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This article critiques the construction of `the Japanese model' of employment relations by sociologists in English language sociological research monographs, organization textbooks and introductory general textbooks. It demonstrates how marked differences emerged across the different genres and relates them to the different purposes of researchers and textbook writers.The article examines three particular puzzles. First, why did general textbooks adopt `the Japanese model' in the 1990s when media commentaries were announcing the demise of the Japanese model in Japan? Second, why did the 1990s textbooks use 1980s organization textbooks rather than research monographs for their sources? Third, why are general textbooks ready to distance themselves from the model in 2006 when researchers confirm continuing vitality in the Japanese model in large Japanese companies? Answering these questions reveals how sociological knowledge of Japanese employment has been generated, disseminated and used in research, teaching and policy debates.

International comparisons of engineering graduate numbers are frequently used as indices of industrial development and measures of the responsiveness of the educational system to industrial requirements. Such comparisons make implicit assumptions about quality by assuming that like institutions or like qualifications are being compared. In this paper the concept of `best practice' engineering education is derived from engineering manpower reports of German engineering education in order to address issues of both quantity and quality in comparing engineering education in Britain and Japan. Japan is found to have associated engineering education with relatively more prestigious institutions and to have attracted a higher proportion of more able male pupils to broad based engineering education compared to Britain. Yet there are some interesting differences between the model of `best practice' engineering education based on Germany and Japanese practice, particularly in curricula, which underline the importance of the division of labour between education and employment in the education and training of engineers. Examining the responsiveness of educational systems through propositions derived from a model of `best practice' rather than through simple output statistics underlines the importance of different patterns of institutional development, the role of the state, educational and occupational selection, and status within the curriculum for understanding the variety of contemporary engineering education.