially integrated occupation’ in favour of ‘an amalgam ofmany diverse elements’ (Ellis 1969a, 1969b). His image of the industrialscientist became that of the ‘scientific worker’, often becoming someone whohad been lured into pure science in the educational system and thrust into therole of ‘frustrated technologist’ aspiring to management, acutely aware thatengineers might have more readily relevant skills and better promotionprospects.

Prandy set out much more explicitly with an interest in stratification to lookdirectly at the position of the engineer and scientist in the authority and prestigestructure of British industry (Prandy 1965). Working within a framework whichowed much to Weberian rather than Marxian discussions of social stratification,his interest was in how engineers’ or scientists’ positions in the social structureof the industrial enterprise affected their ideology. For example, how did age,education or employment conditions affect espousal of a ‘class’ ideology(emphasising conflictual elements in their employment relations) or a ‘status’ideology (emphasising harmonious aspects of the relations and acceptance ofthe authority structures). Postal surveys and interviews with members of aprofessional institution (the Institution of Metallurgists), a trade union (theAssociation of Scientific Workers) and a professional union (the Engineers’Guild) confirmed his main hypothesis that where engineers and scientists shareddirectly in the exercise of authority, or where their work gave them a feeling ofbeing close to management, they saw themselves as part of a graded hierarchy,espousing a status ideology, which tended to find concrete expression inmembership of professional institutions. By contrast, those engineers andscientists who experienced work conditions which emphasised theirsubordination tended to hold an ideology closer to the class type, recognisingconflicts of interest with their employer, and tended to be trade union members.Linking positions and ideologies, Prandy found that the status (or harmonious)ideology tended to be related to administrative functions, private industry, full-time university education, and older respondents. By comparison, the class (orconflictual) ideology tended to be found among those in technical functions(particularly routine production rather than R&D), the public or governmentsector, part-time technical college education, and younger respondents.However, Prandy cautioned that, even where dissatisfactions were expressed,action along class lines among the young engineers and scientists was at bestonly half-hearted since these employees were very conscious that they couldaspire to escape by individual career advancement rather than collectiveadvance. By and large, collective efforts tended to be seen in terms of public-


relations campaigns to convince management, government and the generalpublic of the need for proper recognition and rewards for the special talentsand vital work of engineers and scientists. In other words, engineers andscientists tended to argue for greater social differentiation and a special positionin industry rather than press for class action and throw in their lot with labourin a struggle with capital.

The revival of interest in Marxist scholarship in Western Europe stimulatedtwo studies of the social position of engineers in British industry. Whereasmost of the studies discussed so far put their emphasis on industrial society,these studies emphasised the capitalist setting for engineering work. Smithrejected the Weberian approach because it tended to ‘fragment class relationsinto an infinite variety of market properties, without capturing the contradictorymovement of class consciousness and conflict within capitalist societies’ (Smith1987:298). Starting from the ‘new working class’ theses of French neo-Marxistwriters, he attempted to avoid their technological determinism by setting thecentral class relations in their particular historical social formation in Britain.Linking the conceptual discussion to empirical study through trade-union accessto a group of workers in a number of technical occupations in British aerospace,Smith argued that there was a close association between technical and manualworkers. This association had emerged through continuities in craft traditionsin training and socialisation, although Smith concedes that it is being challengedat design engineer level through technological change and through therecruitment of university graduates which might generate a new barrier betweentechnical workers and other members of the working class.

By contrast, Whalley (a member of the Columbia research team discussedin Chapter 4) rejected the French neo-Marxist ‘new working class’ theses asoverlong on logic and short on empirical study. Through interview investigationsin two engineering plants, a traditional mechanical engineering plant and morehigh technology computer, Whalley conceptualised engineers as ‘trustedemployees’ recruited, trained and rewarded to undertake the discretionary tasksdelegated by employers in the complex industrial organisations of advancedcapitalism (Whalley 1986:59). Locating these ‘trusted workers’ within thebroader ‘service class’ enabled Whalley to link the micro-level of detailed plantstudies to the more macro-level of occupational political and national variationsin the organisation of work and occupations. Although the discussion of ‘trust’and ‘discretion’ marked interesting conceptual innovation, there were echoesof earlier discussions. While the employers’ problem might be seen as the needto extract ‘surplus value’ discreetly, the engineers’ problem is how to maximisethe area of discretion (Whalley 1986:196). This links back to those issues raisedby Kaplan, namely that engineers and scientists in industry might ‘use thevalues of science and the desire for autonomy in order to increase their powerwithin the organisation and not at all to become better basic scientists’ (Kaplan1965:97). As Prandy demonstrated, ideologies of professionalism were morelikely to be canvassed by engineers and scientists in R&D than in otherfunctional areas of industry (Prandy 1965). Moreover, Burns confirmed that


they might do so with some success in his classic pioneering text on engineersand scientists and the management of innovation: first, industrial scientistsand engineers in R&D do make claims for a special status in industry; second,their familiarity with other settings in which scientific and engineering skillsare employed gives scientists and engineers different perspectives andbargaining positions vis-à-vis their employers compared to other industrialemployees; third, explanations of the relations between engineers and scientistsand their employers in British industry must be set in the broader historicaland cultural context of British industrial development (Burns and Stalker1966:175).

Far from sealing R&D workers away either linguistically or socially, formuch of the post-war period Japanese employers have emphasised their commonlot with other employees. Claims by or on behalf of R&D workers for specialstatus are relatively recent in Japan and reflect the novelty of the 1980s waveof longer-term industrial R&D facilities.

The modern university system which was fashioned in the Meiji period wasinitiated as an arm of the state to develop the cadre of engineers who couldhandle imported technology and the administrators who could administer themodernising state. The Japanese state controlled both the supply and the demandfor their services. There was a premium on understanding and applying Westernscience and technology in the service of the state. This was not a disinterestedstate supporting the generation of knowledge for its own sake. The historicallegacy of simultaneously importing science and technology for state purposeshas had important ramifications for contemporary discussions of ‘science’,‘technology’ and R&D in Japan and is reflected in linguistic differences intheir treatment in English and Japanese, as Methe notes:

…what in the West would be distinguished as scientific knowledge, asopposed to technological knowledge, was to the Japanese simply thatknowledge needed to solve problems. The clear distinction betweenscience and technology thus became blurred. As a result, the Japaneseterm kagaku-gijutsu appears as often as do kagaku and gijutsu indiscussions of science and technology. Kagaku-gijutsu often is translatedinto English as ‘science and technology’ with the ‘and’ made explicit inEnglish but absent in Japanese.

(Methe 1995:21) The Imperial universities had a central preoccupation with the introduction ofimported technology and the generation of Japanese technology was oftenundertaken in research institutes attached to universities. Private-sector R&Dbegan to appear in the late Meiji period. The R&D laboratory of MitsubishiNagasaki shipyard had been started as a small chemical analysis laboratory inthe foundry but, after expansion in 1916, influenced by impressions of theKrupps laboratory in Germany, its 12 engineers played an important role infacilitating the adoption and adaptation of imported technology (Fukusaku 1986:


82). R&D reports suggest that the activity through the 1920s and 1930s wasmainly related to manufacturing rather than independent research (Fukusaku1986:84).

The pre-war Japanese factory had many of the characteristics of a Westernfactory and there was a sharp demarcation in conditions and terms ofemployment between blue- and white-collar staff. Amid the post-war occupationreform period, Japanese labour unions pressed for the closing of that gap. TheAssociation of Japanese Scientists (Minkan), a body linked to the JapanCommunist Party, was active in pressing for the greater democratisation ofhierarchical administration in laboratories and had some influence on personnelpolicies in established company laboratories, such as those at Toshiba(Nakayama 1991). An important theme in early post-war debates was the extentto which Japan should rely on imported technology or try to develop indigenoustechnology. Some companies had a strong reputation for fostering home-growntechnology and Hitachi laboratories were highly regarded as favourableemployment by those seeking scope for the more independent R&D (Nakayama1991). Other post-war companies were concerned with the need to createorganisations which attracted, retained and promoted creative talent. Althoughadopting the broad parameters of the lifetime employment system as itdeveloped in post-war Japan, the Sony Corporation promoted itself as one ofthe new breed of postwar corporations in Japan, self-consciously concerned tobe marked out as an innovative high technology company and sensitive to theneed for organisational forms and personnel policies suited to the managementof creative professionals. By the 1960s, the more technocratic opinion heldgreater sway among Japanese engineers and scientists. While there was a waveof R&D building in the 1960s, much of it was still concerned with adaptingimported technology and the scale of R&D employment was still relativelysmall. It was the 1980s’ wave of building central laboratory facilities for longer-term R&D which prompted surveys of R&D workers and debate about theneed for new patterns of human resource management (JPC 1987, 1988; Yamada1991; Wakasugi 1992).

The relative strength of alternative pulls on organisational design forindustrial R&D have been usefully mapped by Westney (Westney 1993a:45–9). On the one hand, companies have faced a strong set of interrelated pressuresto match human resource management policies and practices in R&D functionsclosely to those in other functions in their organisations. Many of the pressuresstem from the institutionalisation of a range of policies and practices in careerand reward structures. Career structures rest on the recruitment of generaliststo follow standard career paths, and transferring R&D specialists eventuallyinto line or staff positions in operating divisions. Reward structures arestandardised across functions and their use is buttressed by conventions to limitdiscriminatory rewards for ‘high flyers’ or to differentiate in favour of particularfunctions. Although the standard image of Japanese R&D staff held in the USis that of ‘company men’ locked into internal communication networks andrelatively sealed off from external networks, Westney points to efforts by


electronics and information technology companies to foster ‘organisationalprofessionals’ whose external reputations enrich company standing. ThusJapanese electronics workers have been found to be more likely to participatein professional societies, more likely to attend professional meetings, and morelikely to believe that their employers supported publication than their Americancounterparts (Westney 1993a:48). On the other hand, Japanese companies havenot been strongly pulled towards the design of organisations to accommodate‘academic professionals’ in the sense that American or British companies didfrom the 1950s and 1960s. Japanese universities have not provided many PhD-level researchers for industry. Japanese universities have not provided a strongalternative model of the professional researcher since they have not beenprominent in the national research system. They have tended to be valued fortheir contributions of manpower and for their contributions to improving sciencethrough a focus on external information gathering and dissemination ratherthan to fundamental breakthroughs in scientific knowledge. Thus the definitionsof scientific ‘professionalism’ with which Japanese scientists and engineersenter industry are less likely to serve to differentiate them from otherorganisational members and less likely to provide points of conflict with theiremployers compared to those available to their American counterparts. Thisdebate, and the impression that Japanese corporations might learn from theexperience of Western corporations’ involvement in R&D, lay behind the interestof Japanese social scientists and companies in the International Survey of R&DWorkers from which we can gain further insight into the aspirations andexperiences of R&D workers in the next section.

The paradoxical professionalism of Japan’s R&Dworkers

Given our account of the development of corporate R&D in Japan and theWestern industrial countries and the models of professionalism available tocorporate R&D workers, the International R&D Worker Surveys across fourcountries suggest a surprisingly more intensive and more pervasive level ofprofessionalism among Japanese R&D workers than their Western counterpartsby attitudinal and behavioural measures on each of the standard dimensions ofspecialist knowledge, autonomy, career commitment, reward, professionalorganisation membership and publication.

Specialist knowledge

While R&D workers in all four countries attached a high importance todeveloping their specialist knowledge and skills, the Japanese R&D workersattached much more importance to increasing their knowledge developmentthan the R&D workers in either the British, German or US samples (see Table6.1).


Autonomy

Again, while all R&D workers attached importance to freedom in the conduct oftheir work, the Japanese R&D workers attached much more importance to increasingtheir freedom in R&D work than those in the other three countries (Table 6.1). Thesharp contrast between the Japanese emphasis on freedom in research and thelower priority in Britain was still confirmed when Japanese and British R&D workerswere compared, controlling for their location in either research or development(Table 6.4).

Career commitment

The desire to continue in front-line technical work was much more widely heldamong the Japanese R&D workers than among the R&D workers in the otherthree countries (Tables 6.1 and 6.3).

Professional rewards

Looking at preferred rewards in the future, the Japanese R&D workers attachedmuch more importance to increased autonomy in their R&D work than the R&D

Table 6.1 Personal goals of R&D workers in four countries

1 One answer only.2 1=very important; 2=important; 3=not so important; 4=unimportant.3 Multiple answers possible.

Source: Ernst 1995 (based on respondents to the International Survey of R&D Workers from theelectrical and electronics sectors only)


workers in either the British, German or US samples and attached least importanceto promotion (Tables 6.1 and 6.3).

Professional organisations

The Japanese R&D workers were the least likely to remain outside some organisedgroup related to their technical speciality. While this might fit popular stereotypesof the group-oriented Japanese, the more surprising point was that they were muchmore likely than their Western counterparts to join an extra-company professionalassociation (Table 6.2). Moreover, they were much more likely to see the benefitof their membership in opportunities to present their research work outside theircompany (Table 6.2). However, greater importance was attached to maintainingcontacts with professionals outside the company by the both Japanese ‘Research’and ‘Development’ workers compared to the British respondents (Table 6.4).

Publication

The relatively high propensity for external communication evident in professionalassociation membership was further confirmed by the higher level of publicationwhen Japanese and British samples are compared on the importance attached topresentations and publications while controlling for functional location (line 11 inTable 6.4). Not only was a higher aspiration expressed in the attitude survey, but itwas matched by consistent behaviour as more of the Japanese R&D workers reportedpublished papers (see Chapter 4) and this difference was consistent across thecompanies (Tables 4.9 and 4.10).

Table 6.2 R&D workers’ membership in professional organisations in four countries (%)

Source: Ernst 1995 (based on respondents to the International Survey of R&D Workers from theelectrical and electronics sectors only)


R&D inputs: working hours

The life of a Japanese R&D worker has been much more intimately wrapped upin the world of the company than that of the British R&D worker. Put in morequantitative terms, Japanese engineers and scientists in industrial R&D typicallyworked over a day a week longer than the comparable employee in a Britishcorporate laboratory—for example, Japanese respondents averaged 53.12 hoursper week compared to only 41.37 hours among the British respondents. In practice,the hours worked in Japan were spread unevenly with the longest working weekbeing put into the development laboratories compared to the research laboratories.In Britain, there was little difference between research and development laboratorysettings. Among British R&D staff, the main noticeable variations could be foundbetween managers and rank-and-file R&D staff, with the managers workinglonger hours.

The context of the ‘bubble economy’ in the late 1980s and the associatedlabour shortages exacerbated the problems of working hours, particularly forR&D workers in the development departments. One third of the additionalcomments freely volunteered by Japanese R&D staff were concerned with‘working hours’, whether as complaints that long working hours weakened stafffreshness and creativity or suggestions that more discretion ought to be grantedin flexi-time.

I have to do overtime work for one or two hours every day, although wecannot get enough pay. I hope for the management of working time (36).

Overtime work is considered as natural, and business results are evaluatedby the hours of overtime work. They always have tendency to take theovertime work of different departments, but that is not what we are lookingfor (184).

Researchers need flex-time to work more efficiently (486).

We need the shortening of working time to the 5 day week, flex-time andthe system of long vacations (522).

Greater discretion over research time features in many of the debates on reformsneeded in Japanese corporate R&D. It has often been discussed as ‘free time’or time for ‘under-the-counter’ R&D work. The argument runs that more scopein time and resources for independent curiosity-oriented research will benecessary if Japanese laboratories are to secure the more radical innovationsneeded in a society which is at the research frontier and no longer content torely on just improving imported technology. The case for ‘free time’ has beenput not only in terms of the need for individual space for fresh and creativethinking, but it has been seen as a powerful incentive and reward which R&Dmanagement could offer to induce and reward good performance. ‘Free time’

Tabl

e 6.

3 Im

port

ance

atta

ched

to w

ork

goal

s by

R&

D w

orke

rs in

Bri

tain

and

Jap

an (

%)

Sour

ce:

Inte

rnat

iona

l R

esea

rch

Surv

ey o

f R

&D

Wor

kers

Tabl

e 6.

4 Im

port

ance

atta

ched

to w

ork

goal

s by

‘re

sear

ch’ o

r ‘d

evel

opm

ent’

func

tion

in J

apan

and

Bri

tain

1

1R

espo

nden

ts m

arke

d go

als

on a

fou

r po

int

scal

e fr

om ‘

very

im

port

ant’

(1)

to ‘

very

uni

mpo

rtan

t’ (4

).

Sour

ce:

Inte

rnat

iona

l R

esea

rch

Surv

ey o

f R

&D

Wor

kers


was more readily apparent among Japanese R&D staff (13 percent) than amongtheir British counterparts (6 percent). However, the greater availability of ‘freetime’ in Japanese laboratories has to be set against the average length of theworking week as reported by our respondents. Returning a few hours back toJapanese R&D staff in the form of ‘free time’ makes small inroads into thediscrepancy, compensating for up to only 40 percent of the difference in workingtime.

The depth to which the lives of Japanese R&D staff were wrapped up in layersof corporate fabric was impressive not only by formal hours of work (includingcompulsory overtime); it became even more enveloping when out-of-worksocialising was added to the picture of the everyday life. Japanese R&D staffwere much more likely to number colleagues from their company among sociallife then their British counterparts who tended to nominate comparableprofessionals from other companies among social contacts. Certainly thepercentage suggesting that socialising always included company colleagues wasmuch higher (30.1 percent) than among the British respondents (5.3 percent)(see Table 6.5). The penetration of corporate life into out of work hours waseven more striking when we note the extent to which supervisors and managerswere included as ‘ever present’ (12.5 percent) or frequently (25.5 percent) inJapanese social contacts compared to their relative invisibility in the out-of-workhours social life of British R&D staff (see Table 6.6).

Managing project work

Many of the differences emerging in comparisons and contrasts at the microlevel of R&D project management fit into the more general systemic differenceswhich have been evident in the organisation and management of R&D work inJapan and Britain. For example, the distribution of projects among R&D staff,the manner in which they are monitored and the factors which R&D engineersand scientists feel are important for project success are all strongly related to thetechnology strategies adopted by Japanese companies and the practice of lifetimeemployment.

Table 6.5 R&D staff reporting out-of-work social contacts with colleagues (%)1

1 These percentages record those answering that social contacts ‘always’ included colleagues. Thepercentages in brackets record report ‘frequent’ contact.



Airport bookstalls carry many books on Japanese business etiquette, designedto equip foreign readers with charts, diagrams and explanations of the physicallayout and symbolic significance of the Japanese open-plan office. Typically, theytell a visitor that the layout will reveal the office status hierarchy by presenting themost junior by the entrance to greet the visitor and the most senior manager furthestfrom the entrance. But, whilst this layout reveals hierarchical differences, it isclaimed to show a strong dose of egalitarianism by demonstrating that the manageris to be found in the rectangle, living ‘cheek by jowl’ with and always available tosubordinate staff. Often the foreign reader is gently reminded that this physicallayout can be contrasted with the more traditional picture of life in the Westerncompanies, with Western managers tucked away in separate offices, physicallyand socially remote from their subordinates. R&D laboratories and offices reflectedsome of these characteristic differences. Although, on average, British R&D staffappeared to carry only slightly more projects than their Japanese counterparts inthe International Survey of R&D workers, the way in which projects were distributedacross grade levels was more suggestive of the deeper, more systematic andsignificant differences between the Japanese and British laboratories.

Striking difference emerged in the project responsibilities of R&D staff in Japanand Britain when these workers were distinguished into three grade levels —‘thefully fledged’ engineer or scientist (that is, those beyond the training experience ofearly careers and forming the mainstay of project work), the project leaders andthe R&D managers. In Japan, there was a steady increase with experience in thenumber of projects for which an engineer or scientist was responsible (see Table6.7). However, in Britain, while project responsibilities increased with experience,there was a much sharper increase in project responsibilities for the managers(compare Table 6.5). Where the JPC account portrayed the Japanese manager asthe ‘player manager’, the most fitting counterpart to this would be thecharacterisation of the British manager as the ‘non-playing captain’ (JPC 1991a:42–3). The relatively lower project loading for Japanese managers is consistent withthe impression of the Japanese career as a gradual unfolding of deepeningresponsibilities and the expectation that the Japanese R&D manager should maintaina ‘hands-on’ involvement in R&D projects. In contrast, the larger number of projectscarried by British R&D managers was consistent with the notion of a career step

Table 6.6 R&D staff reporting out-of-work social contacts with supervisors (%)1

1 These percentages record those answering that social contacts ‘always’ included supervisors. Thepercentages in brackets record report ‘frequent’ contact.



change and much sharper disjuncture in responsibilities in moving to manageriallevels and the expectation that the British manager would become much moreheavily engaged in paperwork and administrative duties to the relative exclusionof a ‘hands-on’ technical involvement in projects. While some caution is necessarywith the use of the general term of kanrisha for manager in the Japanesequestionnaire and the possibility that it does not distinguish sufficiently betweenthe rank and the position of manager in the Japanese system, the context of questionson graded levels of responsibility makes it safe to interpret as a question comparinglike Japanese managers with like British managers in terms of position andassociated duties.

Projects employing the Japanese R&D staff tended to be longer (2.8 years) onaverage than those employing the British R&D staff (2.2 years). Differences in thecharacter of R&D careers and technology management were evident whenconsidering the respective time intervals for project progress monitoring in thetwo national samples. While British engineers and scientists had periodical projectmonitoring reviews every three months or so, irrespective of rank, the time intervalsfor project reviews among the Japanese R&D staff varied according to rank, withmore frequent reviews reported among the lower rank and less experienced R&Dstaff. Again, this was consistent with the Japanese conception of a more graduatedpath of career development with increasing responsibility being extended withgrowing experience. British R&D staff, on the other hand, saw themselves as ‘fullyfledged’ relatively soon after graduation and entry to the world of R&D work,were more likely to be expected to fill a particular post—and perform at a levelappropriate to post—rather than according to a set of expectations shaped by ageand seniority.

Given that the Japanese respondents were more likely than the Britishrespondents to be working on the research end of the R&D spectrum, we mightexpect that there would have been some differences between the national samples,other things being equal, in the responses to questions about project management.For example, project lengths in research tended to be longer than those indevelopment and this difference, plus the differences in sample compositions,underlies the differences in average project lengths on which the respective nationalsamples worked. However, Japanese and British R&D staff shared some commonperceptions of R&D activity, notably that a paramount factor making for successfulR&D projects is the setting of ‘clearly established research goals’ (Japan 62 percentand Britain 74 percent). However, in a question permitting multiple responses, thesecondary and tertiary responses showed some national differences. Japanese

Table 6.7 Number of projects for which an R&D staff member is responsible by position

Source: JPC (1991a)


respondents gave more prominence to ‘an organisational culture which acceptsrisk’ and ‘the administrative ability of managers and project leaders’ than the Britishrespondents who were more likely to draw attention to ‘R&D facilities’ and to‘smooth communication among research, manufacturing and marketingdepartments’. Concern about risk-taking does not necessarily mean that JapaneseR&D staff were more adventuresome in R&D than the British engineers andscientists, rather that in the context of the considerable uniformity in the managedcareers of Japanese R&D, rather more Japanese engineers and scientists felt thatinnovation would need increased readiness to experiment. Conversely, given theenormous effort put into enhancing communication flows and co-ordination inJapanese R&D, it is not surprising that this appears to be almost taken for granted,whereas it attracted more attention among British R&D staff.

