Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia - Jurusan Antropologi ...

118 WENDY A.SMITH
‘buffer zone’ of less privileged women and men, who worked as part-time
or temporary labourers on lower wages with no training or promotion opportunities
and no union representation. Although the system is now collapsing in Japan in the
face of a recession, it has been adopted as a model by developing countries eager
to emulate the Japanese economic miracle.
MANAGERIAL CAREERS–THE CASE OF IROHA
(M)
Iroha (Malaysia) was established in Malaysia in 1961 as the third overseas
manufacturing investment of the parent company in the post-war era. One of the
earliest Japanese companies to invest in Malaysia in the 1960s, when Japanese
investment began, it was set up to produce a highly specialised food item formerly
imported into the local market.
Production is highly technical in nature, involving a series of continuous chemical
reactions. This requires only a small workforce of unskilled and semiskilled male
workers organised into three shifts to regulate and observe the process. Most
workers started with the company at the age of seventeen. In many cases it was
their first regular job and they stayed on because of the job security. Hence the
workforce aged with Iroha (M), and by the 1990s there were many ‘veteran’
employees with close to thirty years’ service. From 1978 to 1988, the workforce
decreased by 20 per cent under a vigorous management rationalisation campaign.
Again, according to typical Japanese management policies, workers were not
retrenched, but those who resigned were not replaced.
Recruitment of local managers
Although Iroha (M)’s top posts were filled by expatriate Japanese, 15 local
managers were present at all three management levels in the organisation.
Managers and section chiefs (the equivalent of Bucho and Kacho in Japan) are
considered to be senior management, and unit chiefs (Kakaricho) are junior
management.
After Iroha (M) was established in 1961, the company advertised for local
management staff, emphasising the need for applicants to have a university degree.
They tried to recruit unmarried males in the first instance because they wanted to
send them to Japan for an extended period of technical training. They also tried to
recruit Malays, although before the NEP, Malays with science or engineering
degrees were few in number and preferred to seek employment in the public
service. Nevertheless, the original batch of managerial recruits, who received an
initial six months’ training in Japan, comprised four Chinese (all science graduates,
one female) and three Malays (with incomplete science degrees, all male). Of
these, three resigned from Iroha (M) and four remained for over three decades,
until they reached retirement age. There were two other early recruits, a Chinese
graduate and an Indian who did not complete his undergraduate engineering