ABSTRACT
The immediate post-war period was so harsh for large segments of the population that the social stability of Japanese society was perceived to be in danger. Before World War II, as shown in the examples provided by Koike and Taira, there were few attempts to link the foregoing management practices to normative social rules in the modern heavy industries. Workers in small companies thus obtained improved working conditions and a number adopted human resource management systems operating under the same basic principles as in large companies. The work ideology that had allowed the successful adoption of these management practices had indeed started as a purposeful and calculated imposition by management and the new collaborative company unions in order to convince the workers of the advantages of the labour-management compromise. The idea of making large company communities was the cement consolidating the relational psychological contract within Japanese companies and the underlying ideology of work.
