Managing Diversity In Japanese Organization

Challenges

The report will discuss in detail about the concept of managing diversity in terms of including more women in workforce and bringing gender equality in Japanese companies. The economy of the Japan is very volatile right now since there are number of challenges like rapid shrink in population with decreasing birthrate. The country is contently trying to find varied methods to revamp the engine of economy. One important step taken by government of the country is encouraging more participation of women of the country in the workplace. In last ten years, companies as well as government has taken some crucial steps in the direction. Now the main focus of the companies these days is to encourage diversity in management and balancing the work life for the management (Klarsfeld et al., 2014). The integrated goals in this are the rising participation of women as well as leadership in the organization with improvement in the work life balance for all the employees. But there are some constraints as well like lacks of awareness about gender equality in corporate world, as well as lack in support for promoting work-life balance and there are some limitations in promoting alternatives for women and many more.  The report will discuss in detail about the concept of diversity based management strategies of many large companies in Japan.

Women in Japan are considered as some of most highly educated population than their male colleagues. However, women leave the work or their respective career in some years to have a proper family. The culture of the country gives more value to the fact that women can drop out work in their twenties since motherhood is a full time work and given much importance in Japan. However, there are some practical reasons for women leaving early (Al Ariss et al., 2014). It is important to understand one thing that the women of the country receive unequal pays in terms of salary which is almost 30% less than men coworkers. Also the organization culture to raise family is not very conducive and cooperative. People have to work for long hours and the concept of presenteeism are considered as best method to move ahead in the ladder (Barak, 2016). This is why, there is very less time left for the women who are actually expected to manage in proper manner and also has to take multiple responsibilities. This happens specifically since the country is struggling to address shortage of so much of daycare spaces. The complete concept of Womenomics and movement around it is actually can be treated as a unique concept called as harbinger of karoshi which also known as death because of overwork for many working women. The concept of Womenomics has absolutely nothing to associate with promotion of gender based equality. It is crucial to be blunter specifically when the government wants a society to encourage women to shine. This in reality means that they need women to work more. A lot of discussion is based on raising the overall number of women works in the country but government is not responding on queries on how to help the society in bringing more balance for the gender based roles (Cumming et al., 2015).  They are addressing people and asking them to create a society which can become a commonplace for men as well as women and also share right kind of responsibilities for the work, many household based work and rearing for children. However the complete focus is on small speeches about increasing female participation in organizations but nothing is said about how to provide right kind of support in adjusting them in workplace and also how they will adjust with so many changes on domestic front. The focus is also less on the fact how these changes proposed by government will be implied on the company and how to deal with resistance of any kind (Brinton and Mun, 2016).

Strategies taken by Toshiba

The strategy related to diversity Committee in the company has taken many important decisions to bring diversity based strategies in every department which will also include recruitment of women, measures to grow as well as recruit many women managers. Also developing international personnel and improving the level of employment. The company has taken a proper action plan which is entirely based on act to bring more success in the work life of people and the target are set with rising percentage of female workers to at least seven percent by taking important measures to increase the pace of using the female workforce (Matsui et al., 2014). The company has also set up the recruitment goals for new women graduates at fifty percent in number of administrative positions and approx. twenty five percent for many technical positions and all the actions are taken accordingly. This can be taken as a very high percentage for number of technical based jobs as well as it also exceeds for women student who are enrolled in many technical courses.

Company like Shiseido is actively promoting the concept of gender based equality and it has become an integral part of many management based strategies to set up right kind of organizational based culture that constantly increases the workforce vitality as well as also improves the overall solutions. The main aim of increasing the level of corporate culture is based on trust of employees who are also important stakeholders of the company.  The company is also working to strengthen the overall appointment and promoting the leaders as well as development of human resource (Matsui et al., 2014). There is an assumption based on employing number skilled workers but the company is also reviewing how workforce is working to improve the level of productivity when the company is trying to correct long working hour which also encourages women to take any active kind of role and also realize that employees and the associated work life balance is important (Matsui et al., 2014). Following are steps taken by the company:  –

1. Women are allowed to leave work when they have a family and children and it is difficult to strike a balance.
2. Women are encouraged to work with raising their children and create a right balance.
3. Both men and women are given equal opportunity to move up in career while taking important responsibilities in personal lives like childcare (Carrasco et al., 2015).

Following are important initiatives taken by Toyota: –

1. Promotion of participation by women in workplace.
2. Women engineers of the company have established a committee called Toyota Female Engineer development foundation which actively promotes learning of female (Komori, 2015).
3. Initiative like work from home program has been established
4. Initiative in nursing care and related policies are also setup

It is important to understand the seriousness of women’s responsibility to work at domestic as well as professional front. Therefore, mothers while reentering the work which is flexible with number of work arrangements with small time might make it easy to juggle with work as well as childcare and also be able to manage the household. It is important that the government take important decisions and formulate important policies for rapid change in developed country to deal with so many roadblocks (Nucci et al., 2014). The initiative to offer at least fifty two weeks of paid leaves for new parents is a welcome change.  There are other methods as well that through which government can empower as well as promote women at organization. It is important that the authorities should work towards changing the culture in organization since the country is now motivating a better balance in work life.

Conclusion

It is important to understand that the country like Japan is facing some serious issues since the population is shrinking with more aging population. To completely ignore a meltdown, companies and government must attempt to motivate more female to come forward and join the work. It is important to create a place where all women shine and the initiative started by the government is called as Womenomics (Empson et al., 2015). The overall solution to this issue is to get more female in corporate culture. The country is progressing since in the year 2014, it is ranked at 104^th position out of one hundred and forty two countries in term of bringing more gender based equality.

Reference

Al Ariss, A., Cascio, W.F. and Paauwe, J., 2014. Talent management: Current theories and future research directions. Journal of World Business, 49(2), pp.173-179.

Barak, M.E.M., 2016. Managing diversity: Toward a globally inclusive workplace. Sage Publications.

Brinton, M.C. and Mun, E., 2016. Between state and family: managers’ implementation and evaluation of parental leave policies in Japan. Socio-Economic Review, 14(2), pp.257-281.

Carrasco, A., Francoeur, C., Labelle, R., Laffarga, J. and Ruiz-Barbadillo, E., 2015. Appointing women to boards: is there a cultural bias?. Journal of Business Ethics, 129(2), pp.429-444.

Cumming, D., Leung, T.Y. and Rui, O., 2015. Gender diversity and securities fraud. Academy of Management Journal, 58(5), pp.1572-1593.

Empson, L., Muzio, D. and Broschak, J. eds., 2015. The Oxford handbook of professional service firms. Oxford University Press, USA.

Klarsfeld, A., Booysen, L.A., Ng, E., Roper, I. and Tatli, A. eds., 2014. 9.78 E+ 12: Country Perspectives on Diversity and Equal Treatment. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Komori, N., 2015. Beneath the globalization paradox: Towards the sustainability of cultural diversity in accounting research. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 26, pp.141-156.

Matsui, K., Suzuki, H., Tatebe, K. and Akiba, T., 2014. Womenomics 4.0: Time to walk the talk. Goldman Sachs.

Nucci, L., Smetana, J., Araki, N., Nakaue, M. and Comer, J., 2014. Japanese adolescents’ disclosure and information management with parents. Child development, 85(3), pp.901-907.