Reward systems

The salary patterns observable among R&D staff in Japan and Britain reflect thebroad character of ‘organisation-oriented’ and ‘market-oriented’ career systems.Thus while seniority plays a part in both systems, it is more evident in Japan thanBritain (see Tables 6.8 and 6.9). However, both systems have been changing, withthe British companies increasingly conscious of the need to design salaryremuneration in line with external comparisons and Japanese companies keen topress the importance of merit in salary decisions. While salary is the main sourceof reward and index of performance, it is not the sole factor. The availability ofintrinsically interesting work and the ‘free time’ to undertake interesting projectswere among the additional compensations available for management discretion,and seemed to be more prized in the Japanese rather than British laboratories.

Writing in the early 1970s, Dore noted that both Japanese and British pay systemshad complexity in common, albeit their own peculiar and characteristiccomplexities. Yet, apart from complexity, he concluded that ‘the two systems havealmost nothing in common’ (Dore 1973:74). Perhaps curiously, viewed from the1990s, the various waves of reform since the 1970s appear to have yet more layersof complexity. For example, the graphical picture of Figure 6.1 showing the paysystem of the 1970s, look simple when contrasted with the pay system of the1990s in Figure 6.2.

Table 6.8 Reward level by age cohort1

1 The reward levels are based on the country average=100.



In the early 1970s, the Japanese economy was still experiencing double-digitgrowth and there was a relatively youthful labour force enjoying expandingemployment and promotion opportunities. The strong weight to seniority in thepay system had a recognised economic rationale at the individual level in givingdue regard to growing proficiency and at the level of companies and the economyin encouraging stability in the labour force.

Contents and discontents

R&D staff in both Japan and Britain seem a fairly contented lot, whether thinkingof work in general or the content of their current work (Tables 6.10 and 6.11).Satisfaction with the content of their current work was widely reported in Japan(88.6 percent) and Britain (85.1 percent), while the more holistic question aboutjob satisfaction prompted widespread levels of satisfaction too—Japan 77.0 percent

Table 6.9 Reward level by stage of career development1

1 The reward levels are based on the country average = 100.


Figure 6.1 Wage composition under the seniority-oriented system

Source: Davis 1988


and Britain 79.7 percent. Contentment with the intrinsic rewards of R&D workwas further corroborated by the accounts of dissatisfaction where few of the nationalsamples reported mismatches between their interests and the work which had beenallocated to them (Tables 6.12 and 6.13). While R&D staff appear broadly satisfiedwith their status in their companies in both countries, this aspect is more pronouncedin Japan (81.4 percent) than in Britain (65.6 percent). While the extrinsic rewardsof salary and promotion are generally positive in both countries, much the lowestlevel of satisfaction with income is evident in the Japanese electronics company.

Figure 6.2 Salary composition under the shokunoshikaku system

Source: Davis 1988

Tabl

e 6.

10 D

egre

e of

sat

isfa

ctio

n w

ith a

spec

ts o

f w

ork

in J

apan

1

1 Pe

rcen

tage

rep

ortin

g ei

ther

ver

y sa

tisfi

ed o

r sa

tisfi

ed S

ourc

e: I

nter

natio

nal S

urve

y of

R&

D W

orke

rs

Tabl

e 6.

11 D

egre

e of

sat

isfa

ctio

n w

ith a

spec

ts o

f w

ork

in B

rita

in1

1 Pe

rcen

tage

rep

ortin

g ei

ther

ver

y sa

tisfi

ed o

r sa

tisfi

ed

Sour

ce:

Inte

rnat

iona

l Su

rvey

of

R&

D W

orke

rs

Tabl

e 6.

12 S

ourc

es o

f di

ssat

isfa

ctio

ns a

mon

g Ja

pane

se R

&D

sta

ff (

%)

Sour

ce:

Inte

rnat

iona

l Su

rvey

of

R&

D W

orke

rs

Tabl

e 6.

13 S

ourc

es o

f di

ssat

isfa

ctio

ns a

mon

g B

ritis

h R

&D

sta

ff (

%)

Sour

ce:

Inte

rnat

iona

l Su

rvey

of

R&

D W

orke

rs


Overall, the British respondents seem more likely to express higher level ofsatisfaction with pay (Tables 6.10 and 6.11).

Issues connected with working time furnished much of the reporteddissatisfaction among the Japanese R&D engineers and scientists and madefor contrasts with the British R&D engineers and scientists (Tables 6.12 and6.13). Although the overall numbers expressing dissatisfaction with longworking hours did not appear pronounced among the Japanese sample (24.3percent), their incidence appeared more significant when broken into thedevelopment end of R&D, with a greater concentration of dissatisfaction (46.0percent), and research (only 14.3 percent). By contrast, complaints against thelength of working hours were negligible among the British sample, althoughthose expressing some complaint followed the same pattern across development(6.9 percent) and research (1.9 percent). Again, concerns about the tightnessof research schedules were more marked among Japanese R&D staff (27.9percent) than their British counterparts (14.5 percent), and a similar breakdowninto research and development showed again the more acute sense of timepressure among the Japanese development sample (39.8 percent) compared toresearch (24.2 percent). Although showing the similar distinctive pattern acrossdepartments, the numbers reporting concern in the British development (15.0percent) and research (13.2 percent) laboratories suggested less intense pressure.

Further aspects of the Japanese engineers’ and scientists’ perceived lack ofcontrol over their working lives was evident in their higher levels of reporteddiscontent over the lack of holidays and the lack of ‘free time’ for ‘under-the-counter’ research time. Nearly a quarter of the Japanese R&D sample (23.4percent) expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of opportunities for paid leave,although one Japanese company, ‘J-drink’, approached the much lower levelsof concern with holidays in the British companies, where overall concern wasvery tiny (3.9 percent). Within company working time, complaints about theadequacy of opportunities for independent research time formed the secondmost common source of discontent among the Japanese R&D staff (44.9percent) but roused much less widespread concern among the British sampleof R&D staff (15 percent). Although the incidence of concern varied acrossthe British companies, in no companies did the numbers expressing concernreach the levels expressed among the Japanese samples (Tables 6.12 and 6.13).Although a 1994 survey of R&D workers does not record the acute levels ofconcern about working hours registered in the 1988 survey, it has strongsimilarities in noting the discrepancy between the reward systems favoured bycompanies and by R&D staff (Ishida 1998). While companies put the emphasison managerial promotion and pay, the R&D workers stressed their desire forgreater autonomy in working time and research themes.

Perhaps surprisingly, in view of the relative volumes of national debate oneducation and training issues, complaints over the adequacy of opportunitiesfor education and training were less common in Britain compared to Japan.Yet on this topic we can see the importance of simply aggregating responses toassume national effects, for concerns about educational opportunities vary


widely across companies in both country samples. There is nearly a threefoldincrease in ‘J-drink’ over ‘J-comm’ in complaints on education, while thevariation is nearer tenfold in Britain between the most concerned group ofR&D employees in ‘B-elec’ over the least concerned group in ‘B-drink’.

Although we have noted that the highest levels of discontent expressed inboth countries dwelt on perceived personnel shortages in R&D, a distinctivefeature of the British complaints compared to those of the Japanese sample layin the clustering round promotion issues. Lack of clarity and poor definitionabout personnel policies were voiced by many of the British engineers andscientists (40.8 percent), while another cluster of dissatisfactions centred onthe lack of prospects for promotion and salary increase (31.4 percent).

Adverse comments about the adequacy of budgets and facilities were morecommon in Britain (37.9 percent) compared to Japan (27.7 percent), but levelsof concern varied greatly across companies in both countries. For example, thelevel of dissatisfaction were nearly six times higher in ‘J-elec2’ (44.0 percent)compared to ‘J-comm’ (7.6 percent) among the Japanese companies. In Britain,although the disparity between companies with the most and least widespreaddissatisfaction over facilities was greater, it occurred in a similar pairing of anelectronics company (55.4 percent) and a communications company (14.8percent), (see Tables 6.12 and 6.13).

The scope for collective voice: professional institutionsand unions

Faced by some areas of dissatisfaction, to what extent can professional-levelengineers and scientists aggregate their concerns and find collective voice toadvance their common interests? The two main types of occupationalorganisation available for occupation groups to further their collectiverepresentation with employers in capitalist industrialism have been theprofessional institution and the labour union. Each type has had rather differentrationales and modus operandi, although in practice professional institutionsand craft unions might appear to achieve similar effects through restricting thesupply of labour.

In Britain, professional institutions have largely expressed interests inoperating as ‘learned societies’ and acting as ‘qualifying bodies’. The firstfunction can be achieved by advancing knowledge and skills in a technicalfield by facilitating communication such as publications and conferences, whilethe second function can be achieved by setting standards of competence throughthe design of syllabuses and examinations. Historically, the qualifying functionhas been important in Britain as occupational interest groups began in the latterhalf of the nineteenth century through ‘self regulation’ to define education andtraining levels before the state began to play a major role in education andtraining. By contrast, with the state playing a leading role in Japaneseindustrialisation and taking the leading role in the establishment of advancedengineering education and training, the professional institutions (gakkai) in


Japan have confined themselves to the role of learned societies. Of course, inboth Japan and Britain, the professional institutions have tried to promote thepublic image and perception of the occupation and their members through publicrelations activities, particularly directed at schoolchildren. For example, theJapanese Society of Mechanical Engineers (JSME), founded in 1897 to ‘advancescience and technology, and thereby contribute to the development ofindustries’, has launched campaigns to promote the image of engineering andindustry amid fears that increasing number of Japanese youth perceive industryas ‘dirty, dangerous and difficult’.

The balance of ‘learned society’ and ‘qualifying body’ roles in professionalinstitutions has varied over time and across sectors. As the state has taken moreresponsibility for the provision of higher education in Britain, the significanceof qualifying functions and professional institution examinations has waned.Their significance has generally been less in science than engineering since alarger proportion of professional scientists have emerged through full-time studyin universities rather than the part-time educational route supplementingemployment and on-the-job training which dominated engineering until the1960s. The more prestigious institutions have operated under Royal Charterand have claimed that their Charters and charitable status (carrying tax benefits)have limited them to act in the interests of engineering and science rather thanfor the direct self-interest of engineers and scientists. Thus while they mightpublish salary surveys and campaign about general salary levels, they have notattempted to engage in collective bargaining on behalf of members.

Collective bargaining and the more direct intervention on behalf of theirmembers has been the stock in trade of labour unions, although a variety ofunions have contested the appropriate character, strategy and tactics for‘professional unionism’. Prandy suggested that professional engineers wouldtend to opt for either professional institution membership or trade unionmembership depending on their position in the labour market and authoritystructure of an enterprise and their perception of social hierarchy and socialadvancement (Prandy 1965).

Comparing memberships of professional institutions and labour unions, wecan see that both kinds were much more common among Japanese R&D workersthan among their British counterparts (Tables 6.14 and 6.15). Again, however,union membership is one of those dimensions of comparison which is bestpursued by disaggregation of the national samples to take a closer look at thecompany context, for there are some significant variations by company in bothmemberships and the claimed benefits of membership.

Over two thirds of the Japanese sample of R&D workers were members ofprofessional institutions (67.7 percent) compared to over half of the Britishsample (54.0 percent). The highest level of membership was found in thetelecommunications company ‘J-comm’ (98.9 percent). The strong public-service ethos and tradition of regulation associated with the telecommunicationsindustry have probably encouraged membership, and the ‘B-com’ showed arelatively high level of membership (62.3 percent) among British R&D staff.

Sour

ce:

Inte

rnat

iona

l Su

rvey

of

R&

D W

orke

rs

Tabl

e 6.

14 J

apan

ese

mem

bers

hip

of c

olle

ctiv

e or

gani

satio

ns (

unio

ns a

nd p

rofe

ssio

nal i

nstit

utio

ns)

(%)

Tabl

e 6.

15 B

ritis

h m

embe

rshi

p of

col

lect

ive

orga

nisa

tions

(un

ions

and

pro

fess

iona

l ins

titut

ions

) (%

)

Sour

ce:

Inte

rnat

iona

l Su

rvey

of

R&

D W

orke

rs

Tabl

e 6.

16 T

he s

igni

fica

nce

of p

rofe

ssio

nal i

nstit

utio

n m

embe

rshi

p in

Jap

an (

%)1

1 T

he p

erce

ntag

es n

otin

g th

e pr

ofes

sion

al i

nstit

utio

n as

the

mos

t im

port

ant

of t

he p

rofe

ssio

nal

orga

nisa

tions

to

whi

ch t

hey

belo

nged

.

Sour

ce:

Inte

rnat

iona

l Su

rvey

of

R&

D W

orke

rs

Tabl

e 6.

17 T

he s

igni

fica

nce

of p

rofe

ssio

nal i

nstit

utio

n m

embe

rshi

p in

Bri

tain

(%

)1

1 T

he p

erce

ntag

es n

otin

g th

e pr

ofes

sion

al i

nstit

utio

n as

the

mos

t im

port

ant

of t

he p

rofe

ssio

nal

orga

nisa

tions

to

whi

ch t

hey

belo

nged

.

Sour

ce:

Inte

rnat

iona

l Su

rvey

of

R&

D W

orke

rs


The lowest level of membership in Japan was found in the electronics company,‘J-elec2’ (40.5 percent). Professional institution memberships showed markedvariations across the British companies, ranging from the high of 68.4 percentin the small central laboratory of ‘B-drink’ to the low of 43.7 percent in ‘B-fibre’.

Of the variety of professional organisations to which R&D staff can belongfrom the more formal professional institutions to the less formal in-house R&Dseminar, professional institutions emerged as by far the most important for R&Dengineers and scientists in both Japan (84.2 percent) and Britain (70.3 percent)(Tables 6.16 and 6.17). While small numbers of professional institution membersin both countries saw little benefit from membership, the overwhelming majorityin both countries emphasised the personal gains from the ‘learned society’ functionof gaining technical information in relevant fields of work, Japan (66.9 percent)and Britain (64.8 percent) (Tables 6.18 and 6.19). In the light of the importanceattached to publication by the Japanese R&D engineers and scientists seen earlier,it is perhaps not surprising that opportunities to present research results throughthe professional institutions are the second most important benefit in Japan (50.0percent) and far outdo its importance in Britain (5.6 percent). Not only do theJapanese companies set high store by publication in gauging career progress, theyconcede that internal labour markets limit the opportunities for technology transferand the stimulation of R&D by mobile engineers and scientists. Therefore Japanesecompanies encourage the presentation of R&D results as part of professionaldevelopment. Contacts with professional staff outside the confines of one’s ownemployer serve as compensatory mechanisms for the relative lack of developedexternal labour markets and are appreciated by the Japanese R&D staff. In additionto the prevailing importance of the learned society function, over one third of theBritish engineers saw important benefits in the social contacts (38.5 percent) andthe educational opportunities (38.5 percent) made available by professionalinstitutions. Reflecting their historic qualifying role in Britain, the Britishrespondents (28.5 percent) were much more likely to appreciate the status-conferring benefits of institutional membership than their Japanese counterparts(6.7 percent).

Campaigning to improve working conditions has been the historic mission oflabour unions under industrial capitalism so that it is hardly surprising that this isthe most frequently cited benefit from union membership in the two countries,Japan (38.1 percent) and Britain (37.2 percent), (see Tables 6.20 and 6.21). Yet thissimilarity needs some caution, for it must be remembered that the bases of unionismare different in the two countries and that over half the union members in bothcountries find no specific benefits from union membership. Union organisation isfar from central to the lives of most R&D workers and is not seen as a focus fortheir personal advancement, which is largely going to be achieved by individualcareer advance rather than collective organisation.

While the overall level of unionism among the Japanese sample of R&D staff(60.6 percent) is twice that in the British sample (29.6 percent), there are largevariations across the companies. The main axis of union membership in Japan is


the enterprise union (rather than the occupation or industry) to which all regularemployees belong up to managerial levels (typically up to kacho or sectionmanager). The surprisingly low level of union membership in the ‘J-comm’ sampleis a product of sampling since 92 percent of the respondents were in the managerialgrades and ineligible for union membership. In many Japanese companies, theenterprise unions were reshaped in the early 1950s when company managers wereaggressively determined to rout radical unionism by outflanking devices, includingthe fostering of alternative union structures. ‘J-elec2’ is somewhat unusual in havingtwo unions from these more turbulent times, the rump of the original radicalenterprise union and the reformed and company-supported ‘new’ enterprise union,largely quiescent and co-operative in character. The relatively low level ofunionisation among the ‘J-elec2’ sample (40.5 percent) cannot be explained by ahigh number in managerial grades (only 10.5 percent of the sample) and anexplanation is more likely to be found in company style and the character ofindustrial relations in the company. The level of unionisation was significant inonly two British companies, ‘B-comm’ (70.5 percent) and ‘B-fibre’ (59.0 percent),and low (21.4 percent) in a third, ‘B-drink’, and negligible in the remaining threecompanies (see Table 6.15). Only in one company in the two countries, ‘B-comm’,were respondents sanguine about the prospects for union members to mobiliseshopfloor opinion to influence management policy.

Conclusions

At first sight, the arrival of Japanese debates about the employment conditions ofR&D workers some two decades after debates on some similar issues in the USand Europe might appear like a latter-day vindication of the ‘convergence thesis’of the 1960s, that societies would face technological imperatives propelling themtowards increasing similarities in social structures. However, this would be asimplistic conclusion. First, I have argued that much of original debate on theprofessionalism of scientists and engineers in American and European industrywas misconceived. Industrial R&D staff rarely wanted to espouse professionalismin the manner of academic scientists. Secondly, the Japanese debate has had adifferent starting point and different contexts, has been couched in different termsand has been viewed within different theoretical frameworks; what is more, thehistorical patterns of institutional development still carry considerable weight incontemporary arrangements.

One path to the resolution of the paradox of greater and more widespreadprofessionalism among the Japanese R&D scientists and engineers compared totheir Western counterparts lies in recognising that the paradox is more apparentthan real. The behavioural measures of professional organisation membership andpublication have been dimensions along which ‘professionalism’ has been measuredand along which lines of conflict between ‘professionals’ and ‘businessbureaucracies’ have been discussed by social scientists in the context of the greaterapplication of science and technology to industry in Europe and the US. It waswidely assumed that business would find tensions with the value commitments of

Tabl

e 6.

18 B

enef

its o

f pr

ofes

sion

al o

rgan

isat

ion

mem

bers

hip

in J

apan

(%

)1

1 R

espo

nden

ts w

ere

aske

d to

ans

wer

in te

rms

the

mos

t im

port

ant p

rofe

ssio

nal o

rgan

isat

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scientists and engineers to public communication and with their loyalty toprofessional associations. However, far from being antithetical to business, wefind that these institutions serve distinctive purposes in the context of the Japaneseemployment system. Far from being in conflict with their employers, JapaneseR&D workers appear more likely to be rewarded for their participation inassociations and for their output of publications.

However, when we turn to the comparative attitudinal measures, there is a anotherpath to the resolution of our apparent paradox. Here, we find evidence among theJapanese R&D workers of ‘a latent need for individual professional profiling’ (Ernst1995:90). Ernst argues that we should not take the survey results simply at facevalue; rather, we should interpret them as clues to subjective perceptions held byR&D workers of their work and employment context. Thus, the strong emphasesput by Japanese R&D workers on ‘more freedom’ should not be interpreted assome free-floating and absolute commitment to a universal value but seen as anindicator of a ‘deficit’ in their current experience (Ernst 1995:89). Meanwhile, themore ready emphasis on career advancement opportunities expressed by BritishR&D workers can be taken as evidence of ‘deficits’ which they see in employment.

If Japanese R&D workers perceive deficits and some dissatisfaction, we mightspeculate on how far such ‘latent’ professionalism might be manifest in conflictwith employers—for example, in collective voice. The two main types ofoccupational organisation available for occupation groups to further their collectiverepresentation with employers in capitalist industrialism have been the professionalassociation and the labour union. Each type has had rather different rationales andmodus operandi, although in practice professional associations and craft unionsmight appear to achieve similar effects through restricting the supply of labour.

With the state playing a leading role in Japanese industrialisation and taking theleading role in the establishment of advanced engineering education and training,the professional associations (gakkai) in Japan have confined themselves to therole of learned societies. Of course, in both Japan and Britain, the professionalassociations have tried to promote the public image and perception of the occupationand their members through public relations activities, particularly directed atschoolchildren. However, they have not appeared likely bodies to mobilise as lobbieson employers for the enhancement of working conditions for engineers andscientists.

The standard rationale of labour unions has lain in collective bargaining and amore direct intervention on behalf of their members’ interests. Japanese R&Dworkers were much more likely to be union members than British R&D workerssince it was an expectation of all regular workers up to management levels. However,the Japanese enterprise unions, representing the broad span of company employees,have often been seen as part of the problem of R&D workers rather than part of thesolution. Union agreements with companies have inhibited company efforts tohave separate scales for R&D workers or to single out high performance. In oneinterview, an R&D manager pointed to the union agreement as a major constrainton company freedom to reward very able R&D workers but hoped that the promiseof much greater freedom in rewards in the equivalent of managerial grades would


retain the loyalty of patient R&D workers. However, he conceded that they wouldneed the virtue of patience in the meantime.

If collective remedies appear limited, the other prospects for change in theemployment conditions might come through foreign example and pressures in thelabour market. The increasing presence of foreign R&D laboratories establishedin Japan will present foreign companies with the dilemmas of adapting their homepatterns of human resource management to local conditions, while Japanesecompanies face similar dilemmas in their attempts to move overseas (Westney1993b). Some Japanese companies have recruited foreign nationals to theirlaboratories in Japan, partly to ease labour shortage and partly to introduce ‘creativerefreshment’. However, some small-scale research suggests that far from reorientingthe Japanese laboratories, the foreign researchers experience considerablefrustration (Kurata 1990). Meanwhile, beyond the industrial laboratories, theJapanese service sector has been able to offer terms and conditions of employmentfor increasing numbers of the able science and engineering graduates of the eliteuniversities. Thus, the widening scope of employment opportunities may hastenthe urge to learn about alternative patterns of organisation and employment, and inthis comparative studies play their part.

Note

1 Functionalism was an influential paradigm within sociology in the 1950s and 1960s, emphasisingthe role of social institutions (or social structures) in ensuring the satisfactory performance ofimportant processes (or functions) for the survival of a society. By the 1970s, interactionism wasseen a major alternative paradigm to structural functionalism. Where functionalism started fromthe macro level of the needs of society, interactionism focused on the more micro level of theway that social actors took up their roles in society through the processes of symboliccommunication.

7 Engineering transplants

‘…It may be that the “obstacles to Japanisation”…are more deep-seated, perhaps more“culturally embedded”, than we originally believed.’

(Oliver and Wilkinson, second edition, 1992:321).

