ABSTRACT
In trying to explain the contrasting economic records of Japan and the United Kingdom, commentators have focused on a wide variety of factors, including the manner in which industrial investment has been funded, the nature of state assistance, inherent socio-cultural attitudes towards work and employment systems. 1 Clearly, though, while a monocausal interpretation would be impossible to achieve, differing attitudes towards human resource management has been accorded considerable importance. With specific regard to management, as long ago as the 1920s G.C. Allen remarked that:
Unless a man has received the conventional academic training appropriate to his particular career, then he has little hope of ever obtaining a good position … The banks and business firms recruit themselves very largely from the graduates of the commercial and higher commercial schools, and one rarely meets a bank manager or an important official in a joint-stock company who has not been trained at one of these institutions. 2
