The purpose of this study is to investigate how Japanese white-collar workers feel and dealwith their own careers in terms of individual career management.Recent years havewitnessed increasing discussion about how one should always be aware of career problemsand be planning and designing one's own career.Under this circumstance, how are those intheir 30's trying to develop their own careers?This paper intends to tackle this question usinga conceptual framework called Mist-Drift Matrix (MDM) developed in the Japanese context.Qualitative data were gathered through intensive interviews of eight Japanese white-collarworkers, who were around 35 years of age.Three cases, which seem to represent the typicalcoping style within the framework, are presented.Results from our analysis of these casesshow that (1) organizational influence is still an important force in in the MDM, (2) individuals show a propensity to stay in a certain domain within the MDM, and (3) there aredifferent styles of coping according to position within MDM.Practical implications are also discussed.

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The purpose of the present study is to investigate the relationship between employmentseeking and the three areas of emotional intelligence: intrapersonal, interpersonal and situationalabilities. A questionnaire study was conducted among 104 senior female universitystudents. The results revealed that the student group who had received employment offersfrom more than three companies showed the highest scores in all three areas of emotional intelligence.Particularly, a close connection with the employment seeking was found in the interpersonalability of emotional intelligence. The students who received employment offer (s) showed significantly higher scores in all three areas as compared to the students whoreceived none. These results suggested that emotional intelligence plays an important rolein successful employment seeking among university women and that training to develop theemotional intelligence would be recommended as a part of career education programs. There is another angle to consider: namely the findings suggest that adopting the emotionalintelligence scale for employment examination is useful for most of the companies in Japan.

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The purpose of this research is to examine the factors that influence whether married working women with children feel their work is worth doing. A questionnaire was mailed to women in 5 unions of the Japanese Trade Union Confederations in 2005. About 90 percent of respondents were regular full-time workers.
Based on a three step regression analysis, the major findings are asfollows:(1) Positive factors are related to the level of consciousness at the workplace, that is they perceive the possibility of promotion to a higher position, they have good relations with colleagues and supervisors, and they work in a family-friendly environment.(2) A negative factor was that they felt discrimination from men with the same career path.(3) Among working women with children under three years of age, time inflexibility such as overtime work with their coworkers is a greater negative influence compared with mothers having older children.

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Management by Objectives (MBO) refers to a management control system advocated in 1954 by P. F. Drucker. MBO was introduced into Japan in the early 1960s. In the 40 years that have since elapsed, different studies have reported that over 60% of the listed corporations on the stock exchange markets in Japan have introduced MBO systems. Thus, the MBO system is, like budgeting, one of the most prevalent management control systems in Japan. Unlike other management control systems, MBO involves the application of a function that can break down the company-wide strategy and organization goal of a corporation to the level of individual workers. For the purposes of this paper, this function is called “chain effects among objectives”. Chain effects among objectives are essential for the management control system of a corporation. MBO will become more instrumental in implementing corporate strategy when it is organically combined and operated with other management control systems.
This paper explores MBO's chain effects among objectives for Japanese corporations and focuses on identifying those factors that have an impact on the chain effects among objectives. The results have revealed that the concern and involvement of top management have a great impact on the chain effects among objectives, and that target workers' satisfaction with their MBO and chain effects among objectives are related in such a way that will bring about synergistic effects.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors increasing the motivational benefits of goal-setting. In this study, the effects of goal-related situational conditions such as goal sharing and information sharing in the work place were examined. The hypothetical structural model describing the relationships among goal setting, goal sharing, information sharing and work motivation was examined by structural equation model using the data from 2446 employees in a company.
Results of the analysis showed the following: Having a specific goal improved one's work motivation. Sharing one's goals with co-workers in the workplace led to higher work motivation. It also had an indirect effect on work motivation through enhancing information sharing in the work place.

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The possibility that performance-based appraisal systems lead to organizational dysfunctional behavior (ODB) in Japanese organizations was investigated.Japanese employees (n=500;mean age 38.4 years;360 men, 140 women), working for corporations in Japan participated in the study by answering a specially designed questionnaire.ODB was assessedusing four sub-scales:(1) serious dysfunctional behaviors in the job, such as damaging workplace property;(2) sabotage, such as sending private e-mails during working hours;(3) verbal harassment, such as speaking ill out of earshot of other employees;and (4) verbal violence, such as arguing at work.Structural equation modeling revealed the following:(a) performance-based appraisal systems did not directly determine ODB;(b) job stressors were not related to ODB;(c) organizational justice was negatively related to ODB;(d) the more performance-based appraisal systems were established in Japanese organizations, the more fluid they became;and (e) ODB tended to occur in fluid organizational situations.

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