Introduction

Tanaka-san,1 the Managing Director of a Japanese electronics company in thewest of Scotland and an engineer by training, liked to tell his Scottish employeesabout Henry Dyer, the Scottish engineer who had gone from this local area tofound the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo in the 1870s. The twinklein his eye and the wry smile were ample evidence of the irony he felt in teachinglocal history (and its international impact) to his staff, but Tanaka drew a deepercomfort from his personal feeling of repaying a debt to those British engineers.Now his factory could play a part in generating jobs in the manufacturing sector.He confessed his surprise that some skills and technologies appeared to him tohave been lost in recent years in the UK, apparent in the difficulties in securingsupplies of consistent quality steel and other supplies. But he hoped that thestimulus to suppliers from the factory would play its part in the region’sindustrial regeneration. In many ways, the arrival of the Japanese engineers inthe UK to set up and operate the transplants seems like turning the wheel fullcircle from our starting point in Chapter 1, and Henry Dyer and the ‘hiredforeigners’ (many of them engineers) who took British technology andengineering knowledge and skill to Japan in the Meiji era. Then, Britain wasregarded as the ‘workshop of the world’ and the source of industrial best-practice’. By the 1980s, Japan had become the source of models of ‘bestpractice’ in industrial technology, organisation and management, with foreignmissions beating a path to Japan in search of ‘lessons to be learned’ and practicesto be imported. After several chapters in which the emphasis has been on thecontrasts between engineers working in their home environments in Japan andBritain, this chapter returns to cross-cultural and cross-national themes. Thecentral questions are about the arrival and impact of Japanese engineers on thetransplant operations of their parent companies, and the crossing of cultures in

Engineering transplants 217

their working relations with British engineers and scientists in the transplantfactories and R&D units.

The rapid growth in the numbers of Japanese-owned manufacturing plantsin the UK in the second half of the 1980s provoked much debate. Although thepace of Japanese investment in Europe has slowed with the burst of the ‘bubbleeconomy’ in Japan and recession in the 1990s, the slower growth of theEuropean economy in the 1990s and the pull of alternative investmentopportunities in east Asia in the early 1990s, there has been continued growthin the number of plants opened and a deepening of earlier investments withincreases in the numbers of R&D units established. While the UK has attractedthe major share of the Japanese investment in Europe, it has witnessed some ofthe sharpest debates about the strategies of the inward investment and its impact.Can Japanese engineers successfully transplant Japan’s manufacturingoperations overseas? Are Japanese transplants in the UK little more thanwarehouses serving the needs of screwdriver activities in the assembly ofimported parts? Can Japanese technology play a part in the regeneration ofBritish manufacturing industry? What employment and career opportunitiesare open with the recruitment of British engineers and scientists to work withJapanese counterparts in overseas R&D units?

The arrival of the transplants has not been without criticism. Some criticshave doubted either the feasibility of transfer or the desirability of transfer oreven both aspects. Even enthusiasts, such as Oliver and Wilkinson whointroduced ‘Japanisation’ into British discussions of Japanese inwardinvestment, have become more circumspect about the feasibility of effectivetransplants, as shown in the passage quoted above. Some critics argue, first,that Japanese companies will have little interest in transferring R&D, leavingonly low value-added, low-skill, lowly paid types of employment and, second,that even if they had the desire, their Japanese engineers would not be able tointroduce the key element of Japanese technology and Japanese workorganisation to the UK because these features are too dependent on Japaneseculture and social organisation. And even if the transplant process were feasible,then some critics question whether it would be desirable from the host country’sperspective because the price paid would be to transform many institutionalfeatures of British industry into forms and practices more closely Japanese,for example in industrial relations. Most of the attention given to transplantshas concentrated on either the economic implications for the economy or thejob opportunities and industrial relations implications for blue-collar workers.Engineers have been largely overlooked.

However, technology transfer is a complex process in which engineers arecritical agents. To be effective, Japanese companies need Japanese engineersas expatriates who can introduce new processes and products. But if companiesare to fully globalise their activities, they will need to employ British engineerswho can liaise effectively with the Japanese engineers on company sites inJapan, particularly if they seek to upgrade their technological capability in theoverseas plants. In exploring the roles of Japanese and British engineers in


transplants, I shall start with the broad picture of the supply side of inwardinvestment—that is with the purposes and modes of inward of investment. Thesupply side will be followed by an examination of the demand for Japaneseinward investment, particularly the sometimes heady and optimistic expectationsgenerated for Japanese inward investment. These mixtures of motive andexpectation set the context for considering the ‘Japanisation debate’ and thearguments about the prospective impact of the transplants. Turning from thesevery broad-brush debates on the Japanese transplants to a more finely detailedexamination of the relations between Japanese and British engineers, it isimportant to bear in mind the very different career paths through which theyhave arrived at the transplants. Examination of the development of R&D unitswill cover both those ‘attached’ to manufacturing plants and the ‘independent’units too. The final section will draw some threads together on the activities ofengineers and scientists in transplant operations.

The supply side of Japanese foreign direct investment

The first Japanese transplant in the UK was established in by the zip-makerYKK as part of the company’s strategy to locate close to its customers in thefashion industry. YKK rapidly set up manufacturing plants across Europe.However, this conduct stood out in marked contrast to the vast bulk of Japanesemanufacturers who were content to remain in Japan and sell abroad. Even inthe early 1980s, Trevor had dubbed Japanese companies as ‘reluctantmultinationals’ for their fear of leaving their very familiar and supportivedomestic environment (Trevor 1983). By contrast the service sector had a muchlonger history of overseas operations stretching back into the Meiji era, oftendesigned to support the overseas sales of manufacturers. However, two factorsprodded the manufacturers to establish plants in Europe from the mid-1980s:first, the rise in value of the yen (endaka) following the 1985 Plaza Accord ofthe G7 countries, and second, the plans in Europe for the ‘single market’(Dicken, Tickell and Yeung 1997). The overall growth of investment in Europehad much to do with perceptions and fears that the institutions of the singlemarket would be a ‘Fortress Europe’ in the EC with exclusion of Japanesegoods by tariff barriers.

The relative novelty of this rise in Japanese manufacturing investment inEurope must be set in the context of the relatively recent increase in totaloverseas manufacturing investment—for example, the total for 1984 to 1989matched that for the whole of the period 1950 to 1983 (Fitzpatrick Associates1991:1). The main destination over this period was the US, with its share risingfrom 33.1 percent in 1984 to 48.2 percent in 1989. Meanwhile, the Europeanshare increased more modestly from 19.1 percent to 21.9 percent in 1989. Bythe end of 1996, the manufacturing investment in Europe had become heavilyconcentrated in three countries—the UK (223 firms), France (114 firms) andGermany (101 firms). Britain has not only secured the largest proportion ofmanufacturing plants, but the largest proportion of plants with R&D bases and


the largest share of ‘independent’ R&D units (see Tables 7.1 and 7.2). OverallBritain had secured the largest share of Japanese-owned employment in the 12EC countries in 1993. It must be remembered that the Japanese presence inEurope is still relatively small whether it is considered in terms of its proportionof Japanese investment abroad or total foreign investments in Europe (Micossi& Viesti 1991).

Britain has had the largest proportion of total investment with several reasonscited for this prominence: the role of the English language as an internationallanguage for business, science and technology together with the greaterfamiliarity of Japanese businessmen with English compared to other languages;the very consistent and positive attitude adopted by the Thatcher governmenttowards foreign investment; strongly pro-business policies from investmentincentives to favourable taxation policies; cost advantages, particularly labourcost, and large pools of relatively cheap labour available in several developmentregions; and relative stability in terms of politics and industrial relations.

If they were to secure their proprietary advantage in manufacturing, wemight expect that Japanese manufacturers would opt for 100 percent whollyowned direct investment rather than joint ventures. This preference has beenclear in their UK operations, although capital participation has been moreprominent in some other EU countries where foreign entrants faced lesscongenial political and legal conditions (JETRO 1997). Electronics andelectrical equipment manufacturers have been the largest single sector (28percent) of manufacturing investment and the typical form of investment hasbeen similar to that in one manufacturing plant on a ‘greenfield site’, employing346 people and with capital of $ 11 m. Definitions of ‘greenfield sites’ vary,but have typically included reference to a new physical site and buildings, anew labour force, and new production technology. It is often contrasted to a‘brownfield site’ where a company takes over one or more of these elementsfrom physical plant to labour force. The combination of 100 percent ownershipand a ‘greenfield site’ should give a foreign investor considerable authorityand scope to introduce new methods of working—for example, methods familiarin home country plants. The industrial relations problems of introducing changein joint ventures and ‘brownfield sites’ were vividly portrayed in some of thetelevision plants in Britain, and after the break-up of the joint ventures theJapanese partners took on the task of trying to convert ‘brownfield sites’ intoquasi-‘greenfield sites’ (Bassett 1986).

The demand for Japanese foreign direct investment

The demand for inward investment can be distinguished into two componentsat the national and local level. For the Thatcher governments of the 1980s,Japanese manufacturing investment offered solutions to some of Britain’s short-run economic problems: investment in car plants and electronics plants offerednot only jobs to mitigate high unemployment levels, but also goods to substitutefor imports and to ameliorate the balance of trade problems of the British

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economy. In the longer run, there were hopes that inward investors might bringsolutions to long-run decline in manufacturing competitiveness in the physics-based industries. Japanese direct investment in particular offered the prospectof technology transfer and the spread of ‘best practice’ in work organisationand management. If Britain’s oil bonanza were to end and the British economywere to need a revived manufacturing industry, Mrs Thatcher’s governmentplaced little faith in the prospects for the familiar industrial practices of the1970s. Japanese inward investors were seen as part of the longer-term drive toreinvigorate British manufacturing industry.

At a more local or regional level, there was strong competition for inwardinvestment between Britain’s depressed regions to stimulate industrialregeneration. Aided at the national level by ministers of cabinet rank and backedby substantial budgets, the Scottish and Welsh development agencies werepowerful suitors for Japanese investment. The English regions could matchneither the political nor the economic strength of the Scots and the Welsh, butthe northeast region in England and the new town corporations in Milton Keynesand Telford made spirited bids for Japanese investment. Images of car assemblyplants and their tiers of suppliers located nearby for just-in-time productionconjured up images of a primary round of investment followed by secondaryrounds of investment and multiplier effects through the local economy. Localauthority representatives joined missions to Japan to persuade companies ofthe advantages of their region in presentations which ranged across geographicaladvantage to local labour markets and educational provision. Using land-useregulations and their planning consent powers, the local authorities had thepower to put together parcels of land for inward investors. In the case of Toyota’ssite for its assembly plant near Derby, the European Commission judged thatexcessive enthusiasm had been used through the provision of land below marketprice, and Toyota was required to pay back £4.2m to the Derbyshire CountyCouncil to avoid charges of unfair competitive advantage (Palmer 1991). Theless prosperous regions (Scotland, Wales and the north) secured significantshares of the Japanese plants compared to the more prosperous and populousregions (south-east and west Midlands). However, as Darby noted, they havebeen less successful in attracting technological upgrading in the share of R&Dunits, whether attached to or independent of manufacturing plants (Darby 1996).

Debates on ‘Japanisation’ and technology transfer

One approach to gauging the success of Japanese engineers and managers incarrying ‘best practice’ manufacturing technology has been to draw up a list offeatures of Japanese manufacturing organisation in Japan and use them as achecklist against which overseas operations could be measured. In someaccounts, these features are seen as theoretically and empirically linked togenerate the much-acclaimed ‘best practice’ manufacturing of Japanese industry.Figure 7.1 provides one example of this approach (Oliver and Wilkinson 1992).The issues raised here are the relations between the main elements of


manufacturing methods’, ‘organisational structures and systems’, ‘personnelpractices’ and the ‘wider social, political and economic conditions’. Tightinterdependence would imply that engineers would not be able to introducekaizen (continuous improvement) without changes in associated organisational,personnel and wider societal institutions. However, a looser ‘fit’ betweeninstitutional elements would imply more scope for the creation of ‘hybrid’institutions, for example by grafting ‘Japanese features’ of manufacturingmethods on to ‘British personnel practices’. Although Oliver and Wilkinsonwere confident in their first survey (1988) that such features were beingtransferred, their second survey (1992—quoted above) was much more guardedabout the prospects for transfer. However, other writers have doubted the allegedbenefits of Japanese manufacturing transplants in the US and Europe for thehost countries. Terms such as ‘screwdriver plants’ or ‘warehouse’ operationsdeny any worthwhile technology transfer to the host country and conjure upthe image of low-skilled, low-paid employment. Using data from the USDepartment of Commerce and the UK Census of Production, Williams and hiscolleagues portray the transplants as essentially ‘warehouses’, assembling

Figure 7.1 A checklist of ‘Japanisation’

Source: Adapted from Oliver and Wilkinson 1992


imported components, rather than ‘factories’ engaged in full manufacture(Williams et al 1992). Claiming that the alleged benefits have been subject tomuch exaggeration, they rest their case on four broad points: first, that the totalscale of the Japanese manufacturing investment is still relatively small andeconomically insignificant; second, that the typical establishment is a small stand-alone operation, marginal to the parent operation and weakly linked to the hosteconomy; third, that their poor economic performance (measured by profitability,productivity, and stock turnover) provides an unlikely base for ‘best practice’models in the host economy; and four, that the retention of high value-addedactivities in Japan and the high import content of the transplant operations limitshost country employment to low-skill, poorly paid assembly jobs.

Engineers are most clearly relevant to the second proposition (the marginalcharacter of transplants) and the fourth proposition (the scope for higher skilland better rewarded jobs in the transplants). Although, when set in the contextof the whole economy, the Japanese transplants appear small and responsiblefor little more than one percent of UK employment in manufacturing, theircontribution to employment and economic performance in specific industriesand regions is far from insignificant.

Taking an industrial perspective, Japanese company investments in the UKhave been particularly important in two industries, the colour television andmotor car industries, and acted as significant catalysts in several others (Eltisand Fraser 1992). By 1987, 18 of the 32 Japanese plants making colourtelevisions and other consumer electronic products in the EC were based in theUK. In a similar way, the continuing weaknesses of the British volume carproducers through the 1970s, paved the way for the direct entry of the threeleading Japanese car producers, Nissan, Honda and Toyota. In both industries,Eltis and Fraser concluded that the Japanese companies have had a significanteffect on the UK economy through the direct investment, through joint ventures,through the competitive examples, and through the development of therespective industrial infrastructures of component suppliers.

Taking a regional perspective on the UK, Munday and his colleaguesunderlined the importance of the Japanese manufacturing investment in Walesand directly challenged the thesis of Williams and his colleagues (Munday etal 1992). From seven enterprises with 2,500 employees in 1980, the scale ofinvestment has grown to 29 firms with 13,000 employees in 1991. By the early1990s, the scale of employment ranged from an enterprise with only 15employees to another with 2,500 employees. Much of the growth in employmenthas come, not from the addition of more companies and investments, but fromthe deepening investment of earlier arrivals. Only 11 of the 29 companies couldbe classed as assembly plants, mainly the recently arrived companies, while 9of the 29 companies had local R&D units. Munday and his colleagues queriedthe interpretation of profitability, productivity and stock turnover data, andusing measures of local plant autonomy, employment stability, and employmentquality, they argued that the Japanese plants can be properly regarded asfactories rather than simply warehouses. Pointing to the application of


‘Japanese-style work organisation’ and to increased local sourcing, Mundayand his colleagues emphasised the contribution of Japanese transplants to theWelsh regional economy. Yet these Cardiff-based researchers conceded thatuniversity graduate employment remains relatively low among the Japanesetransplants in Wales (‘with 21 out of 25 transplants employing less than 25graduates’), although they did not indicate what proportion of these graduatesare engineers (Munday et al 1992:10).

The debate between the two sets of researchers is as much an argumentabout methodology as a debate about substantive findings. Williams and hiscolleagues were wary of reliance on a few celebrated case studies of Japanesetransplants and drew heavily on official statistics to give an ‘X-ray view of thefirms’. Munday and his colleagues are sceptical about the interpretation of thestatistics on profitability and argue that there is no substitute for direct surveysand visits to companies. Therefore, in the following sections, I will try to givea picture of engineers in transplants drawn from both the broad brush of asurvey perspective and the finer detail from case studies.

Transplants and the employment of engineers: a survey

After a promising start, academic surveys of Japanese manufacturing companiesin the UK have a relatively recent history and a relatively disappointing responserate. Kidd and Teramoto’s 1980 survey of the (then) 17 production subsidiariesin the UK yielded a 100 percent response rate, yet their 1990 survey yieldedonly 23 ‘usable responses’ (a response rate of only 23 percent). The researchersconcluded that this was a ‘reasonable’ response rate with the targeting ofJapanese production companies by many other researchers (Kidd 1994). Despitea modest improvement between their two surveys, the tendency for low responserates was experienced by Oliver and Wilkinson in their survey of Japanesemanufacturing companies in the UK (Oliver & Wilkinson 1992). For example,they found only a 28 percent response rate in their 1987 survey of manufacturingcompanies, 14 firms from the 49 approached. However, there was a modestincrease to a response rate of 34 percent for their 1991 survey, 53 completionsfrom 155 manufacturing companies approached.

The 1994 ‘Engineering Careers Survey’ was sent to 207 companies listedby the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) as Japanese companies withmanufacturing establishments in the UK and yielded 88 responses (42.5 percent)of which we have used 56 full responses (27.1 percent).2 The ‘partial response’questionnaires (7.2 percent) were largely made up of those companies whichwere relatively recent arrivals and pointed to the absence of engineers (Britishor Japanese graduate engineers). Some respondents pointed out that ownershiphad changed or that manufacture had stopped. The ‘refusals’ (8.2 percent) werelargely made up of older-established companies who felt that they were ‘over-exposed’ to researchers.

In addition to the questionnaire, a closer grained view of working relationsbetween British and Japanese engineers was gained through interviews in six


case-study companies—a television maker, a car assembler, a heavy engineeringcompany, and three office equipment companies. This study echoed theInternational Research Group on R&D Management study (discussed inChapters 4, 5 and 6) by adopting the pragmatic definition of an ‘engineer’ as a‘graduate engineer or equivalent’ and accepting company definitions ofequivalence from among the staff they classified as professional-level engineers.

The Japanese expatriate engineering staff formed part of the core staff andtheir employment relations were conducted from the head office personneldepartment. In effect, there was a dual-track personnel management systemfor the Japanese and British staff. Typically, Japanese engineers had beenrecruited directly after graduation from university in Japan. During their stayof three to five years in the UK, they remained the direct responsibility of theparent company’s personnel department. In addition to these despatchedengineers, there were some engineers assigned for short-term stays over a fewweeks or months to oversee the introduction of new product models or theinstallation of new production processes. The recruitment of Japanese engineersalready living or studying in the UK has been relatively rare. Not all of thecompanies had Japanese engineers assigned to them on a regular basis,particularly among the acquisition companies. Japanese engineers were foundin 36 of the 56 responding companies. They tended to be located in smallgroups, with 31 of the companies employing between one and five engineers,and 19 companies having no Japanese engineers on regular assignment to them(see Table 7.3). Already, in looking at the employment patterns of Japaneseengineers in Japanese companies, we can see considerable variety among thecompanies, from those with no engineers on a regular basis to those with aregular core who remain after the initial start-up phase of a greenfield site.

While 14 companies employed no UK-recruited graduate-level engineers,41 companies were responsible for the employment of 1129 UK graduateengineers. However, these engineers were spread in very uneven clusters, for24 companies typically employed from one to five engineers while only sevencompanies employed groups of 20 or more engineers (see Table 7.4). Only onecompany, an acquisition rather than a ‘greenfield site’, had a concentration ofover 50 engineers. The largest disciplinary concentration lay among the softwareengineers (465), followed by the electronic engineers (233), mechanical (86)and production engineers (63). The recruitment of British engineers wastypically conducted through the occasional recruitment of limited numbers ofexperienced graduate engineers rather than large-scale regular recruitment fromuniversity campuses. Only 10 companies had added to their stock of engineeringmanpower during 1993. These companies were largely companies which hadbeen established for at least two years in the UK. Only five companies wereinvolved in the sponsorship of undergraduate engineers. Only two companieswere involved in securing engineering manpower through contract engineers.Again, we can see great variation across the companies in numbers employed,disciplines recruited and employment policies and practices followed among


engineers and these reflect the industries and modes of entry from greenfieldsites to acquisitions.

Although many of the survey companies are large multinationals, employingthousands of staff and hundreds of engineers in Japan, the relatively smallscale of their operations in the UK makes their recruitment practices more likethose of the medium-sized company. Among the case-study companies, theratio of mid-career recruits to fresh graduates was 2:1 and over half of theseengineers, as recognised by companies, gained their educational qualificationsoutside universities, usually at Higher National Diploma (HND) or HigherNational Certificate (HNC) levels. These latter qualifications are awarded oncourses with a less academic and a more practical orientation than universitycourses. Many of the engineers in our case-study companies had been attractedby the prospects of gaining experience of Japanese engineering managementmethods. However, companies conceded that their scope for attracting andretaining engineers with varied career paths was limited by the current size oftheir operations. Twelve of the survey companies had experienced some turnoverof engineering manpower, but two thirds of them noted that this was typicallyonly one or two engineers per company leaving mainly to join othermanufacturing companies. Providing alternative definitions of success forengineers was seen as a key managerial challenge for management intransplants. As one training manager put it:

Table 7.3 Plant size and number of Japanese graduate engineers

Source: Engineering Careers’ Survey

Table 7.4 Plant size and number of UK graduate engineers



Retention within a leaner, flatter organisation (is the most importantmanagement problem that the company faces in the mid-1990s in relationto engineering and technician manpower). The management challenge isto redefine success, status and personal achievement toward avenues otherthan hierarchical promotion.

(Training Manager, Japanese transplant company) Those UK engineers who had had extensive one- or two-year assignments toJapan were particularly valuable losses. One company lost four out of the cohortof five engineers sent to Japan to learn about the new production technologiesto be introduced from Japan. On their return to the UK, they were recruited byan American rival company opening up a new facility close to the Japanesecompany’s UK plant. Having organised expensive training and work experience,the company had failed to monitor the career progression of its UK staff.Chastened by the experience, the company introduced a new appraisal scheme(attempting to match career development with identifiable responsibilities) anda new higher pay scale. Together, these reforms appeared to help retain all ofthe second cohort of engineers assigned for training in Japan.

For some companies, the apparent lack of longer-term career prospects in arelatively small plant has been offset by the growth of the scale of operations,and the progressive upgrading of the plant and the labour force. Responding totheir own business plans and the encouragement of EC local content regulations,companies had added to their local manufacturing facilities and tried to increasethe ‘local content’ of their production. The manpower implications of thesedevelopments can be traced in one of the semi-conductor manufacturing plantswhere, as total employment increased, the proportion of engineering manpowerincreased. For example, operations started in 1982 with 40 engineers (13.6percent) out of a total labour force of 294 employees, but the engineering staffhad risen more than proportionately to 199 (26.5 percent) of the 750 totalemployment by 1991. By this time, the ‘engineers’ were divided evenly betweenthe half largely holding Higher National Diploma qualifications and largelyemployed in maintenance operations (often termed ‘technicians’ in othercompanies) and the half who were graduates holding a university degree or anequivalent qualification.

The organisation of engineering work

Having looked at the broad picture of the employment of engineers in a sampleof transplant operations in the UK, we can now turn to some case studies toexamine, firstly, the development of engineering functions at the level of thewhole organisation in the transplants, that is, the cumulative additions ofdepartments from sales to R&D, and secondly, the development of engineeringroles, that is, the development of engineering activities at the level of theindividual engineer.


