Globalisation and ʻflexible ʼlabour in Japan: consequences for multinationals operating in Japan

In the 1990s, Japanese society witnessed the concept of flexible labour take root and spread across the country, and at the time of writing (2004) this trend was still in progress.

The aim in this chapter is to look critically at this development and suggest potential implications for the operations of multinationals in Japan. Our hypothesis is that the persistent low growth and globalisation movement of the 1990s rendered corporate restructuring – and hence the widespread adoption of labour flexibility – inevitable.