キャリア形成なき能力育成のメカニズム

コンビニエンス・ストアにおける非正規従業員を事例として

抄録

The increasing number of part-time jobs creates logical contradictions for thecurrent framework of employment management. This paper points out thesecontradictions, referring to three types of employment management.
The theoretical framework of employment management is not suited to thephenomenon of increasing employment of atypical workers. Some authorsexplain it through an explanation of deskilled worker, while others cannotprovide an explanation in spite of focusing on the phenomenon. Past researchbegins from the assumption that workers, who strive to gain greater skills andachieve excellent results, aim to acquire good occupational positions, such as, for example, full-time workers. This is why the theoretical framework cannotexplain this phenomenon.
The purpose of this paper is to describe mechanisms of occupational abilitycreation for workers in part-time jobs. This study examines the management ofemployees in convenience stores, in order to clarify the management strategy.The paper is based on interviews of employers of convenience stores. Part-timeworkers' careers are not generally linked to good occupational positions, buttheir skill levels still rise. How can employers achieve such a situation? Thefollowing findings were made. Employers understand that their employees donot like to be in competition with each other to raise their position in thecompany. Employers are confronted with an ambiguous situation. They simultaneouslywant to improve their workers skill level and encourage their workersto work hard together. This is a desirable method for them. However, if theypublicly announce performance ratings for all employees, it is likely that manyemployees will quit. To deal with this ambiguity, employers only show theperformance ratings to the individual worker, and use bonds of membershipbetween employer and employee to probe their working conditions. Employersuse these strategies to maintain and develop their companies.
Using bonds of membership between employer and employee individually isa key concept in explaining the mechanism of management of part-timeworkers. This is most important finding of this research, and this finding couldbe useful in discussing the development of part-time workers.