From High School to Work: Market and Institutional Mechanisms in Japan

Abstract

Market models posit that institutional linkages interfere with efficient labor markets. Many Japanese high schools have agreements with employers to hire their students, and this article examines the ties between Japanese schools and employers, the reasons they make these ties, and the criteria they use to select students. Interviews with teachers and recruiters indicate that the Japanese system shifts the competition for jobs from the labor market into schools and among schools, and employers also compete for dependable sources of labor. Multivariate analyses of surveys of 1,408 high schools and 964 seniors indicate that desirable jobs are allocated more on the basis of academic than nonacademic criteria, contrary to the predictions of some models. Moreover, contrary to a hypothesis that institutional linkages reduce achievement effects, achievement has greater effects on jobs with linked employers than on jobs with nonlinked employers. Institutional linkages differ from both economic market models and from sociological personal network models, and they have practical and theoretical implications for understanding the relationship between education and work.

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