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Flexible Employment in Japanese Retailing: Toward a Just-in-time Employment Management

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Japanese Management in the Low Growth Era

Abstract

The emergence and development of hyperflexible employment structures and mechanisms in the Japanese retailing sector are analysed, based on indepth case studies of four different retail formats: a food supermarket, a General Merchandise Store, a department store, and a Convenience Store. The sophisticated differentiation into flexible job categories and their management is linked to specific integration factors emanating from the institutionalized Japanese wage-labour nexus. In addition, a number of non-market complementarities (statutory, gender, socio-cultural) between the supply of and the demand for these flexible jobs are identified. Recent developments in Japan are found to be only insufficiently explained by traditional segmentation theories.

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© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Ribault, T. (1999). Flexible Employment in Japanese Retailing: Toward a Just-in-time Employment Management. In: Dirks, D., Huchet, JF., Ribault, T. (eds) Japanese Management in the Low Growth Era. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-58257-8_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-58257-8_20

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-63518-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-58257-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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