Personnel Management Reforms in Japanese Supermarkets: The Positional Warfare and Limited Assimilation of Conversational Communities

The Japanese general merchandising stores (GMS) industry has, in the 2000s, introduced new personnel management policies based on the principle of determining employee status and treatment according to ‘working conditions rather than employment arrangements’. This paper analyzes the substance and features of the new policies, as well as the factors underlying such policy reforms. By focusing on micropolitics at the workplace level, this paper highlights the possibility that the unofficial power of part-timers may underlie these reforms. The Japanese supermarket industry has increasingly been relying on the transformation of part-time employees into their main workforce both in volume and in substance in order to reduce labor costs. In the supermarket industry, these new personnel management policies serve both to contain the unofficial power of part-time employees through a limited assimilation of core part-timers and to stabilize the profit structure. In addition, the new policies, which offer preferential treatment to employees who are able to accept transfers involving changes of residence, reinforce the gender differentiation that previously adhered to the underside of employment arrangements while weakening notions of differential status based on employment arrangements. 1