Karask's Demand-Control model which insists the interaction of job demand and job decision latitude (control) detormine the amount of strain employee experiences, has been regarded as one of the most sophisticated stress models in the field of occupational stress studies. In this article, an extended review of literaturo was conducted for scrutinizing the significance and problems involved in this model as well as for exploring the forefront of occupational stress research related to this model.
Through the review of literature the following points were uncovered; Firstly, the model itself contains strong feasibility for being applied to conercte intervention practiees, in which practitioners could easily adjust the amount of strain the omployee has by manipulating the degree of his/her job demand and decision latitude. Secondly. instead of its applicability, there are very few evidence that the interactive effect of demand and control on the mount of strain supports. This suggests that the concept of control is ambiguously defined in the model and the samples used in the empirical studies tend not to represent the populations of research.

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The operation of Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV) is characterized by public recruitment and voluntary participation of its members who engage in the interaction with local people in the overseas field. One of the long-standing problems for JOCV is the comprehension gap between the contents specified in the request form sent from JOCV local offices and the actual work condition the JOCV members encounter after assignment. Although working in an organization inevitably brings about for an individual role conflict and role ambiguity, JOCV members tend to undergo serious contradictionsbetween two different expectations: one as a member of JOCV and the other as a member of assigned organization in foreign countries. Focusing on the process of role perception under the role theory framework, this study tried to identify the factors related to the experience of role ambiguity and role conflict stand in the way of effective technology transfer.

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This study investigates 1) whether the psychological effect of work autonomy on job satisfaction is different for American and Japanese workers, and 2) if a cross national difference is identified, to what extent the disparities in the level of bureaucratic structuring between American and Japanese organizations explain the difference. It is hypothesized that a U. S.-Japan difference in the effect of work autonomy disappears once organizational characteristics are held constant across workers in the two countries. The results, based on samples of 4, 567 American and 3, 735 Japanese manufacturing workers, show that although work autonomy increases job satisfaction for both American and Japanese workers, it exerts significantly stronger influence on American workers even when organizational characteristics are held constant between the United States and Japan. The findings suggest that cross national variations in organizationalstructuring does not fully explain why autonomy has more powerfulimpacts on Americans. Embeddedness of the importance of autonomy in social structures is discussed.

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Recently, many Chinese state-owned corporations (SOCs) have started to change the traditional management system into the morden one. As a result, the quality of managers in SOCs has increased and their performance has improved. In this study, an effort was made to find ten most important skills for managers in Chinese SOCs:(1) that characterise their present level of managerial performance, (2) that are required for improving their managerial performance on the present job, and (3) that will be critical for Chinese managers to function effectively under the market economy situations. The results identified the common seven skills across these three different situations: namely skills of strategic thinking, profit consciousness, proper use of personnel, decision making, quality control, motivating, and innovativeness, but with a different order of importance for each situation. However, in different situations, some additional different skills were found important. In summary, most of the top ten skills were found to belong to the category of organizational development capabilities. Some differences that were found between different managerial levels and between high and low performing SOCs were discussed.

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Based on a survey of ten state-owned enterprises in Changchun city of China, this study analyses Chinese corporationculture in the transitional period of market economy. Observing the current situation this study discusses the features and existing problems in the construction of Chinese corporation culture in state-owned enterprises. This case study is one part of the author's study on the evolution of Chinese corporation culture in state-owned enterprises. Started from 1993, the survey and will be further conducted every two years as planned.
According to author's study, corporation culture can be divided into three levels, namely the core, middle and surface levels. Such division may help to understand the current situation of Chinese corporation culture, Surveying about fifty middle managers in ten state-owned enterprises in Changchun city, the author finds that the construction Chinese corporation culture at the surface level is influenced by economic results of enterprises and is impacted by social environment at the middle level, and the change of ideology at the core level has lagged far behind economic devclopment.

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