The Cluster Specialist System

The second generation has appeared in Japanese-style management with new developments in the organization and management system which respond to various changes in the management environment. In what follows, I shall suggest some new ideas regarding future personnel strategy for those Japanese enterprises classified as management types A and B, who are feeling anxious because these styles of management will supposedly be abolished in the future [see the note on four types of Japanese-style management at the end of this article]. Naturally, since those business managers leading the drive to abolish Japanese-style management must be directing their own companies along a course they believe in, I have no intention of attempting to sway them at all with my suggestions. What I intend to do below is to make some new suggestions in an attempt to help those business managers who, despite a desire to reject Japanese-style management, are having a hard time choosing a new direction. At the same time, this writing may contribute somewhat to ideas about the personnel systems of the second generation of Japanese-style management as it contains contains further theoretical development of the "multiple specialist system," first proposed in my 1977 book, Japanese-Style Management in a Highly-Educated, Aging Society.