The Japanese government first officially launched the concept of lifelong learning 25 years ago. This article shows how Japan's industrial success is in fact based on approaches to people development which are centuries old, but which owe much, too, to British and other foreign experts recruited during the Meiji era in the 1870s. The concept of management in the West needs challenging, and recognition needs to be given to the emphasis in Japan on on-the-job training. An Anglo–Japanese comparative research project is described, together with practical proposals on what other nations might do to compete more effectively in future, using lifelong learning, with the Japanese.
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References
1.
LorrimanJ.A.KenjoT.Japan's Winning Margins — Management, Training, and Education, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994.
2.
Ibid.
3.
A personal development planning document which I developed for the IEE, Europe's largest learned society, and which has now sold over 13 000 copies.
4.
LorrimanJ.A.Continuing Professional Development — the Practical Guide to Good Practice, The Engineering Council, London, 1991.
5.
Ibid.
6.
This is being marketed through Knowledge Associates, the knowledge management company.
7.
These include: 10 founder organizations— among them the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI), the Japan Society for Engineering Education (JSEE), and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE); 42 professional organizations; 17 industrial organizations; 234 academic institutions; 251 individual members.
