Abstract
This paper clarifies what causal conditions result in “suicide by overwork” instead of “death by overwork.” It conducts crisp-set qualitative comparative analyses (csQCA) of 58 judicial precedents on claims for worker’s accidents and damages in Japan. Both “suicide by overwork” and “death by overwork” can be caused by various combinations of conditions. Yet we focus on identifying which combinations cause “suicide by overwork” instead of “death by overwork.” The result reveals that the combination of “inability to attain assigned quota” (the most fundamental condition) and “problems with human relations in the workplace” has the dominant influence on “suicide by overwork.” This finding indicates that “suicide by overwork” occurs when people face problems of human relations in the workplace, such as insulting and berating based on assigned quota rather than overwork.
