Human Resource Management in New Industries: The U.S. and Japan compared

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Cornelia Storz
• Subject Area: Accounting and Finance
• Term: from 2012 to 2013
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 230112876

A fluid nature of institutions and, in particular, a turbulent industrial organization and a mobile labor market have been construed as critical to the emergence of new industries, and as a new logic of organizing in the entrepreneurial economy, to borrow Audretsch and Thuriks term. This shift involves that long-term employment centered on well-defined professions develops towards a more flexible use of labor and boundaryless careers. However, these insights are based on empirical evidence of new industries that emerged in the U.S. There is strong evidence that this pattern can be less found in other economic systems: In a recent project, we analyse career histories in a very dynamic new industry, the videogame industry. Based on an analysis of career histories of 39,439 U.S. and Japanese game developers, we find that the mobility of U.S. developers is much higher than of Japanese developers. Hence, there seems to be a variety of mobility patterns and corresponding HRM practices. This is astonishing as the literature on new industries has argued that institutions shall in general allow for more turbulence and mobility. With the proposed research stay at the Stanford University I want to understand why there is this variety: is it the difference of the institutional environment, or is it the difference of the underlying technology? The research is embedded in a follow-up stay at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, in January to February 2013, for which support of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science has been announced. References: Arthur, Rousseau 1996, Audretsch and Thurik 2000, Cappelli 1995, DeFillipi and Arthur 1998, Powell 1996, Schmid 2000, Polivak/Nardone 1989, Storz, John, Riboldazzi 2012, Whitley 2006Note: The input system does not allow for special characters so that references have been added at the end of the abstract.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants