Yoshiko Shinohara and Tempstaff

Management in Japan

Final Report – Yoshiko Shinohara and Tempstaff

Introduction

Yoshiko Shinohara might be one of the most powerful women in Japan. Founding “Tempstaff” (one of Japan´s first service company for temporary staffing) from scratch in 1973 without any business experience neither law safety, she managed to grow her business over 40 years from the beginning to nowadays 5,970 employees and 295 operating offices in 9 countries. Her background story is even more stunning: Her father died when she was 7 years old, her mother had to work as midwife and raised her and her sister by herself. She got divorced in less than one year after her marriage, went several times abroad and worked hard, while other women became housewives.2She often opposed the government’s laws regarding temporary staff working, and is partially responsible for changing some laws regarding women’s working rights.

Management tasks and functions

Planning is the managerial function of defining the goals and proposing ways to accomplish them that minimize the inherent risk. In order to fulfill this task, managers have to decide goals and means, assess risks and returns, in order to make a positive difference. Yoshiko Shinohara was defining the goals by providing her visions:” Creation of employment”, “people´s growth”, and “contribution to society”. Creating vision, mission or a company creed is a very important part of planning. If people feel that their doing are leading towards a goal or have a purpose, they might be highly motived. Her reason for founding her company is at the same time her major plan:” Why were there only women? I am a woman and my initial vision when founding the company was to make a workplace where women can work freely. This is the number-one reason.” By putting on women as not-used workforce, she established her company in a niche, understood future development and created with her vision a plan for her company.

Organizing is the managerial function of...