Learning and Incentive Systems in Japanese Industry

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines the character and content of workers' skills on the shop-floor in production workshops and makes clear the learning process in which the skills are formed. It also delves into the incentive systems, which need to be different from ordinary ones. The chapter stresses the importance of the worker's capacity to adapt to changes in tasks and cope with unforeseen events such as machine breakdown, as distinguished from the operational skills useful for performing routine tasks. On the basis of this distinction, the chapter identifies two types of work organization: the separate system, in which standard operating tasks and problem-solving tasks are entrusted to different specialized workers, and the integrative system, in which two types of tasks are integrated in individual workers. The chapter argues that the essence of what appears to be teamwork or group-oriented behaviour at the Japanese factory is actually not so much collective as the exercise of the individual's 'intellectual skill' in performing the non-routine element of tasks in the integrative system. This chapter discusses incentive and monitoring schemes for promoting and rewarding the formation of such skill on the basis of field observation of a Japanese car manufacturing plant. This chapter aims to illuminate the learning systems with which workers acquire skills and the incentive systems which promotes skill acquisition in contemporary Japan.