The paper examines how project branding has impact on resource mobilization from management for new projects initiated by front line employees. Companies can diversify their strategic options for new businesses by using new projects initiated by front line employees. Thus, it is recommended that companies make use of front line employees as project leaders for new projects. For successes of projects initiated by front line employees, it is necessary that project leaders give legitimacy to the project and legitimacy for resources allocation into projects. The resources consist of managerial resource and project members. A previous work (Ozawa, 2013) confirmed that those resources were key success factors by quantitative analyses. The study confirmed that a) highly acclaimed project leader and high possibility of project success at birth stages, b) high possibility of project success at growth stages, c) highly acclaimed project leader at mature stages have positive impact on resource mobilization by management.

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To examine the factors promoting employees' work-life balance (WLB), I focus on the psychological process of their middle managers. Specifically, I classify middle managers' attitudes toward their subordinates' WLB into two types: support for 1) family needs and 2) personal needs, and formulate hypotheses based on the job demands-resources model. The hypotheses were tested using survey data from 1,483 Japanese full-time middle managers. Consistent with our prediction, we found that job autonomy influences middle managers' supportive attitudes toward their subordinates' personal needs. On the other hand, assistance from immediate supervisors improves the middle managers' supportive attitudes toward their subordinates' family needs. Moreover, the middle managers' anticipation of negative effects caused by employer-sponsored WLB programs was found to mediate the latter relationship.

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Based on social exchange theory, I propose the mediating effects of job crafting and thriving in the relationship between leader-member exchange (LMX) and employee outcomes (i.e., affective commitment and job performance). To examine the proposed model, I conducted a survey of 277 subordinate-supervisor dyads in China. In support of the hypotheses, the results show that employees with a high quality of LMX are more likely to craft their jobs and thrive at work. It is also found that job crafting mediates the effect of LMX on affective commitment and that thriving mediates the effect of LMX on affective commitment and job performance. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

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The Center for Organizational Research & Development, Acadia University, Canada developed a new measure, Areas of Worklife Survey (AWS) that measures six areas in the work environment. The objective of the present study is to translate the AWS into Japanese and evaluate factorial validity and examine criterion-related validity as well as reliability. The Japanese AWS was prepared and administered to a sample of employees at one IT enterprise. A total of 1,214 valid data was obtained. The AWS consists of 29 items that produce distinct scores for each of the six areas of worklife: workload, control, reward, community, fairness, and values. The exploratory factor analysis replicated the same six-factor structure as the original. The confirmatory factor analysis supported a six-factor model. Cronbach's alpha coefficients for all six subscales were .66-.88. The AWS had significant correlations with three subscales of the MBI-GS but not for workload-professional efficacy. In all, the examination found support for the validity as well as reliability of the Japanese AWS although a couple of issues to be resolved in the near future remain.

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