Reflective report and comparison between human resources systems in the USA and Japan

Résumé du document

I was in an international group composed of seven people from China, Sri Lanka, England and Germany. As a French student, it was a new experience for me to work with such a group. We decided to compare HR systems in two countries from which none of us come from. The idea of this presentation was to improve our knowledge by ourselves and we all wanted to play the game by getting in touch with HR systems that we did not know. We were also interested in comparing two models which are not similar. That's why in our presentation we chose to compare HR systems in the US and in Japan. Group work has been organized through six meetings in which everybody presents ideas and opinions. As we sometimes had some difficulties to understand each other, the group was led by the English people because they had a better background of HRM knowledge than all of us. As we were seven people in the group, we divided the presentation of each country in three parts: employment relationship, reward systems and training and development. We dealt with each part in pairs, comparing alternatively the US and Japan.

Extraits

[...] We decided to present the two HR systems of the United States and Japan. The presentation went well and the feedback of the tutor was positive so I decided to write this assignment on the same two HR systems. Literature review (books and recent journals) gives good material to define properly the two models. It is also an indicator of actual trends in HRM practices. These countries have been chosen because they are considered as two large international economic players with a reputation of having very different culture (Allen, Takeda, & White, 2005). [...]

[...] 2). Thomson. Strauss, G. (2001, Sept). HRM in the USA: correcting some British impressions. International Journal of Human Resource Management, vol 12 Wever. (1995). Human resource management and organizational strategies in German- and US-owned companies. International Journal of Human Resource Management, vol 6 p. 606. [...]

[...] Human resource management in Japan - Adjustment or transformation? International Journal of Manpower, vol 22 p Shibata, H. (2002). Wage and Performance Appraisal Systems in Flux: A Japan–United States Comparison. Industrial Relations, vol 41 pp - 652. Stone, D., Stone-Romero, E., & Lukaszewski, K. (2007, June). The impact of cultural values on the acceptance and effectiveness of human resource management policies and practices. Human Resource Management Review, vol 17 pp - 165. Storey, J. (2001). Human Resource Management, A critical text (Vol. [...]

[...] London : Pearson Education. Rowley, C., Benson, J., & Warner, M. (2004, June / August). Toward an Asian model of human resource management? A Comparative analysis of China, Japan and South Korea. International Journal of Human Resource Management, vol 15 pp - 933. Saruta, M. (2006). Toyota Production Systems: The ‘Toyota Way' and Labor- Management Relations. Asian Business and Management, vol pp - 506. Selmer, J. (2001). [...]

[...] They want to be hired and rewarded on the basis of their skills and performance. US managers see some advantages in the Japanese system, like high commitment of employees to their firms and low employees turnover rate (Ichniowski & Shaw, 1999). Although cultures can change, and in the case of the US has changed, it is a long process. Without legal intervention it is unlikely that the current HR practices in the US will change as management is unlikely to willingly implement anything that would mean otherwise. [...]