This module examines Japan’s socio-economic institutional system and its high degree of institutional complementarity where interdependent institutional aspects complement and reinforce one another, making their combined analysis essential. It provides a systematic overview of Japan’s employment and education systems, industrial relations, corporate governance and welfare systems, with a particular focus on the transition of education to employment and the so-called simultaneous recruitment of new graduates system.
The module incorporates social theory frameworks – institutional complementarity, relational sociology, and a framework developed in the instructor's current research, stratified relational normativity – to ask how institutions relate to other phenomena and concepts such as social norms, culture, and liberality. A concrete example will be to explore how one can best explain the phenomenon of low vacation uptake among employees of Japanese firms.
The module further adopts a comparative perspective, contrasting Japan’s institutional arrangements with those of other – mostly, but not only, Western European – countries (e.g. Germany, France, Switzerland, etc.), and exploring both the important differences as well as – surprising to some – the arguably even more important similarities that can be found among «industrialised capitalist democracies».
- verantwortliche Lehrperson: Stefan Josef Heeb