The development of engineering functions in transplantoperations

Japanese companies in the UK now have varied histories and exhibit a widevariety of policies and practices in engineering management. Acquisitions haveenabled some medium-sized Japanese companies to start with a ready-madefull range of manufacturing operations, while plants established by largecompanies on a ‘greenfield site’ may take years of patient investment to graft afuller range of operations on to the initial stock of ‘assembly-only’. Thus, ithas been argued that transplants will follow a natural history of developmentsfrom initial sales outposts, later supplemented by service and repair operations,until eventually fuller manufacturing operations are established with designand development following the initial start-up period of assembling importedknock-down kits. The JETRO annual surveys have attempted to capture someof these developments by surveying the extent of R&D unit growth, includingboth units ‘attached’ to a factory site and ‘stand-alone’ (or ‘independent’) units.The total number of Japanese R&D bases in the UK has risen from 24 in 1990to 118 in 1996 (JETRO 1997). While some companies have located their R&Don a separate site from their UK manufacturing operations, hence the term‘independent’, some of the ‘independent’ units represent investments bycompanies without any manufacturing in the UK. In this sense, they are a novelphenomenon and show a different path to R&D than the ‘natural history’ view.‘Independent’ refers only to a separate location from manufacturing and carriesno implication of financial and budgetary autonomy. In fact, 75 percent of theR&D units were owned by the parent company in Japan in 1994 and show thatthere has been relatively little localisation of ownership in R&D activities(Hasegawa 1998:53).

In this section, I will draw on four of the case studies to demonstrate howcompanies have been cautiously building up their operations in both scale andcomplexity. These case studies of a television maker (Terebi), a car assembler(Kuruma), a heavy engineering company (Jukogyo), and an office equipmentcompany (Denki) reflect important sectors and illustrate significant themes inother sectors too.

The TV makers

Companies manufacturing electronics products from business equipment toconsumer products such as colour-television (CTV) makers form one of thebiggest segments of Japanese inward investments to the UK. CTV productionis hailed as one of the success stories in regenerating an ailing industry andailing regions through Japanese direct investment (Eltis and Fraser 1992:6–8). The electrical and electronics industries have been a major source of Japanesecomparative advantage in international trade. The European adoption of thePAL transmission technology (pace the French adoption of the SECAM system)gave some temporary shelter for UK CTV-makers’ imports. Fears about the


rapidly increasing import penetration of the UK market by Japanese CTVmanufacturers led to a ‘voluntary agreement’ between the British and Japanesemanufacturers’ associations, limiting Japanese imports to 10 percent of theUK market. Therefore, Sony (1974) and Matsushita (1976) set up manufacturingfacilities in the UK to produce the large-screen models excluded by theagreement. However, Hitachi’s plans for CTV manufacture in the UK provokedfierce opposition from UK producers and trade unions. The National EconomicDevelopment Office (NEDO) responded with a plan to restructure the UK CTVindustry around existing manufacturers, but encouraged the queuing Japaneseentrants either to enter joint ventures with the European companies or to takeover their unwanted plants (Ughanwa and Baker 1989:21–31; Strange1993:196–9).

The distribution and character of the later Japanese CTV entrants reflectsthis rather curious history. Only Sony and Matsushita were able to start from‘greenfield sites’ in south Wales (that is, from the popular image of a new sitewith new plant and equipment, a new labour force and new patterns of workorganisation and management). Of the other CTV makers, Hitachi formed ajoint venture with GEC (Hirwaun in south Wales in 1978); Toshiba entered ajoint venture with Rank (Plymouth in 1978); Mitsubishi took over theNorwegian Tandberg company plant (Haddington, east of Edinburgh in 1978);and Sanyo took over the Pye factory (Lowestoft in 1978). However, the jointventures foundered on the lack of UK partner expertise and managerial conflicts.Then the Japanese partners were left to develop wholly owned sites as theBritish partners pulled out. Thus, there were two ‘greenfield sites’ and theremainder are more properly called ‘reconstituted sites’.

A pragmatic and incrementalist approach to the development of transplantengineering functions can be illustrated through a case study of one of theseTV makers, the Terebi company. Through the 1970s, Terebi set up overseasmanufacturing operations in non-Japanese Asia, largely for access to lowerlabour market costs, and the US and the UK, largely to secure product marketaccess. Company managers conceive of these overseas moves as part of a three-stage development from ‘the international company’ (where overseas salesoperations were established) to ‘the transnational company’ (where overseasmanufacturing activities were developed), and eventually to ‘the globalcompany’ (where the co-ordination of products and processes across nationalboundaries will be much more closely integrated). Currently, operations arejudged to be at the transnational stage.

Although the US is a very large market and both the US and non-JapaneseAsian facilities were established before the 1979 UK activities, the UK planthad emerged as the company’s most advanced overseas manufacturing facility.It included the full range of operations of CTV (colour television) assembly,from the auto insertion of small components to the manual insertion of largecomponents as the chassis is built, and later combined with the CRT (cathoderay tube) and cabinet as the line moved towards final assembly. Moreover, theUK plant added design and applications engineering to broaden the range of


engineering functions. Two factors underlay contrasts between the company’sUS plant operations and the other locations outside Japan. First, the US andnon-Japanese Asia wage differential made production of components in Asiaand assembly only in the US more attractive. Secondly, the European localcomponent requirements encouraged attention to manufacture in the EuropeanUnion. In terms of Figure 7.2, the US plant concentrated on the ‘back end’only of CTV assembly whereas the UK plant undertook both the fullermanufacturing involved in both ‘front end’ and ‘back end’ activities. Thecomplexity of ‘front end’ operations meant that the UK plant needed muchmore engineering activity, and hence more engineers, in the production area.However, technological changes have been eroding the differentials over time.In 1979, the ratio of total manufacturing staff in ‘front end’ to ‘back end’operations was 2:1. However, the progressive introduction of more auto-insertion of components, for example 80 percent of components are now auto-inserted, has brought the ratio nearer to 1:1 in the 1990s.

The propensity of consumers to regard the CTV as an item of living-roomfurniture and evident variations in national furniture tastes and styles is onefactor prompting the desire to set up design and development units close to theoverseas manufacturing plants. Yet when the Terebi company wanted to addapplications engineering to its small UK plant in 1981, there was a lack ofinterest in advertised posts. After consultation with the company President, theincentive of one or two years’ study in Japan was added to advertisements and20 applicants sought the two posts. Since then, a stream of engineers has madethe trip to Japan, at the rate one per year, and a capacity for applicationsengineering has been developed. Now the UK engineers can take basic ideasfrom the Japanese design centre and develop applications for the complex andhighly differentiated European market. In 1994, the design activity for Europewas reorganised into a UK-based group and a Japan-based group under aJapanese manager based in the UK. While the two groups were of similar size,

Figure 7.2 Colour television manufacturing processes

Source: Terebi Television Company


the UK-based team was largely made up of British engineers supplementedby only a few Japanese engineers.

Over the 15 years from its establishment, the range of engineeringfunctions has been extended in the UK plant so that gradually moreresponsibility has been taken there. Basic research in CTV is unlikely to beestablished in the UK, for it seems set to remain concentrated in the centralresearch laboratories in Japan. However, more longer-term research in multi-media is a possibility for the UK. Nor is it likely that video-tape recorder (VTR)manufacture will foster local engineering competencies to the same degreesince the VTR is seen as a product for a less differentiated international marketand it can be serviced more readily from Japan than the CTV. The implicationsfor engineering recruitment from the addition of more engineering functionscan be traced in Figure 7.3 and the career paths in the Terebi plant. With thefocus on production, the company relied on operators, technicians and theJapanese engineers. Technicians could be recruited as mid-career recruits with(sub-degree) HNC/OND qualifications or from college at E, or taken on as atechnical apprentice at C.3 Over the longer run, the company could make internalpromotions from operators (recruited at C) or the assembly line ‘trouble-shooters’ (recruited at B). However, when the company wanted to establish thedesign and development functions, they wanted to develop the engineering/technical career path with graduate engineers recruited at F. While Britain hada relatively low age-participation rate in higher education, there were ableschool-leavers who could make their way through employment and part-timestudy to reach engineering management, as one engineering manager explained:

I suppose I have come a long way from ‘TV repair man’ to ‘EngineeringManager’. I did a five-year apprenticeship which I regret now. I shouldhave gone to college or university full-time, but few did in my community.If I were starting again now, I probably would go to university. When Iwas working in TV repair, I saw jobs advertised here (at Terebi) ininspection. I have moved through ‘incoming inspection’ (two years) to‘development’ (two years), then into the ‘automatic test department’ (twoyears) and finally into ‘production engineering management’ (two years).

(Engineering Manager—Terebi Company)

Although Terebi has been satisfied with the quality of university graduateengineers recruited, they have been disappointed by the small pool of applicants.To some extent this has reflected the history of plant location (where theJapanese TV makers were encouraged to take over the plants of failing EuropeanTV makers in the UK, typically in depressed regions with high unemployment,rather than being given a free hand to establish ‘greenfield sites’ in newlocations). However, recruitment problems have also reflected the image ofanalogue electronics as a poor cousin of digital electronics among aspiringengineers. Here technological change, and the development of multimediaproducts, is bringing some cheer for the personnel department as the increasing


Figure 7.3 Career paths in Terebi TV Company

1 ⇑ Denotes entry to the structure.

Source: Terebi Television Company


importance of digital electronics skills adds new dimensions and more positiveimages for the CTV manufacturer. The net effect of these technological changesis an anticipated upturn among engineer applicants and an amelioration of someof the engineering recruitment labour market problems for the CTV companies.

While the Japanese companies as a group transformed the British TVindustry, business success has not been evenly shared among them. Europe inthe 1990s has not yet lived up to all the heady hopes of prosperity whichappeared as the plans were pressed for the completion of the single market,and the Japanese companies were pressed to manufacture on the inside. In1998, Mitsubishi Electric announced the closure of its Haddington plant,prompting union criticism that they were moving in search of lower labourcosts on the European periphery.

The car assemblers

The auto industry illustrates very well the interaction of those supply-and-demand factors which brought about the growth of Japanese auto assemblytransplants in the UK. On the one hand, by the 1980s, Japanese manufacturerswere seeking to manufacture overseas in order to get round real or anticipatedtrade barriers, while many foreign governments were building hopes on autoindustry restructuring as a potential source of inward investment to promoteindustrial regeneration in declining industrial areas. As a major industryrequiring large capital investment and carrying dynamic spillover effects intothe automotive component suppliers, an investment for car assembly lookedan attractive proposition for local and central governments. Japanese carassembly looked even more attractive. The prospect of dense networks ofsuppliers clustered round the assembly plant were stimulated by the images oftight spatial location for suppliers around Toyota City, the reliance of Japaneseassemblers on a greater degree of out-sourcing for components, and theprospects of host companies joining the ranks of suppliers. The Thatchergovernment after 1979 was particularly attracted to the idea of inwardinvestment bringing ‘best practice’ manufacturing. The British government’sattitude stood in contrast to that adopted in several other European capitalssince the European car industry had been marked by segmented markets, oftendominated by ‘national champions’. Britain became a ‘bridgehead into Europe’for the Japanese manufacturers baulked by restricted access to Europeanmarkets. Honda, the first entrant, came via a joint venture and cross-shareholding with British Leyland (later Rover) in 1979. Nissan and Toyotafollowed later in the 1980s on to wholly owned ‘greenfield sites’. The order inwhich these companies arrived in the UK reflected their shares in the Japanesedomestic market and relative dependence on exports. Honda, with a smallershare of the Japanese market, came first, followed by the number two Japaneseproducer (Nissan), while the market leader in Japan (Toyota) came third. Honda,which had added a greenfield site to support its joint venture, was taken aback


by the British government’s readiness to approve the sale of Rover by BritishAerospace to the German automaker, BMW.

Britain’s retention and revival of an auto industry has owed much to thearrival of the Japanese car transplants, partly through their direct contributionsand partly through their stimulus to the other UK-based producers (GM, Fordand Peugeot) and the component industry. Eltis and Fraser observed that theBritish car industry had largely been written off by financial journalists andothers at the start of the 1980s (Eltis and Fraser 1992:8). Efforts to prop up anational champion through the mergers leading to British Leyland had failedto create a viable volume producer and the UK-based multinationals (GM,Ford and Peugeot) were tending to see the UK as increasingly an assemblerwith top ups from their other mainland European plants: ‘…from 1972 to 1982,United Kingdom production of passenger cars dropped by 54 percent and asmall trade surplus became a deficit of £2 billion’ (Eltis and Fraser 1992:8).The future growth of the Japanese transplant operations is uncertain. The 1991accord reached between the European Commission and the Japanese autoindustry deferred full opening of the EU car market to Japanese imports untilafter 1999 and quotas were roughly set in line with existing market shares.However, the transplants were explicitly excluded from the accord, which meansthat any increased market share must come via the transplant activities, withobvious benefits for the British balance of trade and payments.

The European Commission’s local-content rules have had a significantimpact on the development of assembler-supplier relations in Europe. Nissanestablished ‘synchronous production’ (an ambitious form of ‘just-in-time’production), and invited other suppliers (including Japanese suppliers) to jointhem in the north-east region.

While the vast bulk of operator-level employees have been recruited fromthe local region, recruitment of managerial and professional level staff hasbeen conducted at national level. Thus Japanese auto companies recruitedengineers from the established auto assemblers in the UK, particularly Fordand British Leyland (Rover), or companies linked to the auto industry assuppliers of materials such as steel or paint. Although industrial experience ofauto-assembly and auto-supplier companies was valuable, UK engineers foundthat they had to adapt to different patterns of work organisation and take onnew responsibilities.

At the Kuruma auto assembly plant, one of the three Japanese auto assemblyplants, Japanese technical staff had been heavily engaged at several levels ofthe technical hierarchy from manager to group leader in the early years of theplant’s life. After three years, however, most of the Japanese group leaders hadreturned to Japan. Japanese engineers were mostly found occupying advisoryroles, either shadowing a British manager or acting as an intermediary in thestructure. The British engineers encountered in interviews were drawn fromthe assembly and quality assurance areas. Since a new model was in production,working hours were long with six to 17 hours of overtime worked, although at‘senior engineer’ level there was no overtime pay. All the British had extensive


experience in British car-assembly plants or auto-industry supplier companies.Nevertheless, the British engineers saw themselves in a learning role in Kurumain relation to the products, to the different production philosophies and methodsand to their Japanese supervisors. For example, quality assuranceresponsibilities were organised to give broader responsibilities to the qualityassurance engineer as a British quality assurance engineer explained:

I get much more variety at Kuruma than at [my British car company]because I am given much more responsibility, both in the way the workis organised and in the way that instructions are given. At [the Britishcompany] supplier quality work was part of purchasing and plant quality,internal quality was part of manufacturing quality and a division of processengineering. It meant that when we had a problem to solve on a vehicle,it wasn’t clear whose responsibility it was. Here, we have totalresponsibility for an area of the vehicle, for example total responsibilityfor the front end —responsibility for supplier and in-plant quality systemsand problem solving. It’s quite clear who is responsible because of theorganisation. Your expertise in an area becomes far higher.

(British senior QA engineer, Kuruma car company) In addition to the structure of work organisation, the supervisory style wasaimed to encourage initiative and a sense of responsibility by giving scope tothe individual engineer to develop their own approach and to expand the task.

At [my British company], the senior would give you a lot of detailedinstructions—what to do—that’s the British way. But it takes all theinitiative —you can’t contribute, you can’t learn.

Here [at Kuruma], a good performer is someone who does all that’sneeded to achieve the target—the report. If you do that you are a goodperformer. The Japanese way is to give you a goal. If you’ve got time andyou’ve achieved your goal, you can use your own initiative. If you giveall the detail, you’ve failed.

My supervisor calls it genchi kenbutsu—go, see and make an on-the-spot investigation.

(British QA engineer, Kuruma car company) This supervisory style was interpreted by another British engineer with a differentJapanese supervisor in the quality assurance department as an aspect of theJapanese ‘bottom-up’ management philosophy. In similar fashion, he confirmedthe importance of clear direction on target tasks and ample scope for initiativeand the development of engineering skills. Again, he contrasted the approach inKuruma with his previous experience in a British materials company:

They never tell me what to do. It’s left to me to think how to do it. If Ireport on the status of a problem on metallic paint, he will ask why and


give me an idea to follow. It’s very rare for him to say this is how to solveit. He’ll say have you done this. It’s done indirectly. I try to follow thesame approach with other people. It’s a big change because at [mymaterials company] managers told you what to do. I much prefer to do itthe ‘bottom up’ way. It’s daunting at the start. It can be very frustrating.There’s a lot to learn. But if we are told what to do we stay at the samelevel—we’ll never learn.

(British materials engineer, Kuruma car company)

These engineers valued the scope for learning and skill development whichcame through different patterns of work organisation and supervisory styles.However, they noted that career opportunities in the relatively small-volumeproduction of current transplant operations offered fewer career opportunitieswithin the company than the much larger British operations which they had left.

The heavy engineering company

The Jukogyo manufacturing company is a multinational company with a world-wide reputation for its products. Its origins can be traced back into the Meiji eraand the establishment of a manufacturing factory to manufacture miningequipment and machine tools for its parent company. In World War II the firmsupplied the navy with heavy equipment and munitions. In the post-war period,it received a boost from the Korean War orders of the US for a range of militaryvehicles. In the 1980s, it developed production and sales plants in the UnitedStates, Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico and Indonesia, and joint venturesin a number of other countries. The company has earned international recognitionand prestigious accolades for its manufacturing—for example, the company wasawarded the Deming Prize for quality control. Production was transferred to theUK when the EC began to impose heavy duties on the company’s imported goods.The company earned a good deal of local goodwill when it moved into a relativelydepressed region and declared its commitment to both the long-term investmentand strenuous efforts to recruit among unemployed people. The early optimismwas bolstered by the heavy symbolism attached to the company’s move into thefactory space vacated by an American heavy-equipment maker which had closeddown its UK manufacturing operation.

The transfer of design and development came later with the recognition thatthe German market, with its more stringent environmental sensitivities andregulatory regimes, required equipment that was only a minor slice ofproduction in Japan. Therefore the company decided that it needed local designinput with a closer appreciation of both the European product market andproduction using local suppliers. Recognising the value of UK engineers whocould readily cross engineering cultures, the company recruited a group ofnewly graduated UK engineers for despatch to Japan to experience directlycompany design and manufacturing processes. Yet the scheme came unstuckwhen the majority of the recruits left the company after returning to the UK, as


it was found that these highly trained engineers returned to the UK as ‘marginalmen’. Their only experience of factory work was in Japan since they had hadno prior experience of UK design or factory work. Frustrated in work but highlymarket-able, most of the cohort moved on to other companies. In the revisedscheme, the company has been more accommodating to mid-career recruitsand now sends the UK engineers to Japan only after a period of employment(and probation) in the UK. This new scheme appears to work well, producing‘technological gatekeepers’ who are familiar with the design process in Japan,can bring new models to the UK, and can advise Japanese designers of UKmanufacturing conditions. With 10 percent of its workforce engaged in designand development (D&D), the company has proudly announced both thesuccessful transfer of development projects from Japan and the developmentof a new model wholly designed in the UK. One major setback to the processof localisation occurred with the move of the British head of D&D to a UKengineering company. It took a further two years to recover the localisationpolicy through the internal promotion of a British engineer. During theinterregnum, the Japanese departmental adviser had held the manager positionand delayed his return to Japan by two years. After much internal debate, thecompany has concluded that such losses are an inevitable feature of UK labourmarkets, although they hope that astute human resource management mightmitigate their future losses. The company has also had to come to terms withmore depressed markets and the problems of redundancies as the Germaneconomy moved into recession after the reunification boom.

The office equipment companies

The three parent office equipment companies represented different generationsof a Japanese company with foundations in the Meiji era, inter-war and postwarera respectively. Yet all three office equipment plants were established in theUK in the late 1980s in response to European Commission moves to imposeanti-dumping duties of 17 to 35 percent on several products after complaintsand proceedings launched by European manufacturers (Strange 1993). Thiscontext put a lot of pressures on the companies to ramp up their operationsvery quickly. Given that they had proven products, existing designs andcomponents from Japan, the main concern was staff recruitment. However, theEC subsequently moved against ‘screwdriver operations’, those operations thatwere largely assembling kit operations, and the companies were obliged tobuild relations with local suppliers, although some of the local suppliers turnedout to be Japanese companies invited to establish manufacturing plants inEurope.

At the Denki office equipment company, two kinds of problems emerged inthe early years. At the operator level, they found that company insistence onthe recruitment of young workers brought problems of industrial disciplineand high turnover rates. In addition to familiar problems in recruiting a youngfemale labour force who might leave on marriage and family-building, there


were problems which came from the ability to cream the higher ability levelsamong school-leavers who could leave easily for other employment despiterelatively high levels of unemployment. The company then extended the agerange for recruitment to try to reduce operator turnover below 16 percent perannum. The technical base of the company—the engineers, the purchasing andmaterials staff—were recruited from a half dozen other major companies inthe region. Similarly, managers came from a variety of companies and posedsome problems in absorption and cohesion since some had trained in Britishcompanies, and others in American or other European companies. They had totrain together to work as a group, to understand their business and to understandthe character of the Japanese company. Some of these problems were seen asclosely linked to differences in methods of working among British comparedto Japanese engineers. As the personnel director explained:

At the initial phase, there was a great deal of excitement and motivationabout new products, new cultures, new faces. But then we gradually raninto problems—some of understanding, some of structure, some wereabout the way that engineers relate to production in Japan compared tothe way British engineers relate to production. In the UK engineersbecome engineers by becoming graduates. Then the engineer becomes asenior engineer. At that stage they forget what they learned as an engineer.They get their own office. But in a Japanese company like Denki there ismore of a continuum. Engineering is much more of a hands-on approachthan either in a British or American company. It caused many shocks,many arguments after the honeymoon period.

(Personnel Director, Denki equipment company) Three years later, the production engineering group, intended to liaise with companyplants in Japan, became the base for establishing a design and developmentdepartment. Where the priority for rapid entry to production prompted the mid-career recruitment of experienced engineers in production, the priority for designand development was the recruitment of recently graduated engineers who couldbe socialised under the tutelage of the Japanese director of engineering and twoengineering colleagues from Japan.

When I first came I had a surprise. The person who went to Japan, tolearn the technology, left. But we need continuity for engineering andfreshmen from university in the industrial field. The basic knowledgeand design is more complex, they need on-the-job training to learn. Weare not looking for experienced engineers. They would always comparethings to their previous company on pay, conditions, ways of working,and so on. We want them to learn Japanese-style, the need to be moreflexible about technology, knowledge and approach.

(Japanese Design and Development Manager,Denki equipment company)


Senior engineers from Japan were expected to groom the young Britishengineers to cope with differences in approach between British and Japaneseengineers. For example, the engineering director drew attention to differencesin report presentation:

For example, when I say I want a report, the British engineer will producea four- or five-page report. British engineers are less trained in visualapproaches. All I really want is one sheet, a diagram and a short sentenceor a flow chart.

