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If you buy for a Japanese company outside Japan
At the overseas subsidiaries of Japanese companies, the president is a local national in 26 per cent of cases. At American companies the figure is 69 per cent. At European companies, 52 per cent.
Search for the rice-paper ceiling in English and those three figures come back at you from almost every page.
They are figures from 1994.
I spent twenty years buying for a large Japanese manufacturer, and part of that time I was posted overseas. I was on the side you are looking up at. I saw how many Japanese were at that site, and what those people decided.
- You work at the overseas arm of a Japanese company and every senior post is held by a Japanese
- You have read the phrase rice-paper ceiling but cannot tell whether the figures describe today
- You want to know where the ceiling sits in your own company
- When the three quoted figures were collected, and what they count
- What the newest survey says, and what it does not say
- A way to locate the ceiling at your own site
The numbers behind the name are from 1994
The name comes from one book. Rochelle Kopp, The Rice-Paper Ceiling, Stone Bridge Press, 1994. It was written for Americans working at Japanese companies inside the United States, and about 700,000 people were doing that at the time.
The three figures above come from a survey the same author published in the same year. A paper by Hideki Yoshihara of Kobe University quotes it.
That paper also sets out the Japanese companies on their own, year by year. The share of subsidiaries whose president was a local national ran 38 per cent in 1972, 47 in 1981, 35 in 1990 and 22 in 1994. It rose, then it fell. The line does not run steadily upward.
The newest survey says the number two job has opened
So where does it stand now. I looked for a recent international comparison of the nationality of the presidents of Japanese subsidiaries. I could not find one.
The newest figures I found come from a Japanese survey in 2022. JAC Recruitment, a recruitment company, asked 550 Japanese subsidiaries across nine Asian countries (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, India, China, Hong Kong and South Korea) what the highest post held by a local national was.
The share where that post was vice-president or a board seat ran 15.8 per cent in 2015 and 30.7 per cent in 2022. It almost doubled. The share where that post was president ran 11.0 per cent in 2015 and 12.4 per cent in 2022. In seven years it barely moved.
(The published material adds those two together for its headline figure, but the 2015 headline does not match its own breakdown. I use only the four figures from the breakdown.)
- Subsidiaries whose president is a local national
- The single top post, and nothing below it
- American, European and Japanese companies set side by side
- Collected in 1994
- The highest post a local national has reached
- Vice-president and board seats counted as well
- 550 Japanese subsidiaries in nine Asian countries
- Collected in 2022
Read the two shares apart and this is what you get. The ceiling on promotion has risen. It now stops one post short of the top. That is my own inference, and not something the survey states.
Look at the reach of the survey as well. Nine Asian countries. Mexico, the United States and Europe are not in it.
A vice-president and a president do not make the same kind of decision. So you may reach vice-president without the president’s post opening in the same way.
Count who holds the approval where you work
The same Kobe University paper carries one more figure. At overseas manufacturing subsidiaries, Japanese expatriates made up 2.3 per cent of the employees. In a plant of 100 people that is two or three. One of them holds the president’s post.
The ceiling is not a crowd standing in the way. It is a very small number of people sitting in particular posts. And what those posts hold is the approval authority.
So, to make this about you, compare and check three things.
One. How many Japanese expatriates are at your site, and what share of the workforce that is. Set it against 2.3 per cent.
Two. Write out the approvals those people hold, by amount and by type. Up to what value is an order decided at your site, and from what value does it travel up to the parent company in Japan.
Three. At your own company’s local subsidiary, what is the highest post held by local staff. Is it on the vice-president and board side, or below it.
Once you have counted, you may find that the ceiling is two or three posts that hold the approval.
What the local staff member who reached the highest post actually did is for another piece.
The three figures everyone quotes are from 1994, and what they count is the nationality of the president alone. In the newest survey, from 2022, the share of local nationals in vice-president and board seats has almost doubled, while the share in the president’s post has barely moved. The ceiling has risen, and it stops one post short of the top.
And in a plant of 100 people, two or three Japanese expatriates sit in the posts that hold the approval. Count the people and count the approvals at your own site, and you can see that shape for yourself.
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