ABSTRACT
As electronically enabled forms of work become more commonplace and their potential fires the organisational imagination, it is sometimes easy to lose sight of the, perhaps, more pedestrian, yet crucial, issue of fit with the existing workplace. (While the term ‘workplace’ typically refers to the physical area in which work takes place and its layout, it is used in this chapter as a shorthand term for overall work and human resource management (HRM) practices in a given organisational setting. See Van der Linden’s Chapter 5 for an in-depth discussion of the impact of physical workplace design on organisational context). Nevertheless, existing frameworks often have a critical impact on Ework adoption and, indeed, other forms of organisational change. If internal and external pressure towards structural inertia are as strong as Hannan and Freeman (1989), among others, claim, then a close examination of the existing workplace as the major source of internal constraints on structural change is more than warranted. This chapter is an attempt to examine certain aspects of such internal pressure, although it departs from the organisational ecology approach by focusing on a specific core of internal organisational characteristics, namely administrative systems and human resource management practices (Donaldson 1995). In fact, this chapter’s implicit undertone is perhaps better stated as a concern with the issue of organisational legacy or embeddedness (Schein 1992), and its impact on structural fit and/or misfit. Specifically, it discusses at some length existing HRM practices in the Japanese corporate context and how HRM legacy affects the adoption of flexible work arrangements like telework. Before examining these issues, however, a brief overview of the current Japanese business climate is provided.