(Japanese Engineering Director, Denki equipment company) Given that the main product lines in office equipment were establishedtechnologies with little scope for original design or development, the companyhad introduced some development work from another product division in Japanfor the automotive industry, partly to expand into the UK’s resurgent autoindustry and partly to offer some greater scope for challenging work for thedesign and development department.

All of the case-study companies were large corporations in Japan. Each ofthe UK plants was wholly owned by the Japanese parent company and employedseveral hundred people in the UK and were above the average size of Japanesetransplants in the UK. Four of the six plants were ‘greenfield sites’ in the senseof new sites, new labour forces and new working methods. The two other siteswere ‘greenfield sites’ in all significant respects. The only exception was thatthe sites and buildings had had previous owners who had vacated the sites, butthey had left some years before the Japanese acquisitions of the sites. Thereforeeach company had considerable scope to introduce new methods to their newlabour forces. They can be contrasted with the acquired companies which oftenretained their British identity and which were left with considerable autonomy.For example, one of the computer company acquisitions defined itself as aBritish company with joint ventures rather than a Japanese company: ‘we donot perceive ourselves as a Japanese company—We have Japanese shareholders,we have some joint activities but we are not managed by Japanese managers.’In another electronics acquisition in the south-east of England, something ofthe joint character of the new identity was reflected in the adoption of a double-barrelled Japanese-English name. The Japanese company had been a customerand noted that the English company was in the hands of a holding companyand being readied for sale. The main concern of the new owners was mainly tostabilise the future for its acquisition by building its market through its owncontacts. The two Japanese staff, including an engineer, were assigned to theBritish plant in an advisory role. Thus it is clear that there are a variety ofcompany relations between parent and UK plant and a variety of interpretationsof roles within plants.


Developing engineering roles in transplant operations

There have been broad differences in the extent to which Japanese engineers werecalled upon to introduce new methods in the ‘greenfield sites’ compared to theacquired companies. In some of the celebrated case studies the distinctions areblurred because the new operation was acquired after the dramatic collapse of ajoint venture and the need to mark out a new beginning and new order for a newbeginning, rather in the manner of a ‘greenfield site’ (Bassett 1986). Both of theTV plants run by Hitachi in South Wales and Toshiba in Devon followed this pattern,and might be more properly termed (following David Guest 1987) ‘reconstitutedplants’. Four of our case-study plants were ‘greenfield sites’ and two were‘reconstituted sites’. For the most part, acquisitions have been less dramatic andthe Japanese head office has seen its role as to advise, guide and assist rather thandirectly intervening in the acquired plant.

We can look further into the problems of technology transfer by examininghow companies develop and fill ‘gatekeeper roles’, that is, engineers who canfacilitate the flow of technological information between the parent company andits overseas plant. For these roles, the companies need to recruit both Japanese andBritish engineers. Japanese engineers will be more critical in the early phases ofintroducing manufacturing activities. For many companies, the much-criticised‘screwdriver plants’ were an inevitable demonstration phase as Japanese engineerstrained local staff in the assembly of knock-down kit parts. As the companies try toadd R&D or D&D competencies in Europe, the recruitment of British engineersbecomes more important and their ability to liaise with Japanese units becomesmore critical.

In earlier chapters, we have seen that studies of the recruitment, training anddeployment of engineers in Britain and Japan in large companies have revealedsignificantly different approaches in the two countries (Chapters 3, 5 and 6). • Differences in recruitment were associated with the division of labour between

universities and companies in education and training.• The company training system with its in-house and on-the-job training has

encouraged a preoccupation with company-specific knowledge and skills andhence on making company engineers.

• The lifetime employment system had a significant influence on pay andpromotion systems in the large Japanese corporation, with more company-managed career paths and strong weights attached to seniority in the pay andpromotion system.

• We saw that the two above factors were linked in their implications for theinduction of Japanese engineers into dense ‘engineering networks’.

Therefore, Japanese engineers who come as expatriate engineers to the

British plants of their employer are products of a different system with differentorientations, expectations and experiences from those generated among theBritish engineers with whom they work. British engineers, without direct


experience, stand on the outside of these company networks. These differencesprovide some of the potential for either mismatch or fruitful complementarycollaboration. The Japanese engineers despatched by the large companies tothe establishment of their plants in the UK in the 1980s were part of thecompanies’ elite cadre of engineers. We saw (Chapters 2 and 3) that theseengineering graduates had been recruited from elite universities and their careersmanaged by the company personnel departments. Very favourable impressionsof the Japanese expatriate engineers were noted by the British personneldepartments who were invited to compare their British engineers to the Japanesestaff (Table 7.5). A similar comparative profile was evident in the Britishengineer responses to the same question put in our interviews in the six case-study companies. In his mapping of dimensions of cultural differences, Hofstededrew attention to the greater propensity of the Japanese to stress ‘uncertaintyavoidance’, whereas the British were quite tolerant of uncertain and ambiguoussituations (Hofstede 1994:139–58). These cultural traits had echoes in thecomments of British engineers who felt that their Japanese counterparts weremore limited in novel situations.

The Japanese engineers are very good at retaining knowledge. They arenot so good in new situations. The British engineers are much better withnew problems; they are quicker at learning. The UK engineers are largelysatisfied if they have got 90 percent of a problem right. The Japanese gofor 100 percent, but it’s not necessary to get that 10 percent for the effortinvolved.

(British mechanical engineer, Jukogyo company)

Table 7.5 UK engineers compared to expatriate Japanese engineers


Note: Respondents were invited to rate their UK engineers against the Japanese engineersworking in their company in the UK on a scale from 5 (much better) to 1 (much worse).


Authority and autonomy

Japanese organisations are both strongly hierarchical and participative (Lincolnand Kalleberg 1990:235–47). Resolving this apparent paradox is one of thecentral tasks of managers. On one hand, elaborate hierarchies are highly visiblein company uniforms, badges, age-grading and so on, and they are highlyformalised with extensive procedures. On the other hand, companies have thewide range of measures to promote participation from institutionalised smallgroup activities, such as quality control (QC) circles on the shop floor or ‘abilitydevelopment’ groups in offices, to the relatively informal preparatory stagesof decision-making, such as nemawashi or ‘binding the roots’, and the moreformal consultation procedures of decision-making, such as ringi-seido (agroup-oriented, bottom-up consensus-seeking procedure by the circulation ofdocuments among middle managers requiring signed approvals). Japanesemanagers, deeply socialised in occupying positions in formal hierarchies andeliciting commitment from their subordinates, find considerable difficulty incoming to terms with the local staff in the transplants (Smith and Misumi 1989).

Japanese expatriate engineers can occupy several different statuses fromline manager to adviser and the advisory roles can be long term (from three tofive years) or short term (from weeks to months) as particular technologies inproducts or processes are transferred. Japanese staff as managers were usuallyat very senior levels in the plant and it was usually added that this was atemporary position prior to the development of local managers. Some managersfind the sharper boundaries drawn between work and non-work spheres of lifein the UK disconcerting—for example, a Japanese engineering manager wastaken aback when his design team declined to yield their home telephonenumbers to his secretary, even though they could have been readily found in atelephone book. Technological upgrading and the later addition of an R&Dunit to a manufacturing plant can mean that the Japanese R&D unit managerfaces a struggle to establish his department’s standing within the transplantorganisation after leaving the relative comfort and security of a stable hierarchyin the parent company.

Engineering came late into this plant. A lot of relations betweendepartments were already established before I came to set up the designfunction. In (the parent company) you can see the engineers by theirblue badge. Indirects are grey, operators in assembly are yellow, andadministration are green. You can tell the freshmen by their circularbadges, but in the second year they are oval. The engineers are responsiblefor the drawings and the engineering drawing is a most powerful tool,giving great status to engineers. However, when this plant was largelyassembly other groups had more power. We have to try make our wayinto this situation.

(Japanese engineering director, Denki equipment company)


More common were the ‘shadow roles’, known by various terms in the differentcompanies—for example, ‘adviser’ or ‘co-ordinator’. It is a role which was seenas particularly problematic by the Japanese engineers, who spoke of their lack ofauthority and contrasted their role with the more familiar positions which theyheld in Japan.

But there were some qualifications to these simple and starkly drawn contrasts.For example, some advisers noted that the scope of their work in the UK wasmuch broader and it did not involve them in the complexities of consultationacross factions and departments inside a Japanese plant.

Although advisory roles might not carry much overt authority, age andexperience tended to lend support to their position. On the relatively youthful‘greenfield site’, Japanese advisers tended to be older than the British engineerswith whom they worked. However, this situation is changing over time on thelonger established plants. Where it was once unknown for a Japanese engineerto report to a British engineer, such relations are now emerging. Similarly,Japanese engineers were highly respected for their product knowledge as longservice with their sole employer has give them an unrivalled knowledge ofcompany products and processes (see line c, Table 7.4). However, as the Britishplants develop over time, British engineers are developing a greater sense of theproduct histories.

British engineers tended to accept that they were in a junior role in learningfrom their Japanese counterparts. However, some British engineers found anirksome lack of authority with their assumed responsibilities. For example, insome plants, fax messages to Japan had to be checked by a Japanese adviser ormanager and could be altered without reference back, even though they carriedthe original signature. Again, the pattern of double-checking associated with thesearch for consensus management was sometimes found to be time-consumingand frustrating. However, in some cases, these same engineers would concedethat their earlier British employers might have remained in business had theyfollowed similar scrupulous procedures in confirming communications.

Roles and responsibilities

All of the Japanese managers commented on the narrower definition of roles andresponsibilities which they found among the UK staff compared to what theywould find in their companies’ plants in Japan. This apparent narrowness of jobdefinitions in Britain compared to those Japan echoed the earlier contrasts onauthority among Japanese engineers. In Japan, the broader definition of rolesfacilitated overlapping responsibilities and a Japanese engineer saw the pitfallsof narrower British roles in design offices where problems in products andcomponents could arise because of gaps in design responsibilities and poorlyintegrated design:

We can have some communication problems. Among British engineers jobdefinitions are narrow. They tend to say it’s not my job. If we are thinking


about pins, pipes or brackets, we can have a gap in design in the UK. InJapan, responsibilities are more vague and overlap. Of course, both cancause problems—but they are different types of problem.

(Japanese design manager, Jukogyo company)

These comments need to be interpreted with care since Japanese engineersin the UK tended to have a much broader remit and sense of responsibilitythan they carried in Japan. For example, the Japanese engineers in productionwere associated with the development of all aspects of manufacturing andbuilding the relationships with approved supplier companies. For the Japaneseadvisory staff concerned with design, their involvement in the role of translatingdesigns from Japan rather than in carrying out original design work in Japanmeant less challenging (and hence less interesting) work and carried somecareer risks. However, a design engineer was quite sanguine about the unfoldingpattern of career opportunities with the commitment of companies toglobalisation strategies:

I didn’t learn much on the technical side in the UK. I learned somethingabout acceptable standards. But I learned a lot about management in adifferent culture. We have created a design centre now in the UK, so if Iwent now perhaps I could continue to learn more about design. But ifyou want to build a career to be number one in design, we have so manydesign centres in Japan. There should be a maximum length overseas fora designer because you begin to lose your touch. But I learned a lot aboutbuilding good relations with vendors. That’s very useful because we aregoing to have more global operations.

(Japanese design manager, Jukogyo company) For the Japanese engineers and managers, what is happening in the Japaneseplants and head office is a constant reference point, not only for their work inthe UK but also for their eventual return to Japan (Hamada 1992). However,engineers had an extra strand of communication in the enterprise unioncompared to the managers since engineers were still union members, and insome companies the unions took their responsibilities for overseas membersquite seriously and made direct contact and efforts to keep members updated.

Training and skill formation

Just as the survey revealed a variety of employment and training contexts forthe engineering staff in Japanese companies in the UK, so there are a variety oftraining contexts in which learning occurs.

The case studies were drawn from companies which had significant numbersof British and Japanese engineers and tended to be in the larger plants in termsof capital and labour employed. Among these case-study companies, the mainmedium of skill formation for the UK engineers is on-the-job training through


structured experience under the guidance of supervisors, often those in adviseror co-ordinator roles. Visits to Japan or other overseas plants provided anothersource of intensive learning. Visits to car plants in the US eased languageproblems and offered a work context and problems closer to those of the UKtransplant than those in the ‘mother plant’. For example, a Kuruma qualityassurance engineer saw more relevance for the British transplant in the Americanassembly plant’s inspection of supplier components compared to the confidenceexhibited towards long-term suppliers in Japan:

In Japan, I had a month and did a lot of technical training. Quite a lot ofthings I had done at university so it was like revision. A lot of thingswere related to problems of Kuruma in Japan. I had a week in [the US]plant. That was very similar to what we do here and things didn’t lose intranslation. Here we test every coil that comes in from the suppliers. InJapan, they don’t test coils. So we couldn’t learn about that in Japan. In[the US plant] they are still testing coils.

(British design engineer, Jukogyo company)

Among engineers, off-the-job courses had a rather limited role in training.Some engineers commented that the menu of courses were broadly directed toall staff (for example, courses on problem-solving or assertiveness training)and that technical courses were rather limited.

Communications and gatekeepers

At the more interpersonal level, some of the mutual irritations and frustrationsof American and Japanese engineers working in joint ventures in the UnitedStates have been traced to cultural factors (Lynn 1992). American engineersentered the relationships with popular images of Japanese engineers and theirorganisations as efficient and became puzzled and irritated when Japaneseengineers repeatedly asked for information which appeared to be irrelevantinformation. Ultimately, some American engineers concluded that ‘theefficiency of Japanese engineers’ had been largely mythology. On their side,Japanese engineers were frustrated by apparent American unwillingness to help.Lynn set these reactions in the areas of communication and decision-makingin their respective cultural contexts (Lynn 1992). For example, Japaneseengineers emerged from a ‘high context culture’ where the external environment,situation and non-verbal behaviour are crucial in creating and interpretingcommunications, and the practice of life-time employment reinforced therichness of interpretative cues in company communication. However, theseJapanese engineers were faced by American engineers from a ‘low contextculture’, with the opposite characteristics, who did not appreciate thedesperation with which the Japanese engineers were seeking further informationas cues to interpret communications and relationships. Lynn suggested thatmore sensitive cultural training would clarify expectations about communication


and decision-making. In a study of an Anglo-Japanese technology partnership,Lam put more weight on structural rather than cultural factors, demonstratinghow differences in British and Japanese management systems and workpractices in product development, communication and co-ordination, and skillformation undermined the adaptive strategies of the two companies and theirefforts to form integrated work teams (Lam 1995). In product development,the Japanese partner practised a more integrated approach compared to themore sequential approach of the British partner. Communication and co-ordination rested more on the human network developed among long-servingemployees whereas the British partner relied more heavily on formal writtendocumentation. Finally, Lam emphasised the different national patterns of skillformation and labour market structures from which the two partners drew theirengineers.

If Japanese companies work hard at communications in Japan, they mustwork doubly hard at them in their transplant operations. Different nationallanguages add a further complexity to the technological translation process.However, a head office personnel manager responsible for overseas assignmentsin Jukogyo, the heavy equipment company, noted that views about personalqualities necessary for a successful overseas assignment had been changing,with most weight now attached to cross-cultural skills:

We think that the most important elements are: first, character; second,high skills; third, language. We used to think that language was first, butnow we stress character. We mean having an open mind, someone whocan accept dealing with other people. Someone who doesn’t loseconfidence overseas.

(Japanese personnel manager, Jukogyo company)

While ‘openness’ in cross-cultural communication might be seen in headoffice as the main priority, language issues remain important sources ofdifficulty between some Japanese and British engineers. Some British engineersdevelop their personal strategies to ease communication—for example, byrelying heavily on written communication: ‘I prefer to write things down andthat gives Japanese engineers time to mull it over. Telephones calls can be anightmare with Japanese engineers’ (British design engineer, Terebi). Whilethe transplantation of proven production technologies and work organisationfrom one environment to another is complex in itself, attempts to add anindigenous creative facility to the transplant adds further levels of complexity.A great deal of effort has to be put into the creation of ‘gatekeeper roles’,people who monitor and facilitate information flows.

Programmes for the development of ‘gatekeepers’ among engineers recruitedin Britain involve longer assignments in Japan, typically one or two years andinclude language programmes. Two aspects often mentioned by the Britishengineers were: first, the importance of understanding design histories in theparent company and making contacts with company networks of engineers;


and second, the importance of the process of adapting design for a UK context,particularly to the different working relations with suppliers.

British engineers referred to puzzles and problems which they had withcompany designs in the UK plant. Often they and their colleagues would wonderwhy the Japanese engineers had not taken another solution. As one engineerput it, on arrival in the company’s R&D centre he learned about the variety ofalternative routes tried and the way that much of this knowledge remainedwithin the company as an oral history that could be readily tapped among thelifetime employees. They began to appreciate the painstaking and systematicbackground to current designs and could reassure UK staff that many potentialsolutions will have been tried. Moreover, learning the key figures in the R&Dcentre provided the British returnee with a stock of e-mail and fax numberswhom he could contact directly on behalf of UK colleagues. One of thesignificant issues in design was an appreciation of the differences inrelationships between assemblers and suppliers. Japanese designs had to beadapted so that they could be made with high levels of European content—inother words, so that they could be made from components that Europeansuppliers would be able and willing to supply. As a UK engineer in a businessequipment company explained:

Engineering drawings can be a terrible source of problems. Engineeringdrawings are a guide to what should be done. We consider them to be amaster plan. In Japan, they have a relationship with vendors that we don’thave. The vendor might be financially dependent on their company, eitherbecause they have financial links or because they do so much businesswith them. We just don’t have that kind of power in the UK. In the UK,we might only do 10 percent of the vendor’s business. Vendors in Japanwill be willing to spend much more on equipment or take changes inproducts, specifications and tolerances. Often, because of the closerelations, they will make changes without changing the drawing. We havegot design authority in this UK plant, and we can change drawings solong as we let the parent company know, but we don’t have their kind ofrelation with vendors.

(British design engineer, Denki company) A British mechanical engineer working in the design and development departmentof a television company in Japan echoed the earlier comments of the British engineerin Kuruma about the importance of understanding the indirect and implicit characterof a Japanese supervisor’s instructions:

You learn that if you are asked to go to look at a problem, then it meansgo and solve it. It doesn’t just mean look at it. It means go, investigateand gather a team to solve it.

(British engineer, Terebi company)


When the Japanese companies were transplanting the manufacturing process,they frequently had a template in a ‘mother plant’ in Japan which served as areference point and source of continuing communication and support. There isa growing folklore on the human resource aspects of the transplant process formanufacturing activity, from the role of the Japanese expatriate engineers tothe despatch of UK production supervisors to Japan for intensive training inthe production techniques in the ‘mother plant’ and affiliated companies. Thecar assembly companies and the electronics companies can often supplementthis process with visits to other overseas plants in English-speakingenvironments in the US or Singapore. While some engineers found these tripsbeneficial, others noted a preference for learning from the ‘mother’ (Japan)rather than the ‘daughter’ plants. Facilitating communication flows will becritical to the further deepening of inward investments in the transplants.

Some companies had established ‘social budgets’ to facilitate social activitiesoutside working hours. However, patterns of social contacts outside formalworking hours did not match those levels of socialising reported among theJapanese R&D workers in Chapter 6. This meant that one traditional channelof supervisory feedback on an engineer’s performance and career progresswas not readily available in the UK plant. Japanese managers did not find thatmore direct and explicit feedback came easily, as a Japanese Design andDevelopment manager explained:

Japanese managers don’t say ‘Great!’ We should make better use of theappraisal system. Managers should know what motivates UK staff. InJapan, people are motivated by salary, bonuses, rotation, their interest inthe projects, and so on. We have a lot of informal meetings so thatmanagers and engineers get a lot of information about what is going on.We can talk about things without risk. We tend to use ishin-denshin(telepathy or tacit understanding) and we don’t give explicit approval.

(Japanese Design and Development Manager, Denki equipmentcompany)

R&D: the ‘attached’ and the ‘independent’ R&D units

The establishment of Japanese overseas R&D has coincided with interest inthe globalisation strategies of multinational corporations and prompted somespeculation that Japanese companies might better integrate their R&Doperations than American and European counterparts who established theiroverseas R&D operations in an earlier era of internationalisation(Papanastassiou and Pearce 1994, 1995). In looking at this overseas R&D, it isimportant to distinguish inter-industry differences and differences between‘research’ and ‘development’. The electrical industry is responsible for theoverwhelming bulk of the overseas R&D expenditure and employment ofresearchers (Kiba 1996). There are inter-industry differences in location with


the bulk of this electrical industry overseas R&D located in north America,followed by Europe, with a relatively small proportion going to Asia (Kiba1996). There is a similar pattern in pharmaceuticals. However, the bulk ofthe vehicle-industry overseas R&D goes into Asia, followed by north Americaand Europe. In very impressionistic responses by head office to an evaluationquestion, there is a clear tendency to see strong advantages in conducting‘research’ overseas, but overseas ‘development’ is seen as weaker than thatconducted in Japan, reflecting views seen in Chapter 4 about the relativestrengths and weaknesses of foreign and Japanese universities in fundamentalscience (Kiba 1996). On the other hand, R&D managers are confident aboutthe strength of the tightly integrated networks, both internal and external tocompanies, which support innovative development in Japan.

Sensitive to the charges about screwdriver plants, JETRO has gatheredinformation on the development of R&D activities by Japanese companies,including both those R&D units established on factory sites (the ‘attached’units) and the independent units (the ‘independent’ units). The 1996 JETROSurvey noted that 28 R&D units in the UK have been established separatelyfrom any manufacturing activity and function as ‘independent’ units (JETRO1996). In his survey of 10 of the more prominent ‘independent’ R&D units,Cairncross noted not merely the deliberate organisational and physicalseparation of R&D from manufacturing activities in the UK, but that several ofthe companies had no manufacturing in the UK (Cairncross 1994). On theother hand, some companies planned for their ‘independent’ unit to become akey R&D element in an integrated European business strategy involving thefull complement of inter-linked business operations from R&D to manufactureand sales. One company used its UK-based R&D unit as a base for exploringBritish industry for a potential partner to establish a joint activity combiningtheir own production-engineering expertise and British high-technologyexpertise. The chequered experience of the joint venture appears to havepersuaded the Japanese partner to stay closer to core company skills andincremental innovation rather than try the large leap of radical innovationenvisaged through the joint venture.

By 1994, the ‘independent’ units were relatively small in size, typicallywith 15–20 staff. However, they were still recruiting and growing in size. Theyhad few British staff, but half had a Japanese director. Eight of the 10 companiesin the Cairncross study had located their R&D unit close to a British universitycampus (see Tables 7.6 and 7.7). Among several advantages this gave goodaccess to internationally recognised researchers as collaborators in the universitylaboratory and potential help in recruiting researchers to their own laboratoryactivity. For example, the Toshiba laboratory was quite explicitly set in theCavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University in order to associate with therenowned semi-conductor research in the host laboratory (Williams 1990, 244–5). The British Embassy noted that supporting a confidential collaborativeresearch programme at a British university or national institute is ‘a very cheapand cost-effective method of doing research’ (Salusbury 1995). For example,


it was estimated that a relatively modest outlay of 150,000 yen could secure apost-doctoral research assistant, supervision from a professor, and maintenanceof equipment and purchase of materials.

