高年齢者雇用を伝える学術交流の考察

──マレーシア人研究者の来日調査と成果の検証──

抄録

　　Sharing concerns for a future aging society in Malaysia, I have cooperated with Malaysian researchers for nearly twelve years to transfer know-how for employment of elderly in Japan to Malaysia.　This paper reviews the achievements and issues of mainly the first five years of these academic activities from 2008 to 2012.

　　Japan’s practical knowledge for employment of the elderly may be adapted for Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries where similar aging pressures are expected in the near future.　In other words, Malaysia and neighboring countries may be required to utilize all human resources including elderly people to avoid or at least weaken future negative demographic pressures on age of the working population.

　　In this social circumstance, public and private sectors in Malaysia and other Asian countries are expected to need to keenly discuss the possibility of senior citizen employment.　Regarding this point, there are meaningful cases in Japan.　For instance, Silver Human Resource Center, a public job information center for senior citizens, provides more job opportunities for elderly than previously.　Also some Japanese corporations are aggressively employing experienced senior citizen as specialists for public relations, engineering and business management.

　　Therefore, this paper discusses how to transfer the knowledge for employment of the elderly to Malaysia and other Asian countries.　On this matter, the most striking findings are that Malaysian researchers having studied in Japan consider that employment of elderly can contribute to the local society.　These researchers also positively think employment of elderly may become a Corporate Social Responsibility （CSR）.　With these perspectives, this paper concludes that Japanese researchers definitely need to inform not only the know-how but also the social significance of employment of the elderly to emerging countries for a smooth transfer of knowledge.

JEL Classifications:J01, J08, J10, J11, J14