School-Work in Postindustrial Societies: Evidence from Japan.

The Japanese system of school-work has been widely admired for the strong communication and recruitment relationships that exist between high schools and employers. Building on theoretical literature on employment systems and educational institutions, we develop a framework for understanding the macro-level conditions that fostered the effectiveness of Japan's high school-work system up until the early 1990s. These conditions included a stratified educational system, a large supply of high-quality high school graduates, and firm-internal labor markets for blue-collar workers in large firms. We use original data from a sample of urban high schools to analyze how employers' recruitment patterns changed in the 1990s and beyond. The results of that analysis and a counterfactual analysis suggest that recent changes in Japanese employment institutions have had a significant impact on weakening school-employer relationships. We suggest implications of the Japanese case for school-work processes in other postindustrial societies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]