Reform without labor: The transformation of Japanese employment relations since the 1990s

This thesis is about the transformation of employment relations in contemporary Japan. I first develop a conceptual framework for analyzing the complex relation between various levels (societal, organizational and workplace) and dimensions (contracts, mobilities and effort) of employment relations shaping the social (re)negotiation and contestation of the effort bargain. Each of the three levels are sites of negotiation and possible contention, shaping the outcomes of change for contracts, mobilities and effort. All of these dimensions and levels of regulating employment relations intertwine in practice in shaping the social negotiations that comprise the effort bargain.;The thesis takes up two lines of empirical analysis: regulatory changes and changes in labor-management practices. In the first line, I have examined two recent reform drives, focusing especially on the politics of employment change. The reforms studied include the creation of new employment forms and the expansion of the discretionary work regulations. The second line of analysis shifts the focus from state to organizational reforms, in a case study of the introduction of a results-based performance management system at a Japanese electronics company. This story is mainly about control and the renegotiation of the effort bargain, especially at the workplace level, though also in relation to changes in employment contracts and mobilities.;Reforms at the societal and organizational levels have set the framework for significant changes in the effort bargain in Japanese workplaces. Labor market regulations were increasingly liberalized since the late 1990s. Discretionary work regulations have decoupled working time from performance evaluation and wage determination. Results-based management has formalized the performance evaluation system, and shifted responsibility for career development from firms to employees. These changes have all unfolded in the context of the declining influence of labor, and reinforce this decline, with the likely outcome being more risks than opportunities for Japanese workers. The new risks include increasing inequalities among regular workers as well as between workers in regular and non-regular employment contracts, harsher competition among workers for upward mobility and the best paid jobs, and intensified control of the work process by shifting effort measurement from working time to work results.