Table 7.6 Characteristics of Japanese R&D units in Europe

Source: Adapted from JETRO 1997

Table 7.7 Parent company industries of principal independent R&D centres in the UK

Source: Adapted from JETRO 1997


Various rationales for the location of these R&D units have been offered.Where companies are producing in the UK, they can portray their R&D unit asa further dimension of localisation, with locally designed products to satisfylocal consumer need. Even without local production, companies can point tothe need for information about local markets to enable speedy responses tocompetition for technological superiority or to the role of the local R&D unitin shortening lead times from R&D to commercialisation of products forEuropean markets.

Most companies report little difficulty in attracting applicants for their‘independent’ R&D units, indeed interviews suggest that they have beensurprised by the large numbers of applicants relative to places. However, onelaboratory determined to be the main R&D laboratory for the company’sEuropean operations regretted the relative paucity of applicants from outsidethe UK. Another concern for some of the laboratories is that the small size andlimited links with other company operations in Europe mean limited careerprospects. Here lies a central dilemma for the companies expressed in interviewsin the Tokyo head office—how far should they introduce foreign researchersto core company technologies when they might leave for careers in rivalcompanies? It is an anxiety felt quite sharply by Japanese senior managersaccustomed to the long-term employment system.

Conclusions

Using a variety of research methods, including surveys and case studies, I haveillustrated the complex processes for Japanese companies in building their R&Doperations in the context of a different ‘national innovation system’, particularlyin coming to terms with human resource management issues for high-levelscientific and engineering staff. There are several problems in upgradingtechnological capabilities, particularly problems in recruiting and retainingUK engineers with different experiences and expectations in careers, workorganisation and engineering management. My starting point was thecharacterisation of the recent growth in the numbers of overseas Japanesecorporate R&D establishments. As yet, the scale of Japanese R&D conductedoverseas appears small compared to the R&D efforts of US or Europeancorporations. This raised the question of whether this difference was simply amatter of timing or more properly a consequence of the structural features ofthe Japanese system of innovation. Using MITI data to analyse the determinantsof overseas R&D, Belderbos has concluded that the evidence of a Japanese lagcan be attributed largely to the relatively recent timing of internationalisationstrategies among Japanese firms, but this data does not support the argumentthat Japanese companies have a greater propensity to centralise R&D in Japan(Belderbos 1996).

My own question was somewhat different. I did not examine the determinantsof overseas R&D investment, the factors which shape the motivation to buildoverseas laboratories. I asked whether the social organisation of R&D in home


and host countries was different. Having identified some significant differencesin the organisation of the labour market for scientists and engineers, notablythe operation of the lifetime employment system in Japanese companies andthe greater use of external labour markets by British companies, I argued thatJapanese companies would face some particular difficulties in coming to termswith different labour markets and social institutions in host countries in whichthey invested. Thus, even if Japanese companies were prompted to overseasinvestment by the same factors as multinationals from the US or Europe,institutional features of home and host countries set problems which could atworst inhibit and at best slow down the rate of moves overseas. While thesurvey illustrated the relatively small numbers of scientists and engineers inmost manufacturing establishments, the case studies demonstrated the waycompanies grappled with problems stemming from differences in labour marketsand in the ‘taken-for-granted’ assumptions of Japanese and British engineers.Faced by problems ranging from labour turnover to salary determination, thecase-study-companies through trial-and-error learning adopted pragmaticpolicies and practices to resolve problems and develop their R&D activities.With hindsight, companies have made mistakes in policy and practice but haveendeavoured to learn from the process and make institutional adaptations. Thecase-study companies included: a company, determined to recruit freshgraduates uncontaminated by British industry and train them in Japan, whichabandoned the scheme when it found that these recruits were marginal in bothsettings and soon left; another company which organised effective trainingonly to lose staff to a competitor and which changed appraisal and pay policy;a company, keen to speed up localisation, which was chastened by the penaltiesfor excessive speed.

Surveys based on official statistics generally produce a freeze-frame of thedynamic processes in a sample of transplants where some companies may beexpanding and some contracting operations. When Toshiba ended its jointventure with Rank and took sole responsibility for TV assembly in Plymouth,the company was transformed. In place of Rank-Toshiba, with four factoriesproducing 62 models with 2,600 people represented by seven unions, Toshibarelaunched the TV plant as a single company operation with one factoryproducing eight models with 300 people represented by one union. Such baldaccounts of the new company underlie images of the ‘screwdriver plant’.Accounts of the new plant contrast sharply with Fruin’s description of‘knowledge works’ in his portrayal of Toshiba’s Yanagicho plant (Fruin 1997).Such factories are marked by their formidable range of products and productinnovations resting on high levels of knowledge and skill in the workforcewhich Fruin describes as very site- and person-specific, nurtured by the lifetimeemployment system, quality circles and rotation policies. These institutionalisedfeatures of human resource development in Japan, Fruin suggests, lie behindthe difficulties in making successful transplants. However, Toshiba has sincegroomed two plants in Plymouth, by adding design and development to the TVplant and by adding an air-conditioning plant, to employ over 1,000 people.


The focus on the role of engineers in transplants has shed some furtherlight on the debates about the scale of investment, character of themanufacturing and skill levels in transplants (Williams et al 1992; Oliverand Wilkinson 1992; Munday et al 1992). The ‘Engineering Careers’ surveydemonstrates that many Japanese companies are actively engaged in upgradingtheir operations despite the background of difficult trading conditions inEuropean markets in the 1990s, the problems of recession facing their parentcompanies in domestic markets and the fluctuations of the yen. Although theparent company, Nissan, has been the subject of much anxious debate in Japan,the transplant, Nissan Manufacturing (UK), continues to earn high praise forits efficiency. While the high yen of the early 1990s caused problems in marketsand accelerated moves to offshore production, the fall of the yen in recentyears has led to reassessments of overseas compared to domestic manufactureand squeezed company resources available for overseas investment. However,it is more likely that these currency and resource effects will have greater impacton Japanese investment in east Asia than in Europe. It is the investment in eastAsia which is more likely to appear marginal than the investment in Europe,particularly following the autumn 1997 financial turmoil in east Asia and lossof markets. Despite the sanguine views of the Cardiff-based researchers aboutJapanese investment in Wales, some surveys of the TV-company transplantsemphasise the limited skill levels of the assembly operations (Danford 1998).However, this is partly a constraint set by the education and labour marketswhich supply insufficient volumes of potential recruits and inhibit thedevelopment of high technical skills in the workplace (Sako 1994; Delbridgeet al 1998).

The investigation of human resource management issues in R&Ddemonstrates that the issues in technological upgrading are complex and thatsuccessful solutions to the early phases of setting up overseas assemblyoperations can leave a legacy of complications for later technological upgrading.For example, the location of assembly plants in areas with plentiful supplies ofunskilled labour can inhibit the recruitment of engineers and scientists. Thelocation of ‘independent’ research laboratories on university campusesillustrates a quite different path of investment and solution to problems ofattracting high-calibre technical staff. Even when localisation policies arepursued in development laboratories, the operation of the more open labourmarket can set the programme back by two years through the loss of keypersonnel. The snapshot of investment available through surveys can understatethe problems and solutions in the strategic evolution of Japanese investment,which are better explored through case studies and repeat visits.

Going beyond the checklist of Japanese features used in surveys of‘Japanisation’, the case studies and interviews with British and Japaneseengineers revealed that not just cultural factors can impede the processes oftechnological upgrading. Studies of manufacturing operations and industrialrelations suggest that the policies and practices adopted in transplants are farfrom the closely integrated forms identified in Figure 7.1 (McCormick and


McCormick 1996). It has proved relatively easy to establish assemblyproduction using local labour under the guidance of Japanese engineers.However, fuller manufacture under local management requires the building oftrust between engineers and the development of a local engineering capacity.Broadening role responsibilities, sharing and disseminating technicalinformation and decision-making were all areas governed by different culturalpatterns which required negotiation and accommodation. Fujino has likenedglobalisation in Japanese overseas operations to a two-track process, whereproduction has proceeded quite rapidly but administration has lagged behind(Fujino 1998). The main difficulties in the administration area lie in thesocialisation of Japanese managers into three principles underlying decision-making—‘hokoku’ (to inform), ‘renkaku’ (to report), and ‘sodan’ (to consult)—and the difficulties in establishing working relations with local managersoperating on different principles. Within the lifetime employment system andthe domestic environment, ‘ho-ren-so’ becomes second nature to Japanesemanagers but taxes British colleagues in transplants. While of doubtful valuein the analysis of manufacturing, the term ‘Japanisation’ has even less relevanceto the examination of R&D operations. The couplet of ‘R&D’ should be treatedwith considerable caution and the diverse range of activities covered should beunpacked. The bulk of R&D activity in the UK is ‘downstream’, that is moreakin to development work directed to applications and local adaptations, ratherthan ‘upstream’, in the sense of basic or fundamental research. While Japanesecompanies might have confidence in the competitive strength of developmentwork in Japan, it is clear that the types of R&D undertaken in Japan arechanging, that companies are investing in more longer-term research, that thereis much debate about the need for new institutional relationships in Japan, andthere is much less sense of a Japanese model of ‘best practice’ ready for exportin R&D compared to manufacturing. It is apparent that Japanese companiesare using overseas R&D, not only to tap into scarce knowledge and skill, butalso to gain closer experience of other national systems of innovation and tolearn more about the conduct and organisation of fundamental research.

With echoes of earlier discussions of ‘late development effects’ for Japanesecompanies, Papanastassiou and Pearce have speculated that the coincidence ofthe relatively late entry of Japanese companies to overseas R&D and theincreased attention world-wide to the globalisation of business could meanthat Japanese companies will develop a pattern of overseas policies and practicesmore closely attuned to the requirements of global business than companiesfrom other countries which set up overseas R&D in earlier phases ofinternational trade and manufacture (Papanastassiou and Pearce 1994, 1994).Given the age of the R&D facilities, this must remain a hypothesis for furtherexamination. As yet, the development laboratories rarely practise among theirUK staff anything akin to the rotation of Japanese personnel. While there mightbe short business trips to other European facilities or longer-term assignmentsin Japan, there are few attempts to build the integration of activities throughflows of people which the companies practise for their Japanese staff in Japan


and for their expatriates in the UK. The available evidence of control systemsand linkages to the UK science and technology infrastructure suggest limitedcontacts.

While interviews with engineers raised many of the difficulties in workingacross different engineering and national cultures, the engineers encounteredwere broadly positive about their employment in Japanese-owned R&Dfacilities. Whatever the variations of plant size within the UK samples, whetherby industry, by mode of entry into the UK (acquisition or ‘greenfield site’), orby date of establishment in the UK, the scale of operations are typically smallby comparison with parent company operations in Japan. In consequence, thepatterns of recruitment for the British and Japanese engineers are very different.Very few of the transplants are engaged in regular recruitment of scientists orengineers from British universities or in the employment of large numbers ofscientists or engineers. Plant size and anticipated career opportunities mightdepress the pool of job applicants. Yet two factors behind several of the positivecomments from UK engineers were the fact of employment, given the shrinkagein the scale of UK manufacturing industry, and the reputation of Japanesemanufacturing technology. Both were viewed as very positive benefits for theBritish scientists and engineers met in our case studies.

Parallel to the debate about the host country benefits of inward investmentin manufacturing industry, there has been some debate about the establishmentof R&D units by inward investors. Some researchers have identified therecruitment of skilled scientists and engineers by overseas-based multinationalcompanies in Britain with an internal ‘brain drain’. Noting that themultinationals are attracted to the UK by a strong university system, relativelylow pay rates for scientists and engineers, and the international character ofthe English language, these researchers fear the overseas companies exploitunder-priced UK technological resources and take the results of researchoverseas (Turney 1989). Much of this critique has been directed at Americanrather than Japanese companies and at the fundamental rather than appliedR&D units. A more positive view of the recruitment of UK engineers byJapanese companies is voiced understandably by spokespersons for Japaneseindustry. Minato Shungo, on behalf of the UK branch of the ElectronicsIndustries Association of Japan (EIAJ), drew attention to the ease with whichengineers could be recruited in the UK, largely because the contraction of theUK manufacturing industry (Large 1990). He noted that although Germanyproduced more professional engineers, it had a large manufacturing sectorcompeting more vigorously for their services. In addition to our surveyconfirmation that companies had been able to recruit unemployed engineers,we interviewed several engineers in the case-study companies who beenrecruited out of unemployment. Clearly there is a strong political impulseintertwined with the economic strand to the location of R&D, evident in theprompting of the UK government to persuade Japanese electronics companiesmanufacturing in Britain to set up local R&D activities (Skapinker 1990).


Two related points which should not be underestimated in looking at JapaneseR&D in the UK are the need for scientific and engineering success and thelength of time needed to build a viable R&D establishment. Official surveysdo not give much data on the scale of investments or numbers of R&D staff.Even where the function of an establishment is claimed to be ‘basic research’,a staff of only two or three engineers could indicate little more than a ‘listeningpost’ or ‘window on the West’. A British Embassy report on Japanese R&D inthe UK noted a median staffing figure of 28, including support staff. The evidentstrengths of institutional relations identified in analyses of the Japanese nationalsystem will add weight to any tendencies to rely on R&D in Japan and restrictthe overseas laboratory role to that of a listening post. Transcending this rolewill require strong championship from corporate head office and centrallaboratories and the ability to attract able R&D staff within the UK. Yet attractinghigh-calibre R&D staff and giving them scope is likely to depend on a proventrack record of success. There is something of a chicken-and-egg relationshipabout the need for success and the development of overseas R&D, particularlyfor Japanese companies. Twenty companies claim specific successes from UK-based R&D already, but the strongest proof of their ability to cope with thehuman resource management issues and enter the virtuous circle of buildingviable R&D activities will come with the design and development of majorbusinesses based on their UK R&D (Lynch and Sims-Williams 1996).

Notes

1 Tanaka is not a real name.2 The Engineering Careers Survey was undertaken in collaboration with David Cairncross, Brian

McCormick, Alan Turner and Yumi Hanstock.3 Qualifications were outlined in Chapter 2.

8 Conclusions

Comparisons and contrastsbetween engineers

‘Japan’s continuing success is both inevitable and inexorable unless her competitors canlearn the simple lessons explained in this book…. What is so extraordinary is that theWest has made such little real effort to understand the reasons for Japan’s success.’

(Lorriman and Kenjo 1994:6–7)

Introduction

The aim of this final chapter is to pull together some to the threads of what wehave learned about Japanese and British engineers through comparative study,highlighting both the diversity of approaches to comparisons of Japaneseengineers with those in other industrial countries and the evidence ofconsiderable diversity among engineers in both countries. Two importantbenefits from the accumulated attempts by social scientists to undertake seriousand systematic comparative research on engineers in Japan and other industrialsocieties have been: first, a greater appreciation that the way in which engineersare educated, trained and employed in one society can provide a critical mirrorin which to view social arrangements in another society; and second, that arealisation that one should treat populist accounts of engineers and their societieswith a good deal of scepticism. Often, we have seen attractive images ofJapanese engineers and engineering conjured out of secondary sources ratherthan from direct research or matched samples of engineers. All too often, theseimages have turned out to be little more than wishful thinking, projecting on toJapanese engineers and engineering those characteristics, achievements andrewards which reformers believe are necessary to bring about a British economicrenaissance in manufacturing industry. It was a curious kind of thinkingbackwards from effects to supposed causes which ran along the following lines:here are the kinds of engineers, their rewards and social standing necessary tobring about manufacturing success in Britain; Japan is successful inmanufacturing; therefore, Japanese engineers must have these characteristicsand social rewards. The proposed reforms for the education, training andemployment of engineers might well have been plausible and effective on theirown terms in a British context. But they could not be legitimated by reference

Conclusions 259

to Japan. Moreover, this process was likely to obscure who engineers are andhow they work in Japan. If there are attractive strengths in Japanese engineersand engineering, they are more likely to be found by more direct observationand by close comparison of engineers, and by setting education, training andemployment of engineers in their wider national context.

We can readily understand why authors, such as Lorriman and Kenjo quotedabove, whose prime focus is on policy matters and who believe that they havea singular insight into Japanese economic success, are scornful of past effortsto understand Japan and add a dash of hyperbole to their own recipe foreconomic success. However, there have been numerous missions and schemesfrom Britain to learn about Japanese engineers and engineering, ranging fromthe efforts of individual companies (such as those of the auto component makerLucas) to schemes organised by trade associations and government departments,and the Engineers to Japan Scheme operated by the Royal Fellowship ofEngineering on behalf of the Department of Industry (DTI). Yet, howeverlaudable the insights garnered in the 1980s, the notion of Japan’s ‘inevitableand inexorable’ success was wearing more than a little thin by 1994. The endof the ‘bubble economy’, followed by the deepest and most traumatic recessionof the post-war years which had started in 1991, had shaken such simple faith.

The diverse purposes underlying research have generated considerablevariety in the types of inquiry and comparisons undertaken. The purposes havebeen varied (from academic curiosity to policy guidance), the methods havebeen varied (from interview to mailed questionnaire), the sampling ofrespondents has been varied (from educational outflows to employment inflows)and the industrial sectors have been varied (although electronics companiesand electronic engineers have been prominent in most of the Japan-relatedcomparisons). Usually, two-country comparisons have formed the base of moststudies. The theoretical focus in the studies has varied, but much of the attentionhas been focused on contrasts drawn between the different types of labourmarkets—internal labour markets and external labour markets—and the degreeto which industrial companies in Japan and another country rely on eitherpredominantly external or internal labour markets and the correlates orconsequences of these types of markets for education, training, careers, and soon. These attempts to outline the contrasts between two types of labour marketare but one example of a more general process of typology construction inscience, and are like the classification preoccupation of natural history.However, good classificatory schemes should not be ends in themselves, butshould be judged for their fruitfulness and we shall examine typologies ofengineers for their adequacy in description and generation of explanation.

The following sections summarise what we have learned through comparativestudy about: the processes through which Japanese and British engineers jointhe ranks of professional engineers; attempts to construct models of theproduction and organisation of engineers; the diversity of methods forcomparing engineers; and the diversity revealed among both engineers and thecontexts in which they work.


Becoming professional engineers

The acquisition of ‘professionalism’, the mark and qualities of a professional,is a lengthy process, but one which varies across company and nation dependingon the organisation of recruitment, the development of competence and themanagement of careers. In this section, we can summarise some of thesignificant similarities and differences which have emerged in comparisons ofJapan and Britain.

Recruitment

In Japan and Britain, the employment of professional-level engineers has beendominated by large companies and new entrants are typically recruited afteruniversity study (Chapters 3 and 5). However, the operation of the long-termemployment pattern in Japan has meant that the large Japanese companies havetried to maintain a regular annual recruitment, irrespective of short-term orspecific requirements, because the employment system has put a premium onnew graduates for internal grooming to management posts. The new graduatescome to define their career progress in terms relative to the experience of othermembers of their year group of entry. The new graduates are subject to thesame starting date of employment, the same procedures, the same starting salary.Unlike their British counterparts, they have little scope to negotiate individualconditions. There is no direct relation between initial training and the first taskassignment. The broad consensus about the respective roles of university andemployer has meant that universities have concentrated on a very academiccurriculum while companies have put a strong emphasis on the practical trainingwhich starts with employment. In Britain, there have been many more variedpathways into engineering, but the large shift to concentrate entry throughuniversities which ended the traditional ratio of HNC to degree engineers ledto pressures for curriculum reform to incorporate more training elements intothe university curriculum and efforts to restructure a new ratio of elite tomainstream engineers around the M.Eng/B.Eng degrees. Although the largeBritish companies have developed internal labour markets, their ready accessto the labour market for mid-career recruits has meant that long-term needshave been strongly influenced by the need to fill defined jobs in the short run.These differences in employment principles have meant that the centralpersonnel department has a much more influential role in the Japanese companyand its recruitment of engineers. Our surveys of entry to industrial R&D(Chapters 4, 5 and 6) confirmed that Japanese companies have been moving tomake the master’s degree the main professional entry-level qualification toR&D functions, while British companies maintain a wide variety of entry pointsand a wider spectrum of qualification levels, including a much higher proportionof university-trained doctorate-level entrants.

Conclusions 261

Entry into working life

In neither Japan nor Britain are engineers considered ‘finished products’ onleaving the educational system. However, the larger element of practical workin the British first degree and the large element of research training in theBritish science or engineering education means that British employers expecta quicker return on their investment and British engineers consider themselves‘fully fledged’ sooner after graduation than Japanese employers and engineersdo.

Beyond induction, on-the-job training provides the main channel of skillformation. In the Japanese companies, these early work experiences are moreclearly programmed with the support and monitoring of the central personneldepartment, whereas responsibilities for British engineers are typically devolvedto their employing department. For many Japanese manufacturing companies,those new entrants destined for manufacturing or development departmentstook assignments bringing close contact with manual workers and technicalsupport staff. In addition to developing technical skills, there is considerableemphasis on building shared corporate identities and minimising internaldifferentiation between engineers and the blue-collar staff, using a number ofdevices which range from common company uniforms to narrow salarydifferentials. Tasks are progressively enlarged in line with developingprofessional competence.

Career progression and mobility

The main reference points for Japanese engineers to check career progresshave been comparisons with other members of their entry cohort to a company.They have had relatively little incentive or scope to check the external labourmarket, although the large directories of the Recruit Company invite engineersin a career ‘flat spot’ to test the external labour market. For the most part theywill know that they will travel more or less in step through the early years oftheir company careers until the 35 to 40 age range, whereas British engineersare more rapidly tried and tested and channelled into different career paths.Typically, the first phase of the Japanese engineer’s career has emphasised theengineer’s role in a learning organisation and the contributions which engineersmake to the stock of corporate knowledge and skill. The second phase hasbeen concerned with the passage into and through the layers of the managerialhierarchy. Historically, the pool of engineering graduates has been an importantsource from which the future incumbents of the management hierarchy havebeen drawn in manufacturing companies. This traditional pattern is beingchallenged. Two blades have been cutting away at the relative prospects formanagerial promotion. On the one hand, the massive recruitment of engineersin the late 1980s increased the number of rivals while slower economic growthat home and abroad in the 1990s has reduced the rate of growth of managerialopenings. On the other hand, the growth of R&D expenditure and the demand


for specialists has opened the possibilities for careers as specialists such astechnical ladders in R&D, and companies have been exploring the implicationsof more diversified professional career paths for engineers.

