Find the new article The Conversation by Mélia Arras-Djabi, HDR Senior Lecturer at the Sorbonne Business School, Kerstin Kuyken, Professor at the University of Quebec and Sakura Shimada, Lecturer-Researcher at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers!
Successful integration in Japan does not appear in any human resources management manual. It's all played out in the ba, a relational space-time where the new recruit learns the implicit, where learning takes place in direct contact with teams in and outside the workplace. We take a behind-the-scenes look at this immersion process unlike any other.
In many organizations, the integration process is structured by onboarding arrangements that place the main emphasis on formal training, explicit transmission of job rules and dissemination of information relating to the workings of the various departments.
There's nothing obvious or generalizable about this way of conceiving integration. It reflects specific organizational and cultural choices. In this respect, Japanese companies offer an enlightening counterpoint, relying on more informal, relational and situated forms of socialization.
Our recent study highlights three key characteristics for understanding Japanese integration practices: their tacit nature, their deployment outside the work situation and their organization as close to teams as possible, without centralized steering. Although distinct, these practices revolve around the ba, that relational space-time within which new arrivals gradually learn their jobs through interaction, observation and the sharing of daily life.
The ba (場), the space-time of emerging relationships
For a new recruit to a Japanese company, integrating doesn't just mean learning a job or acquiring skills. Above all, it means finding one's place within a team, with its own habits, relationships and constraints. This way of conceiving integration is based on a central Japanese cultural concept, the ba (場), defined as a "space-time of emerging relationships".
In the company, the most important ba is the genba (現場), the actual place where work is done. This is where understanding of real work is built up and ways of doing things are passed on. The genba is the basic unit where socialization takes place. This explains why integration in Japan is so decentralized. Rather than following a single, standardized human resources program, integration takes place within the team's microculture. For a new recruit, the aim is to "blend in" (genba ni tokekomu).