TY - JOUR
T1 - Apprenticeship and product quality
T2 - empirical analysis on the sake brewing industry
AU - Hori, Keisuke
AU - Hoshino, Yusuke
AU - Shimizu, Hiroshi
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science [19K01892,20H01542].
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2020/1/2
Y1 - 2020/1/2
N2 - Do apprenticeships enhance product quality? Whether guilds and apprenticeships have promoted technological change has been debated, but the issue remains unsettled because of the lack of data which allows us to empirically assess technological change by apprenticeships in the comparison with technological change by non-apprenticeships. By scrutinizing apprenticeships in the sake brewing industry and utilizing the national sake quality competition results and the master brewer list, this study examines to what extent the craftsmen trained through an apprenticeship enhanced or reduced product quality. The empirical results indicate that the training in apprenticeships actually decreases the probability of winning quality competitions, which indicates that apprenticeships do not improve product quality. Thus, we discuss why apprenticeships was a dominant form of training and learning, even if they had little bona fide utility for product quality. We show that brewers originally utilized apprenticeship-type practices adopted for migrant labor to reduce production costs. This study also shows that the breweries began to create a positive imagery associated with apprenticeships and sake quality from the 1980s even though apprenticeships actually reduce the probability of brewing high-quality sake.
AB - Do apprenticeships enhance product quality? Whether guilds and apprenticeships have promoted technological change has been debated, but the issue remains unsettled because of the lack of data which allows us to empirically assess technological change by apprenticeships in the comparison with technological change by non-apprenticeships. By scrutinizing apprenticeships in the sake brewing industry and utilizing the national sake quality competition results and the master brewer list, this study examines to what extent the craftsmen trained through an apprenticeship enhanced or reduced product quality. The empirical results indicate that the training in apprenticeships actually decreases the probability of winning quality competitions, which indicates that apprenticeships do not improve product quality. Thus, we discuss why apprenticeships was a dominant form of training and learning, even if they had little bona fide utility for product quality. We show that brewers originally utilized apprenticeship-type practices adopted for migrant labor to reduce production costs. This study also shows that the breweries began to create a positive imagery associated with apprenticeships and sake quality from the 1980s even though apprenticeships actually reduce the probability of brewing high-quality sake.
KW - Apprenticeship
KW - product quality
KW - quality competition
KW - sake industry
KW - technological change
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U2 - 10.1080/17449359.2020.1808482
DO - 10.1080/17449359.2020.1808482
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85089735626
VL - 15
SP - 40
EP - 64
JO - Management and Organizational History
JF - Management and Organizational History
SN - 1744-9359
IS - 1
ER -