Organisational competence and skills

The marked contrasts between Japanese and British R&D staff estimates of theage at which they became ‘fully fledged’ provided vivid evidence of the viewthat skills and recognition for the Japanese engineer are built patiently over alengthy period of time. Taking up the role of a learner, the Japanese engineersbecome immersed in training in the proficiencies and tasks covered collectivelyby the work groups to which they belong. The main priorities for their contributionto their groups, and the main criteria by which they will be judged, lie inguaranteeing collective succession rather than pushing out on bold strokes ofcreativity or technical risk. Lanciano and Nohara emphasise the acquisition of‘production intelligence’ and the ‘building of complementary social relationswith other categories of workers’ as two major ingredients of the organisationalsocialisation of Japanese engineers (Lanciano and Nohara 1993:4). Earlierchapters have demonstrated that much of the learning experience has beenconcerned within the organisational context of engineering, with becoming‘corporate salarymen’. ‘Production intelligence’ was developed by addingempirical and tacit knowledge to the engineers’ theoretical knowledge gained atuniversity. From the company president’s address to the annual graduate intakeat induction to the assignments on rotation, there is a great deal of emphasis onhow the company works and on how the successful product lines have beendeveloped and taken into the market. The strength of this tradition in engineeringformation was evident in British engineers’ admiration of the product knowledgeof their Japanese mentors in the transplants in the UK and in the comments ofthose British engineers who had extended placements in their own company’slaboratories and plants in Japan (Chapter 7). The complementarity of the differentcategories of technical labour are evident in the company emphases on commoncompany membership, the overlapping of skills, and the comments of Japaneseengineers about the narrowness of conceptions of engineering which they foundamong British engineers. The traditional patterns of professional developmentfor engineers in Japan have been associated with clear proficiencies for individualengineers—for example, the facility with which engineers can take products fromprototype to market— and for companies—for example, in the industrial strengthbuilt on mechanical, electrical and electronic engineering in the mass productionindustries.

However, fears that the traditional approach to the education and training ofengineers in Japan will impede effectively meeting future company needs arereadily apparent, evident in discussions of science education (Chapter 2),debates on personnel management for R&D staff and in survey responses ofR&D staff themselves (Chapters 5 and 6). The thread of emphasis on conformitywhich runs through the educational system and professional socialisation has

Conclusions 263

come to be increasingly seen as a possible impediment to that originality andcreativity judged necessary for more radical innovation in new industries.

Models of the organisation and production of technicallabour

Collaborative and comparative research based on extensive data collection withmatched samples is time-consuming and expensive. However, summary reviewsbased on a common agenda can provide an alternative route for studies concernedmore with analytical frameworks and the development of typologies of nationalsystems for the organisation and production of technical labour. Meiksins andSmith took this route to one of the most ambitious attempts to provide acomprehensive conceptual framework for the comparative study of engineersand engineering work. Drawing on their own empirical studies of engineers inthe US and Britain and secondary source material on engineers in several otherindustrial societies (France, Germany, Sweden and Japan), these sociologistsdeveloped a typology of the production and organisation of technical work inindustrial capitalism. Their ultimate aim was to use their classification of nationaldifferences among engineers to examine the prospects for the transfer of ‘bestpractice’ engineering across national boundaries (Meiksins and Smith 1996).For example, if Japan is widely seen as the source of ‘best practice’ manufacturing,will the principles and practices of manufacturing technology developed in Japanbecome adopted world-wide, despite those national differences?

The first step in their approach was to construct some ideal types of theorganisation of technical work, based on four central dimensions covering: • the principal mode of recruitment to technical work, in particular the relative

importance of formal educational qualifications in engineering formation;• the status of technical workers, in particular where technical workers fit in

the division of labour between management and manual labour; the characterof the labour market for technical labour, in particular whether the employingorganisations tend to rely on a restricted number of entry points to theorganisation after formal education and subsequent recruitment through aninternal labour market or whether employers use both internal and externallabour markets to meet their requirements for technical labour; and

• the organisational forms typically chosen by engineers to represent theirinterests, in particular whether they form professional institutions with studyand qualification functions or whether they join labour unions to bargainwith employers.

Meiksins and Smith then identified four principal ways of combining these

dimensions: in effect, four distinctive types or models for producing andorganising technical labour (the four types are summarised in Table 8.1, adaptedfrom Meiksins and Smith):


• The craft type, where recruitment rests largely on entry to an apprenticeshipand pupillage by school-leavers, where the status of technical workers isclose to that of manual workers, where employers will use both internal andexternal labour markets, and where technical workers will form labour unionswith a character similar to those of other craft workers.

• The managerial type, where formal education at university level assumesmore importance in recruitment, where technical workers take up a statusamong the managerial grades of employee, where employers again use bothinternal and external labour markets to secure staff, and where technicalworkers form professional institutions, albeit with weak attachments.

• The estate type, where recruitment to a graded hierarchy of technicaloccupations is based on performance in a matching hierarchy of technicalqualifications, where the fine grading in these hierarchies makes for a lessdichotomous set of identifications found in the ‘craft’ or ‘managerial types’and gives some credence to the notion of a ‘third force’ in the professions,where employers’ use of either internal or external labour markets dependson the positions in the hierarchy under consideration, and whererepresentative bodies run the full gamut with higher-level technical workersmore prominent in professional institutions and manual workers moreprominent in labour unions.

• The company-centred type, where recruitment is heavily shaped by formaleducation, especially university-level study, where there is no sharpdifferentiation from either management or manual workers, where employersrely predominantly on internal labour markets, and where representativeorganisations tend to be built around common interests in the employingorganisation and are of an enterprise union type.

Meiksins and Smith are careful to underline the strengths and weaknesses

of this ‘ideal type’ analysis. The types are abstractions, drawn ascharacterisations from historical experience but unlikely to be found in thispure form in any country. Their prime purpose is to serve as analytical tools tosharpen discussion of particular countries, and ‘ideal’ derives from theidealisation in a pure form rather than any sense of the desirable. Each of thetypes can reveal similarities on some dimensions and differences on others, forexample, the ‘craft’ and the ‘managerial’ types emphasise the sharpdifferentiation between management and labour, whereas the ‘estate’ and‘company-centred’ types soften these distinctions. On the other hand, forMeiksins and Smith, the ‘craft’ and the ‘company-centred’ types share acommon emphasis on unionism as a form of representation for technicalworkers, whereas the ‘managerial’ and ‘estate’ types are more likely to generateprofessional institutions among the engineering grades of technical workers.Although any given country might exhibit a mixed type, the merits of theapproach should lie in highlighting central features and in illustrating thecorrelates of social and technological change with shifts between types.

Conclusions 265

While this bold approach by Meiksins and Smith provides a useful frameworkfor comparison, the typologies could benefit from more refinement—forexample, ambiguities and problems emerge in the ‘status’ and ‘organisationalform’ dimensions. Inevitably summary tables risk some oversimplification, butTable 8.1 is inconsistent in the use of ‘status’ across the four types. The ‘status’dimension appears to bundle together relative economic reward, social prestigeand authority at the organisational level, to incorporate both the observer’sand the technical workers’ view of their social position, and to aim for a notionof central tendency in a sample of engineers. Yet this heroic compression isgiven uneven treatment across the four typologies of the production andorganisation of technical labour. While the ‘status’ of ‘technical labour’ is judgedto be close to manual labour in the ‘craft’ type and close to management in the‘managerial’ type, ‘technical labour’ is only shown to have contact with bothmanagement and manual labour in the ‘company-oriented’ type. It is a truismthat technical workers have some kind of interaction with both managementand manual labour in each of the models if an enterprise is to function at all,but the purpose of this dimension was presumably to facilitate a qualitativemeasure of the character of those interactions in terms of the tensions inherentin capital-labour relations in industrial capitalism. Thus while Meiksins andSmith indicate how they think that tension is usually resolved in the ‘craft’ and‘managerial’ models, they leave unclear the likely outcomes in the company-centred model.

The ‘organisational form’ dimension has another problem in an undulyethnocentric interpretation of the available forms of organisation which

Table 8.1 Models for the production and organisation of technical labour

Source: Adapted from Meiksins and Smith 1996:237


technical labour might adopt. The polarisation which Meiksins and Smith seebetween the adoption of either labour unions or professional institutions torepresent the interests of engineers seems to be derived too strongly from Britishexperience to provide general categories for international comparison. InBritain, professional institutions have had an important impact on the controlof numbers through their role in granting qualifications and this can be likenedto the role of craft unions in controlling entry numbers through apprenticeships.On the other hand, while craft unions have engaged in collective bargainingwith employers, professional institutions have emphasised individual mobility,leaving their members to gauge their own progress against salary surveys. Thistends to leave British engineers with the dilemma of whether to conceive oftheir material advance in collective terms and join a labour union or in individualterms and join a professional association. Thus, the polarisation between unionsand professional institutions in the ‘organisational form’ dimension might reflectfairly on the ‘craft’ model and earlier British experience (save in the 1970swhen increasing numbers of public-sector engineers added union membershipto their professional association membership), yet it does not necessarily reflecteither the logical possibilities in other models or the historical experience inother countries. Where professional institutions have no qualification functionand confine themselves to promoting study functions, there can be a clearerdivision of labour between professional institutions and labour unions and theyneed not pose mutually exclusive choices or dilemmas for engineers. In the‘company-centred’ type, where employers promote a co-operative form ofenterprise unionism, there is an even greater likelihood of dual membershipsfor technical workers in professional institutions and labour unions.

Meiksins and Smith illustrate the value of their ideal types or models of theproduction and organisation of technical workers by linking them to severalnational accounts of engineering formation. Again emphasising that anyparticular country is unlikely to be a straightforward manifestation of one ofthe models, Meiksins and Smith demonstrate the importance of the ‘craft’ modelin Britain’s pioneering stages of industrialisation, the significance of the‘managerial’ model in the US, the influence of ‘estate’ models in continentalEuropean countries, such as Germany and France, and the emphasis on the‘company-centred’ model in Japan. For Meiksins and Smith, these evidentdifferences in national patterns should be understood historically and reflectthe timing of industrialisation in each of the countries. They reject the notionthat the different modes of engineering formation might be simply quixoticchoices from a menu of equally viable options for different ways of producingengineers. With the emergence of the different types reflecting the differenttiming of industrialisation in each country, Britain, the pioneer industrialiser,adopted the ‘craft’ model, whereas the later industrialisers in continental Europeand the US adopted ‘estate’ and the ‘managerial’ models. Japan, an even laterindustrialiser in the era of increasingly important large corporations, adoptedthe ‘company-centred’ model. While emphasising that factors operating in theformative stage of industrialisation have enduring effects on the production

Conclusions 267

and organisation of engineers, Meiksins and Smith briefly sketched some ofthe dynamics of change in the various contemporary national systems. However,it was the dead weight of history rather than any dynamic for change whichSmith and Whalley stressed in looking at Britain:

…British engineering remains weakly structured, highly contested, andunlikely to be radically transformed in the near future. A conclusion thatwould not have been radically different had it been made at any timeduring the previous century.

(Smith and Whalley 1996:56)

This conclusion has drawn sharp rebuke from some reviewers who haveseen positive developments in the moves towards an all-graduate professionled by an increasingly effective Engineering Council (Glover and Tracey 1997:765–6). In the more comparative essay, Meiksins and Smith conceded thatBritain’s ‘craft’ model has become anachronistic with the increasing complexityof technological development, and they noted the efforts of professionalengineering institutions ‘to construct estate-type hierarchies for technical labour,with the creation of chartered engineer, technician engineer and engineeringtechnician categories’ (Meiksins and Smith 1996:250). Thus a developmentalpath from the ‘craft’ model towards an ‘estate’ model provides one scenariofor Britain. Although the more recent proposals from British professionalinstitutions (outlined in Chapter 2) for redrawing the lines around degree studiesand entry to professional institution membership would be consistent with thistrend, my own expectation is that capitalist enterprises will continue to providethe main dynamic for future developments, suggesting that the future is morelikely to lie with moves towards the ‘managerial’ model. Support for this trendlies in two kinds of evidence: first, there is the extent to which management inmanufacturing industry is dominated by engineers; second, there is the evidencethat increasing numbers of Britain’s professional engineers report themselvesin managerial positions, while decreasing numbers are members of trade unions(Barry, Bosworth and Wilson 1997; Engineering Council 1997). This does notmean convergence with American patterns, for the historical legacy of narrowlytechnical conceptions of engineering fostered within Britain’s professionalengineering institutions have inhibited the incorporation of managerial elementsinto engineering education and a more expansive role for engineers inmanagement beyond manufacturing industry. In 1996, Meiksins and Smithconcluded that the ‘company-centred’ model of Japan seemed to be the moststable and harmonious of the four models, enjoying hegemony too, despite theconsiderable challenges of short-term recession and long-term structural change(Meiksins and Smith 1996:280). My own argument has been that Japan willtake only modest steps towards the ‘managerial’ model in their domesticoperations. Insofar as the financial underpinnings can be secured, companiesare committed to the maintenance of the broad outlines of long-term


employment for a core of regular workers and increases in mid-careerrecruitment are more likely to be at the margins.

In addition to exploring the dynamics of change in systems, Meiksins andSmith use their typology to explore the role of engineers in the production anddissemination of engineering ideas, especially ideas of ‘best practice’production. On the one hand, they argue that the different national contextswill prove congenial to distinctive national preoccupations for engineers. Forexample, the sharp differentiation of French engineers from the world of blue-collar workers engenders an enthusiasm for design while the intimate links ofJapanese engineers with production encourages attention to productionprocesses. Thus, the nature of engineering ideas are specific to the particularproblems and contexts in which engineers are produced and in the ways inwhich they are organised. On the other side, these national contexts pose barriersfor the dissemination of engineering ideas from one country to another. Theprescriptions for production processes generated by the American engineer,F.W.Taylor, designer of Scientific Management around the turn of the century,have been contrasted with the Japanese engineer, Taichi Ohno, designer of theToyota Production System in the 1950s. The characterisation of their ideas andtheir impact have been hotly contested. Meiksins and Smith pick their waythrough these controversies to argue that since engineers produce solutions tospecific problems their ideas are always likely to be considerably modifiedwhen applied to production problems in a different context. Thus, they argueagainst the notions ‘of cultural-free production systems’ which can be universalsolutions to production in different countries and against ‘technologicalimperatives’ which are driving increasing convergence in the social organisationof production across societies (Meiksins and Smith 1996:269–72).

The Meiksins and Smith typology will provide a useful starting point forfuture comparative studies. Moreover, they have demonstrated that it is notsimply an exercise in typology construction for its own sake but can be used togenerate hypotheses for investigation. In Table 8.2, I have recast the originalMeiksins and Smith models in order to distinguish in recruitment between thetwo aspects of formal education and in-company training, since in somecountries emphasis is put on one rather than the other, whereas in other countriesboth may be important. This issue recalls Chapter 1 and the historical debatesin Britain about the reform of the craft model, and whether its replacementshould take the form of incorporating ‘training’ into formal education on thecontinental European model. In Chapter 1, we saw that this issue was presentaround the turn of the century, with some envious eyes on Japan, and that itreappeared in the 1980s. Similarly, I have distinguished between two aspectsof the status dimension of the original Meiksins-Smith model into socialdifferentiation from management and from blue-collar manual workers. Thisenables a clearer delineation of the managerial and company-centred modelsand the panoply of devices which have been used by Japanese companies totry to bridge the status divide between engineers and blue-collar workers inthe latter model. Finally, career mobility is added as another dimension to the

Conclusions 269

labour market dimension of recruitment in Table 8.2, since there has been suchstrong emphasis on retention as well as recruitment in the company-centredmodel. Many features of the employment system in Japan have flowed fromcompany commitment to the lifetime employment system (Chapter 3).

Conclusions: diverse comparisons and diverse engineers

The policy orientation of comparative studies has been a constant thread runningthrough this account of the production and organisation of engineers. The beliefthat adequate supplies of well-educated, well-trained and well-motivatedengineers are deployed and utilised effectively in manufacturing industry hasunderlain the curiosity of social scientists, the sponsorship of projects bygovernment departments and the co-operation of companies with researchers.Of course, the projects on which I have drawn range widely across the spectrumwhich runs from the theoretical and curiosity-driven research to those projectsmore explicitly designed to answer questions posed by issues of public orcorporate policy. Yet even studies sharing a common policy focus can differsignificantly in their links to the policy process and the uses to which theresearch is subsequently put. The International Research Group on R&DManagement study provided striking contrasts in the location of support forand subsequent uses of research reports in Japan and the US.

The Japanese team gained support for the Japanese surveys from the JapanProductivity Centre (JPC) and enlisted additional team members from theresearch departments of JPC and the Japan Institute of Labour, a research arm

Table 8.2 Dimensions of the production and organisation of engineers

Source: Developed from Meiksins and Smith 1996:237


of the Japanese Ministry of Labour. JPC was established in the 1950s as atripartite body of government, companies and labour established in the aftermathof the defeat of the Left unions and the reconstruction of a labour movement toaccommodate the push for productivity improvements. By the mid-1980s, JPChad supported several surveys of R&D workers and documented their growingimportance to innovative strategies of Japanese corporations. When theInternational Research Group on R&D Management planned to extend itscoverage to the US, the Japanese team took the initiative and contacted theOffice of Technology Assessment (OTA) in Washington DC. The request toOTA, a body which provided advice and research support to Congress on scienceand technology policy matters, coincided fortuitously with a period of politicalferment in the US over trade and technology issues with Japan. The opportunityto gain some systematic insight into human resource management in JapaneseR&D was readily seized and support secured for a university-based researcherto undertake matching surveys in Japanese corporate R&D laboratories.However, the JPC/JIL axis, the research departments of a tripartite body and aministry, provided a very different point of contact with the policy processfrom OTA, an advisory body for the legislature. The Japanese research contextprovided a link to the bureaucracy, whereas the American context provided alink to the politicians. However much scholars might debate the historic roleof MITI in Japan’s technological development, there is a wide acknowledgementthat the Japanese bureaucracy plays a much greater role in the devising ofpolicy and drafting of legislation than their counterparts in other liberaldemocracies. Findings from the draft research report of the Japanese team (JPC1991 a) were incorporated into the Japanese government’s 1990 EconomicWhite Paper in the chapter on technological development (EPA 1990:133–5).By contrast, the American report penetrated less deeply into the American policyprocess since the political agenda and preoccupation of the politicians hadmoved on swiftly between grant approval and report (Shapira 1990).

Despite these different points of contact with the political process, concernwith organisational survival has been a feature in both systems. In Japan, JPChas had to cope with changing circumstances, the curbs on public expenditureand the belt-tightening of the corporate sector in the post-bubble economy.Underlying these short-term changes, JPC sought a new name to reflect a newmission since it has long-outlived the original concerns to lift Japaneseproductivity levels to match the more advanced levels of the West.1 However,in the US, OTA disappeared completely by the mid-1990s, a victim of thetussles of Congress and the Administration over public expenditure. Institutionalsurvival in the corporate sector has proved mixed too. Of the original six Britishcompanies and six American companies in the International Research Groupon R&D Management study, one British and one American have disappearedcompletely into takeovers and two other British companies have beensignificantly restructured to fight off takeover bids. On the other hand, all theJapanese companies remain largely intact, but attempting to cope with thechanged circumstances of the long-running recession.

Conclusions 271

Over the course of these chapters, I have traced a growing interest since the1980s in comparative studies of Japanese engineers and engineering by socialscientists, attempting to match Japanese engineers with those in other advancedindustrial countries. These studies were stimulated in large part by speculationabout the role of engineers in the relative national economic performance. AsJapan’s manufacturing companies appeared to set the pace in internationalcompetition, more attention was paid to their employment and human resourcemanagement policies and practices. From the British side, this growing interestemerged against the background of a long-standing sense of disappointmentabout Britain’s relative economic decline and a good deal of curiosity and aweabout the economic performance of Japanese industry. In the US and in someof the major continental European countries, concern about relative economicdecline did not have such long roots as in Britain, yet there has been growinginterest in comparisons with Japan in the 1980s. For their part, Japaneseresearchers were often more circumspect about Japan’s economic performancethan their potential collaborators. From the Japanese side, interest in moresystematic comparative study reflected the recognition that the Japaneseeconomic performance was not uniformly excellent, that the institutionalfeatures underlying past success were changing and that the preconditions forcontinuing success might be changing too. Insofar as innovation and creativitywere perceived to be stimulated by the flow of people, bringing freshperspectives and varied experience to organisations, Japanese researchers wereinterested in how ‘Western companies’ promoted innovation and coped withmore open labour markets. While British, American, German and Frenchresearchers might be interested in the alleged virtues of the lifetime employmentsystem for the development and application of engineering knowledge andskills, Japanese researchers could hold that the lifetime employment might bebecoming both less desirable and less feasible and might need to cede greaterscope to mid-career recruitment. Thus from rather different starting points andorientations, researchers from Japan and other industrial countries couldcollaborate on a common theme—the implications of different employmentsystems and their potential for their future development.

The fruits of more systematic collaborative and comparative research studieshave done much to counter some of the wilder claims of commentaries onJapanese engineers by business pundits, who often used erroneous data, workedbackwards from Japanese national economic success to infer a whole string ofvirtuous connections in Japan to be set against domestic vices, and then conjuredup their pet nostrum for reform. Japanese engineers have not had particularlyhigh social rewards in Japanese society, either in salary or social prestige, whencompared to other graduates, whether we look back historically or incontemporary surveys. Within manufacturing companies, they do not appearto have enjoyed more favoured career tracks either. However, they do feel thattheir views have carried weight. Viewed in comparison with their Britishcounterparts, what does appear impressive is the amount of engineering whichcompanies have secured from their engineering workforce. Japanese engineers


have worked a long working week. They have spent longer in the ranks ofengineers before moving off into the ranks of management. They have spentlonger learning the ropes over a wider range of tasks before consideringthemselves fully proficient in their professional roles. Japanese companiesappear to have got a lot more engineering work out of their engineeringworkforce, and to have done so without paying premium rates. Moreover, theyhave been able to harness the efforts of these engineers to those of techniciansand blue-collar employees in co-operative enterprises. The big questions forthe future will be whether companies can elicit those high levels of effort andcontribution in changed circumstances. Japanese engineers are finding a widerrange of career opportunities opening as the finance sector needs moretechnological sophistication and offers higher pay than the manufacturing sector.The kinds of engineering knowledge and skill needed within manufacturingare changing too, and with the establishment of more long-term R&D there arepressures for more differentiated career structures. Meanwhile, the financialsystem which has underpinned the long-term perspectives of companies andthe patient building of skills through in-house training is changing under internaland external pressures for reform. If the social structures supporting the moralorder, often seen as an exchange of loyalty for beneficence, are changing, thenit is far from clear what the new structures will look like. Even the most‘Westernised’ of our Japanese R&D company sample was a good way off themost ‘Japanised’ of the British sample in terms of employee duration ofemployment. Far from a simple abandonment of lifetime employment and allits correlates and a move towards ‘Western’ practice, we are more likely to seeJapanese companies and their engineering workforce adapting employmentpractices and policies to fashion new forms of organisation within a Japanesemilieu.

Although I have been at some pains to challenge many popular assertionsand nostrums produced under the banner of ‘learning from Japan’, there aresome points from earlier chapters which ought to be put before British engineersand industrialists. • Despite all the concerns about ‘hollowing out’, Japan’s manufacturing sector

has remained much larger than Britain’s in terms of size in GDP andemployment. In a sensitive analysis of the deep problems facing smallmanufacturing companies in Tokyo and Birmingham. Whittaker is moresanguine about the future for Japanese owner-managers than that likely fortheir British counterparts (Whittaker 1997). Among the large corporations,it seems that some curbs are being put on the increase in the longer-termresearch end of the R&D spectrum evident in the early 1990s, and thatrenewed emphasis is being put on the more immediate needs for advanceddevelopment. However, this is the area of traditional strength in corporateengineering in Japan.

• In both the large and small firm sectors, enterprise initiatives have alwaysbeen important, even when government ministries were in their heyday of

Conclusions 273

‘administrative guidance’. For the future, companies will be even more relianton their own resources to make their way in a competitive world. Therefore,attention should be focused on companies, particularly their management ofhuman resources.

