Japanese career progress: An empirical examination

This article investigates managerial career progress in a major Japanese multinational corporation over a 23-year period. We contrast our one-stage model of career progress, in which early career experiences can predict long-term career progress, with the well-accepted two-stage model of career progress, in which performance at the end of the first stage determines long-term career progress. In addition, we compare the predictions of our early screening model with those of the tournament model. Our early screening model is as good as or better than the other models in isolation or combination. Overall, we provide preliminary evidence that career progress in Japanese organizations during the high growth period of the 1970s and 1980s was perhaps more complex than shown by the two-stage career progress model that has enjoyed widespread acceptance.