Ageing Societies: Comparing HRM Responses to the Career Expectations of Older Employees in Germany and Japan

The emerging demographic context for the research and practice of human resource management (HRM) is unprecedented. Demographic shift in the form of ‘ageing societies’ has become recognized among academics and policy-makers as a growing economic challenge to organizations globally and to those operating from within so-called ‘developed’ economies in particular. Whereas some emerging economies and, by extension, some nationally-defined labor markets such as Turkey and Indonesia are experiencing rapid population growth and lower average ages among their populations, others such as Germany and Japan are experiencing a sharp fall in indigenous birth rates and simultaneously a rapidly ageing working population. In short, demographic shift in the form of ageing societies has become a key challenge to HRM policy-makers and practitioners across organizational, sectoral, regional, and national boundaries. 

In this Special Issue we focus attention on two leading global economies, each giving context to historically comparable HRM systems: Germany and Japan. Each nationally defined system is under pressure to maintain equilibrium by seeking alternative working conditions or end-of-career pathways for older employees. At the national level, the response in each case might translate into policies for targeted immigration, increasing employment and career opportunities for women, or the raising of retirement ages in certain sectors. At an organizational level, HRM responses might become manifest in the re-negotiation of company pension and other compensation and benefit systems or the re-designing of work conditions and / or career pathways for older employees. 

The emerging situation is both dynamic and, as stated previously, unprecedented. Consequently, organizations in both Germany and Japan are under pressure to formulate and implement innovative HRM strategies in response to the opportunities and threats to productivity that current global demographic trends are creating. 

Call for Contributions

In the broader demographic context of ‘ageing societies’, this Management Revue Special Issue represents an attempt to identify and compare patterns of responses among HRM practitioners and policy-makers in German and Japanese organizations operating and competing across a range of business sectors. For the purpose of continuity across contributions we interpret ‘ageing societies’ as segments of nationally defined labor markets comprising current or potential employees at the age of fifty and over. In the specific context of markets for employment and career development so defined in Germany and Japan, we are looking for contributions on the following themes:

• Responding to the employment and career expectations of employees aged fifty and over in the German manufacturing sector 
• Responding to the employment and career expectations of employees aged fifty and over in the Japanese manufacturing sector
• Responding to the employment and career expectations of employees aged fifty and over in German public sector organizations
• Responding to the employment and career expectations of employees aged fifty and over in Japanese public sector organizations
• Responding to the employment and career expectations of employees aged fifty and over in German service sector organizations 
• Responding to the employment and career expectations of employees aged fifty and over in Japanese service sector organizations

Notes:

The Editors also welcome expressions of interest from potential contributors offering to write on themes that connect generally with those specified above.  

The Editors especially welcome contributions in the form of joint collaborations between German and Japanese HRM researchers and practitioners.

Final contributions will be around 5,000 words in length.

The Editors undertake to provide full editorial support to contributors who are relatively new to preparing contributions for publication in a quality management journal through the medium of international English: initial offers to contribute can be submitted in English, German or Japanese.

Regardless of each contributor’s language of preference, the Editors undertake to engage all contributors in a cross-national dialogue that should both strengthen the cohesion of the discussion across contributions and establish a global network of HRM scholars and practitioners that endures beyond the publication of this Special Issue.

Deadline

Full papers for this Special Edition of ‘Management Revue’ must be with the editors by February 28th, 2015. All submissions will be subject to a double blind review process. Please submit your papers electronically via the online submission system at http://www.management-revue.org/submission/ ‘SI Ageing Societies – HRM’ as article section.

Hoping to hear from you!

Keith Jackson (keith.jackson@soas.ac.uk), SOAS, University of London and Doshisha University, Japan

Philippe Debroux, Soka University and Chuo University, Japan