Interestingly, because the headquarters human resources
departments/business units of the American firms maintained strong centrally-run
systems and managed subsidiaries on tight reins from headquarters, some of the
Japanese human resources general managers complained about the centralized
organizational structures in their firms. A general manager of the AS5 subsidiary
stated that the headquarters human resources department demanded to use a
human resources database system that does not fit human resources management
systems in Japan. The A1 firm forces the AS1 subsidiary in Japan to use
American human resources management systems which separate blue-collar
workers from white-collar employees. A few human resource “general” managers
of the researched subsidiaries grumbled that their jobs are similar to the jobs of
human resources managers in Japanese firms, because their power in the
subsidiaries is limited. According to some Japanese human resources general
managers, since the collapse of the bubble economy in Japan and the recovery of
American economy in the early 1990s, global standard systems led by American
firms have strongly penetrated into Japan