IT MIGHT be argued that the issue of gender does not fit easily into the “varieties of capitalism” debate, nor has much relevance to the theoretical coverage of the “organisation-oriented” vs “market-oriented” ideology. Indeed, the varieties of capitalism literature has little, if anything, to say on gender. However, it was my experience working for a foreign firm in Japan that many ambitious female university graduates would express a strong preference for working in a foreign firm, where they saw their prospects for advancement as being far greater than in a Japanese firm (e.g. Ono and Piper, 2001). This same phenomenon would not exist in western countries and gender is an important element in determining the allocation of resources in firms operating in a traditional communitarian framework. It is therefore worth exploring changes in HR policies, and the reaction of employees, particularly females, when a Japanese firm is taken over by a western one.

The rights of female employees, or rather the lack of them, within the Japanese employment system, has been a consistent theme within organisational literature on Japan. Abegglen (1958, p. 75) wrote: “there is no more striking instance of the kind of tension and other strains caused by the lag between changes in the broader society and the present factory system than the role of women in the Japanese company”.

There is no doubt that the role of women in Japanese society has changed a great deal since the end of World War II.