While management roles are sometimes described as a “punishment game,” cases of “reward promotions” have also been identified. This article examines structural problems in modern Japanese companies through the relationship between managers’ roles and the pressure around them.
Management roles are increasingly viewed negatively, but in practice, greater authority also brings greater responsibility and pressure. Against these two extreme views, this article examines the problems managers actually face in the workplace.
In some cases, people who lack the requisite ability are given management titles as a reward and treated as valuable managers. Through the contrast between “reward promotions” and management roles becoming a “punishment game,” this phenomenon highlights fundamental organizational problems.
The burdens particularly evident among middle managers include the increased responsibility that comes with the title and intense pressure from senior management. Caught between expectations from inside and outside the company and the need to make decisions, managers face an even more difficult role.
When employees without management titles become managers, they are expected to act as the person in charge in situations including customer relations, while the way they are viewed in the workplace and the criteria by which they are evaluated also change. These changes can be seen as one factor behind the sense that management has become a “punishment game.”