Departments
Intermediate Japanese - Free Online Course
ZENERARISUTO
ゼネラリスト
generalist
American and European businesspersons typically specialize. An entire career is often spent in a single functional area, such as sales, marketing, accounting, etc. Moreover, there are few chances for rotation from one functional area to another. Once you start down a particular path, your destiny is more or less determined.
Japanese companies take the opposite approach. Rather than leaving workers in a single functional area throughout their entire careers, they rotate employees between functional groups at regular intervals (usually about every five years). The employee who is today selling the company’s products may someday be responsible for the production schedules by which the products are built. Alternatively, he may be transferred to the accounting department, where he will calculate the profit made on the products.
In a Japanese company, there is often little correlation between an employee’s undergraduate major and job function. I was employed by one Japanese company in which the manager of the accounting department had majored in History. In another company I worked for, the human resources manager held a degree in metallurgy.
There are positive and negative aspects of the "generalist" approach. On one hand, frequent rotations enable Japanese employees to develop a well-rounded understanding of the company. On the other hand, the zenararisuto runs the risk of becoming a Jack-of-all-trades, master of none.