Corporate Social Responsibility for Employees: Japanese and Russian Contexts

The corporation is not only an economic organization that provides goods and services for the maximization of profits, but also a social organization responsible for the benefiit of society. Offering job opportunities to people and care for the living conditions of employees are indispensable social responsibilities of the corporation, because social and economic development cannot be expected without a sustainable reproduction of healthy workforce. In terms of employment practices, common features have been found between the Japanese large-scale company and the Russian statefirm. Both of these forms of organization provide their employees with training and education, long-term job security, welfare facilities for employees and their families, and the company labor unions cooperate with the management in these areas. Directors and managers are recruited mostly from employees of long-time service in a given company, and one of their main duties is to support the existence of employees and their families. Those relationships result in a trustful relationship between employees and management, as well as a sense of identity with their firm for employees. Such practices lead to sustained social integration in each country, although their specific forms are different across the social systems. Those conventional practices have been undermined by globalization in both countries: In Russia it happened radically after a collapse of the Communist system, and in Japan this process has gone steadily during the long-term economic recession of the last twenty years. This paper focuses on the changing patterns of employment practices in Japanese firms within the worldwide ever-growing competitive environment and the implications of this change for the integration/disintegration of the present-day Japanese society.