• The mobilisation of human resources in Japanese companies has not beenthe product of ‘diligence’ or some other cultural virtue, but deliberatelycontrived efforts. In conducting comparative research, I have an abidingimage of Japanese personnel managers arriving at interviews with thick filesand folders, ready to answer factual questions from the massive detaileddatabases on their labour force. While labour-force audits have beencanvassed among British companies, their practice is a long way short ofthat undertaken in Japan. Some instances are particularly colourful, such asthe engineer (of Chapter 7) plucked from one division of the company,drafted to another division, and despatched to establish an air-conditioningplant in the UK. All this completed after the personnel department hadcombed the records for relevant engineering and language skills. Yet it isthe routine nature of assembling and acting on such deep knowledge aboutthe labour force that is outstanding.

• While British engineers and industrialists share with Japanese engineersand industrialists a central belief in the importance of the workplace as thesite for the most significant professional learning experiences of engineers,Japanese companies put impressive efforts into translating the rhetoric ofterms such as the ‘learning organisation’ into reality. The manner in whichJapanese supervisors are responsible for the development of theirsubordinates, the discriminating use of ‘rotation’ which translates a varietyof experiences into a developmental sequence throughout the career, andthe cultivation of small group activities are built into organisational structuresand the routines of everyday organisational life.

• Although it is often argued that the structure of British labour markets andBritish culture would militate against the application of any ‘learning fromJapan’, this view seems excessively simplistic and defeatist. The point oflearning is not necessarily the direct importation of foreign institutions somuch as the observation of ‘good effects’ and the attempt to mimic effectsthrough appropriate institutional means (Dore 1987). It must be rememberedthat Japanese companies learned much from the West and adapted Westerninstitutions to local circumstance. Sometimes institutional innovations werelegitimated by appeals to consistency with traditional culture. These appealscould include subtle sleights of hand such that it is fair to say that culturewas being adapted to organisational needs rather than organisationalinnovations being adapted to culture (Tsutusi 1998:241). There is a growingliterature which shows a more subtle interplay between learning, applicationand adaptation to a new context. Against the popular images of Taylor’s‘scientific management’, largely rejected in Japan in favour of moreindigenous and humane approaches to work design, and of Deming’s gospelon ‘quality’ being uncritically accepted, Tsutsui shows a much more nuanced


picture of the strength of Taylor’s influence and the limits of Deming’scontribution through careful historical research (Tsutsui 1998, 1996).

• Japanese companies are not devoid of conflicts over rewards and resources.However, Japanese engineers do not appear to be engaged in anything likethe long pursuit of social status, buttressed by professional institutions, thathas so occupied so many British engineers and inhibited the emphasis onco-operative relations pursued in Japanese companies. Co-operative relationsare not the products of culture but of deliberate and sustained effort.

• While British engineers put effort into self-development, comparative studiesgenerate questions for British companies on how to generate—and co-ordinate—such efforts in more open labour markets.

Interest in comparative studies of Japanese engineers grew in many industrial

countries in the 1980s. It was prompted, partly by intellectual concerns indebates about the future development of industrial societies, and partly by morepolicy-oriented concerns and debates on the role of engineers in nationaleconomic performance. Japanese scholars had similar interests in comparativestudies too. For some Japanese social scientists, Japan’s emergence as aneconomic superpower prompted a more critical appraisal of modernisationtheory and an emphasis on a distinctive Japanese brand of capitalism whichmight serve as a more congenial model for development in Asia. Among otherJapanese social scientists, there has been more scepticism about the scope ofJapanese success and a continuing concern that Japan still had much to learnfrom the West, particularly in the management of R&D and radical technologicalinnovation.

Images of engineers and engineering have undergone profound changes sinceHenry Dyer and his young colleagues set off for Japan, developed anEngineering College and helped produce the early cohorts of Japanese engineersfor Japan’s industrial take-off. Then, many of the mass production industriesnow most closely identified with Japanese engineers, such as automobiles, werebarely visible above the technological horizon. Electronics had to wait over ahalf century later. Software, now such an important tool of engineers and suchan important ingredient in competitiveness when blended with hardware, wasnot a part of the engineer’s armoury. Since the late nineteenth century, engineershave spread through many industries and many functions. Engineering is madeup of a great variety of sub-disciplines and levels of qualification. Many writerson engineers echo the cry of some engineers that the public image of engineersis often confused and bewildered by this variety. If only, they lament, therewas a clear consensus on educational curricula and qualifications and somesystem of registration or licensing which could regulate who was who inengineering. Yet it is not at all clear that, even with a system of one-to-onemapping between educational courses, qualifications and employment, anyonewould be better off. It is far more likely that the bureaucratic ramifications ofany such system would become a frustrating brake on that ingenuity andinnovation which is the stuff of engineering. Thus, claims, counterclaims and

Conclusions 275

ambiguity about who is, and who is not, an engineer look likely to continue.They will provide ample scope for continuing debate—and provide much ofthe intriguing challenge for comparative research.

Note

1 In 1994, the ‘Japan Productivity Centre’ became the ‘Japan Productivity Centre for Socio-Economic Development’.

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Index

Abegglen, J. and Stalk, G. 97age: and effectiveness in R&D 161–2; and

fully-fledged engineer/scientist 159–61; and graduation 158; and manager159–61; and project leader 159–61

Akaoka, I. 106Allen, G.C. 21, 22Amano, I. 29, 66, 166Amaya, T. 107–8anti-industrial culture: and student career

choice in Britain 62; in Japan 64–5; inlate Victorian Britain 4–5

Aoki, M. 27, 92, 106apprenticeship 58–9Armytage, W.H.G. 25Asahi, J. 56Ashby, E. 25Aso, M. and Amano, M. 24Atoda, N. 71Ayrton, W.E. 14Azumi, K. 89Azumi, K. and Hull, F. 124 Ball, Sir James 117, 119, 177Banks, O. 12Barnes, S.B. 183–4Barnett, C. 12, 74Barry, R., Bosworth, D. and Wilson, R.

64, 71, 72, 75, 119, 267Bassett, P. 219, 241Belderbos, R. 250Berggren, C. and Nomura, M. 2Berthoud, R. and Smith, D.J. 30, 64, 67Bhasanavitch, D. 92Big Bang 119Blears, J. and Bonnet, B.J. 53Boltho, A. and Hardie, C.J. 29bonus, in Japanese pay system 95, 98–101Bowden, Lord 33

Britain: educational system 5, 57–9;employment system 156–7; Japaneseinvestment in the UK 218–22; labourmarket 90, 197–8; ‘Learning fromJapan’ 216–18, 222–5, 247–8, 272–4;national system of innovation 114,117–19; origins of engineeringeducation 13–4, 19–21; professionalinstitutions 204–5; unions 208–9

Broadbridge, S. 22Brock, W.H. 15Brown, K. 68Brown, K.D. 9brownfield sites 219bubble economy 2Buchanan, R.A. 21Burns, T. and Stalker, J. 105, 186 Cairncross, D. 250Campbell, J.C. 116Cardwell, D.S.L. 74career(s): 94–102; milestones 159–62;

paths 161–2, 189; progress andmobility 261–2; timetables 157–62

CEPC (Committee of the EngineeringProfessors’ Conference) 72

Chandler, A.D. 16, 22–3Chartered Engineer 59–62, 68Checkland, O. 14, 16, 22Child, J., Fores, M., Glover, I. and

Lawrence, P.A. 12, 75Chokki, T. 23Chosu 16, 17Clark, B. 12Clark, G. 71Clark, R. 104, 108Cole, R. 168Cole, R. and Yakushiji, T. 105

298 Index

collective voice 180, 204–9; see alsoprofessional institutions, unions.

colleges of advanced technology (CATs)30

communication: cross-cultural 246–9; inR&D work 147

company reporting 127Connor, H. 176Cooper & Lybrand Associates 81Corfield, Sir Kenneth 49–51Cotgrove, S. and Box, S. 183Council for National Academic Awards

(CNAA) 30, 72cram schools: see juku, yobikoCrawford, S. 78Cruickshank, M.J. 32Cusumano, M. 117 Danford, A. 254Darby, J. 222Davis, S.T. 197–8decision-making 138–9Dees, B.C. 87Deiters, R.M. 70Delbridge, R., Kenny, M. and Lowe, J.

254Department of Education and Science

(DES) 51Dicken, P., Tickell, A. and Yeung, H. 218Divall, C. 14, 34Dore, R.P. 10, 13, 104, 105, 109, 116,

155–6, 174, 197, 273Dore, R.P. and Sako, M. 52, 81, 82, 93Dyer, H. 5–6, 10–13, 14, 216, 274 Economic Planning Agency (EPA) 270Edgerton, D. 42, 43, 44, 75education system: outlined in Britain 54,

57–9; outlined in Japan 54–6education: curriculum reform in Britain

71–2; curriculum reform in Japan 69–71; engineering curriculum in MeijiJapan 15–17; industrial perspectives onreform 174–5; in Victorian Britain 14;vocational elements 54–8

Eindhoven Technical University 31Elbaum, B. and Lazonick, W.O. 21Ellis, N.D. 184Eltis, W. and Fraser, D. 229, 235Eltis, W., Fraser, D. and Ricketts, M. 177employment: mobility 155; market-

oriented and organisation-orientedsystems 154–7

endaka (yen appreciation) 218engineer(s): and service class 185;

definitions 4, 19; expatriate 226; inFrance 124–32; national outputs 6, 46–54, 79; prestige of study 64–8;registration 59–64; relations withmanagers 262–8; relations with bluecollar workers 262–8; social standing72–8; student ability 62–4

Engineering Careers’ Survey 225–8, 254Engineering Council 32, 51, 60–2, 64, 75

103, 267engineering dimension 71Engineering Professors’ Conference

(EPC) 44, 64Engineers to Japan Scheme (EJS) 259Ernst, A. 214examinations 64–8, 69 Finniston: Committee of Inquiry into the

Engineering Profession 49, 67; Report30, 71, 75, 90, 93, 102–3, 174

Fitzpatrick Associates 218foreign direct investment (fdi): and

technology transfer 222–5; Japaneseauto assemblers in the UK 234–7;Japanese investment in UK 217–25;Japanese office equipment makers inthe UK 238–41; Japanese-ownedheavy engineering in the UK 237–8;Japanese TV makers in the UK 229–34

Fores, M. 75Fransman, M. 117Freeman, C. 10, 114–15, 117Fruin, M. 83, 253Fujino, T. 255Fukatake Shoten 66, 80Fukusaku, Y. 186–7Fukutani, M. 148–9Funk, G. 181 gakkai (professional institutions); 214; see

also professional institutions.genba (workplace) 43–4Gerstl, J. and Hutton, S.P. 75gijutsusha (engineer) 5, 48Gillan, W.J. 93Glinov, M. von, Driver, M.J., Brousseau,

K. and Prince, J.B. 102Glover, I. and Kelly, M.P. 74Glover, I. and Tracey, M.P. 267Gordon, A. 42, 109Gospel, H. 59

Index 299

Grayson, L.P. 51greenfield sites 219, 230, 241Greenlees, J. 76Gregory, G. 81, 92–3, 112–13Guagnini, A. 34Guest, D. 241 Halberstam, D. 27, 42, 105Hamada, T. 245Handy, C. 81Hannah, L. 24Hara, R. 105Hasegawa, H. 229Hazen, H.L. 87Hendry, J. 110hensachi (standard deviation test score)

39, 63, 65hired foreigners 15, 31, 35Hirschmeier, J. and Yui, T. 93, 109Hitachi 1, 187, 230Hofstede, G. 247Honda 234House of Lords Select Committee on

Science and Technology 118–19Hull, F.M. and Azumi, K. 124Hull, F.M, Hage, J. and Azumi, K. 27,

105, 124Hunter, J. 16 Imano, K. 131Imazu, K. 22Imperial College of Engineering (Tokyo)

2, 5, 12–13, 216Imperial College of Science and

Technology (London) 24, 29IMS 51, 81Inagami, T. 83, 100Industrial Training Act (1964) 54Industry Ventures 72, 178Innovation Advisory Board (Department

of Trade and Industry) 119Inoue, K. 14institutional rigidities 21institutionalisation 4, 9–10International Research Group on R&D

Management 114, 126–30Ishida, H. 203Ishida, M. 95Ishii, M., Yokoo, Y. and Hirano, Y. 121Ito Hirobumi 16Itoh, M., Kameyama, N., Lanciano, C.,

Maurice, M., Nohara, H. and Silvestre,J.J. 125

Iwakura mission 3, 35Iwata, R. 18 Japan: educational system 54–7;

employment system 156–7; Japaneseinvestment in the UK 218–22; labourmarket 82–102, 106–8, 197–9;‘Learning from Britain’ 11–13, 15–16,253; national system of innovation115–17; origins of engineeringeducation 11–13, 15–19, 22;professional institutions 205–8; unions208–9

Japan Inc. 112Japan Institute of Labor (JIL) 270Japanese employment system 19Japanisation debate 216–18JETRO (Japan External Trade Relations

Organisation) 49, 219, 229, 250Jinji’in Kyuuyo Kyoku (National

Personnel Authority) 95–102job satisfaction 198–204Johnson, C. 27joint-stock enterprise 18Jordan, A.G. and Richardson, J.T. 72JPC (Japan Productivity Centre) 132, 187,

269–70juku (cram schools) 29, 62–3jusen (housing loan companies): delay for

the education budget 37–8; rescuecontroversy 2

Kakusho Gakko (miscellaneous schools)

56Kaneko, M. 56Kaplan, N. 183–4, 185karakuri (craftsmen) 17–18keiretsu 90, 108, 141Kerr, I.H.F. 65Kiba, T. 249–250Kidd, J. 225Kikuchi Kyozo 16Kinmonth, E.H. 51, 74, 116Kiyonari, T. and Nakamura, H. 103Kobu Daigakko (Imperial College of

Engineering) 14, 18, 21, 31, 40, 43Kobusho (Ministry of Public Works) 15Koike, K. 162–3Kono, T. 104Kornhauser, W. 182, 185Koto Senmon Gakko: post-war technical

colleges 56; pre-war higher technicalschools 23

300 Index

Kurata, Y. 215Kuwahara, Y. 106 Laciano, C. and Nohara, H. 125, 262Lam, A. 124, 247Lam, A. and Thurley, K. 168Landes, D. 74Lane, C. 59Large, P. 256late development effect 10Lawrence, P.A. and Lee, R. 73Lehmann, J.-P. 17–18Levine, S.B. and Kawada, H. 19, 22lifetime employment system 76–104Lincoln, J.R. and Kalleberg, A.L. 243Littler, C.R. 105Lockyer, N. 40Lorriman, J. 82, 92, 258–9Lorriman, J. and Kenjo, T. 11, 258Lynch, P. and Sims-Williams, M. 257Lynn, L.H. 151, 246Lynn, L.H., Piehler, H.R. and Kieler, M.

120Lynn, L.H., Piehler, H.R. and Zahray,

W.P. 170 Magota, R. 95manpower forecasting 47Manpower Services Commission (MSC)

51–2Marcson, S. 182Marsh, R. and Mannari, H. 95Masaki Taizo 35Massachusetts Institute of Technology

(MIT) 34, 120Matsushita 230McCloskey, D. and Sandberg, L. 21McCormick, B.J. and McCormick, K.J.

254McKelvey, M. 115McKinsey consultants 119, 177Mechanics’ Institutes 32Meiji: era 13, 28, 40, 62, 66, 115, 135,

166, 186, 216, 238; government 3, 13,54, 138; restoration 3

Meiksins, P. and Smith, C. 263–9Methe, D. 131, 186Micossi, S. and Viesti, G. 219Millerson, G. 19Minkan 187Misumi, J. 91–2MITI (Ministry of International Trade and

Industry) 26–7, 49, 70, 113–17

Mitsubishi Electric 230, 234Mitsubishi Zaibatsu 19mock test 65Monbusho (Ministry of Education,

Science and Culture) 39, 53, 69, 70, 71Moorhouse, H.F. 119Morikawa, H. 15–16, 19, 20, 23, 41, 44Morioka, K. 76–7Morris-Suzuki, T. 116multi-divisional firm 24Munday, M., Morris, J. and Wilkinson, B.

224–5, 254Muta, H. 70, 178 Nakagawa K. 18Nakajima, A. 108Nakane, C. 92Nakaoka, T. 44Nakayama, S. 15, 187National Economic Development Council

(NEDC) 52national innovation system 113, 114–19,

151, 154National Institute of Science and

Technology Policy (NISTEP) 121National Personnel Authority (Jinji’in

Kyuuyo Kyoku) 95–101nemawashi (securing informal support)

243nenko joretsu (seniority pay) 94–101NIER (National Institute for Educational

Research) 54Nissan 234–5 Occupation of Japan 26Odagiri, H. and Goto, A. 21, 26, 117, 134,

152Ohashi, R. 76Ohno, T. 268Okamoto, Y. 105Okayama, R. 23Okimoto, D.I. 117Okubayashi, K. 74Okuda, K. 28Oliver, N. and Wilkinson, B. 216, 217,

22–3, 225, 254Osaka Boseki-sho Kabush Kaisha (Osaka

Cotton Textile Company Limited) 18Oshima, K. 49Oshima, K. and Yamada, K. 107OTA (Office of Technology Assessment)

270

Index 301

Palmer, J. 222Papaanastassiou, M. and Pearce, R. 249,

255Passin, H. 88Patel, P. and Pavitt, K. 117, 118, 151patents: among R&D workers 148–51Pavitt, K. 102–3pay: corporate pay systems 94–102;

changing pay systems 197–8; Meijiengineers 19–20

Payne, P.L. 24Percy, Lord Eustace 29Plaza Accord (1985) 218Poole, J.B. and Andrews, K. 25Prais, S.J. 52–3Prandy, K. 184–5, 205professional institutions 19, 204–15; as

learned societies 19; as qualifyingbodies 19

professionalism 188–90project organisation: in R&D 145–7, 194–

7; project responsibilities 195–6publications: among R&D workers 190Pucik, V. 85 R&D: at the corporate level 130–44;

national level 114–19, 150–3; overseas249–52

Rangaku (Dutch learning) 17–18Rawle, P.R. 70, 116Rebick, M. 96recruitment: engineers 85–90, 260; R&D

workers 155–62; in transplants in theUK 225–8

relative economic decline in Britain 1–3reward systems 197–8ringi-seido 243Robbins, K. 13Rodosho (Ministry of Labour) 98–9Rohlen, T.P. 88, 91Rosovsky, H. 21Royal Fellowship of Engineering 259 Sakakibara K. and Westney, D.E. 89, 92,

122, 123Sakamoto, T. 22Sakauchi, F. 122Sako, M. 254salaries: surveys: Britain 75; Japan 73;

and R&D productivity 149–50Salusbury, T. 250Sampson, A. 183samurai 16, 18, 21, 35, 43

Sanderson, M. 25Sanyo 230SARTOR (Standards and Routes to

Registration) 60–1, 68Sato, H. 107, 157SCAP (Supreme Commander Allied

Powers) 26Schonberger, R.J. 27Scott, B.R., Rosenblum, J.W. and Sproat,

A.T. 23screwdriver plants 8, 17seniority wage system 94–101senpai-kohai 38, 91Senshu Gakko 55–6Shapira, P. 270Shibusawa Eiichi 18shiken jigoku (examination hell) 23shin-jinrui (new age people) 108Shirai, T. 103Shiro, Y. 43short-termism: and career planning 177;

and corporate culture and finance 155shukko (temporary job transfer) 107Silver, A., Zussman, R., Whalley, P. and

Crawford, S. 77Sino—Japanese War (1894–95) 17Skapinker, M. 256Smith, C. 185Smith, C. and Whalley, P. 260Smith, P.B. and Misumi, J. 243Snow, C.P. 183sogo shosa (trading companies) 18sokaiya (general meeting mongers) 2Sony 187, 230Sputnik 47St. Simon, Henri, Comte de 3Steven, R. 76–7Storey, J., Edwards, P. and Sisson, K.

171–2Strange, R. 230, 238Strauss, A. and Rainwater, L. 182Sugiura, T. 69Sumiya, M. 21Sumiya, M. and Taira, K. 43 Taisho era 24Takagi, H. 92Takeuchi, H. 17tanki daigaku (junior colleges) 56Technical Instruction Act (1889) 33technical work: organisation and

production 263–9

302 Index

Technische Hochschule 10, 13, 25, 30;influence in Britain 13, 31; influencein Japan 13

technocracy 112technological gatekeepers 247–8technology transfer 217–18Tejima Seiichi 35Temin, P. 21tenseki (job transfer) 107Thurley, K., Lam, A. and Lorriman, J. 123TIT (Tokyo Institute of Technology) 26–

32Toshiba 1, 2Toyoda, T. 35Toyota 234Toyota Technical Institute 87training: and job rotation 120, 170–1;

initial training 167; mid-career training167; off-the-job 162, 168, 171–3; on-the-job 162, 167–8; supervisorcoaching 170; training reform 175;university attachment 171

transplants: auto assembly 234–37;companies in the UK 216–57;Japanese manufacturing TV plants229–34; heavy engineering 237–8;

office equipment 238–40Trevor, M. 83, 107, 218Tsuru, S. 14Tsutsui, W.M. 273–4TUC (Trades Union Congress) 49Turney, J. 256 Uchida, H. 22Ughanwa, D.O. and Baker, M.J. 230UMIST (University of Manchester

Institute of Science and Technology)Unequal Treaties 14, 22

UNESCO 52unions 205–15United Kingdom Atomic Energy

Authority (UKAEA) 43universities: development of the Imperial

universities in Meiji Japan 17;universities in Japan—Tokyo 8;Tohoku 28, 114; Cambridge 24, 25,67; universities in Britain—ImperialCollege of Science and Technology(University of London) 16, 17; Oxford

16; American-Japan comparativestudies Cairnegie-Mellon 120; MIT121

university reform: Occupation reform 26;University Council (Japan) reports 57,71, 80

Veblen, T. 75Von Tunzelmann, G.N. 45 Wada Koruko 36–7Wagener, Gottfried 35–7Wakasugi, R. 131, 187Walker, W. 31, 117War(s): 42; ‘Cold War’ (1948–89) 26, 43,

46, 48; First World War (1914–18) 22;Korean War (1951–53) 26; SecondWorld War (1939–45) 25–6, 44, 47;Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) 17

Watson, H. 14, 44, 74Wersky, G. 27, 81, 92, 103Westney, D.E. and Sakakibara, K. 29, 123Westney, D.E. 149, 187, 188, 215Whalley, P. 78, 185Whittaker, H. 272Wiener, M. 12, 74Williams, K., Haslem, C., Williams, J.,

Adcroft, A. and Sukdev, J. 224, 254Williams, N. 250Williams, P. 119, 177work goals in R&D work 181–5, 188–90working hours among R&D workers 191–

4 Yahata, S. 146–7, 153Yamada, H. 187Yamanobe Takeo 18Yamao Yozo 15–16Yasumura, K. 18–9YKK 218yobiko 63Yonekawa, S. 18, 34 zaibatsu 15, 19, 36Zussman, R. 23, 27, 44, 134, 141

Engineers in Japan and Britain: Education, Training and Employment (Nissan Institute Routledge...

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