‘Inability to switch off’, repetitive thinking about work, is considered to hinder work-life balance. The purpose of this qualitative research is to explore the construction and causes of ‘inability to switch off’. In this study, eighteen regular employees who engage in full-time work were interviewed. The data were analyzed based on grounded theory approach. The result shows that employees have their own ‘personal time’, when they want to switch off from work. It is also revealed that the employees feel psychological pain when they are stuck with recurrent thought about their work in their ‘personal time’. Based on these results, it is clarified that there are four forms of ‘inability to switch off’:‘affective intrusion’, ‘worrying about their work’, ‘being discouraged with themselves’ and ‘problem-solving pondering accompanied with pain’. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that each form has different patterns of relationships to the employees’ work environment, their cognitions, their behaviors and the degree of their personal life’s fulfillment. Although the generalizability of these results needs to be verified, this research is important because it reconstructs the concept of ‘inability to switch off’ and suggests the clues about how to prevent this inability, through closely examining working environment and individual cognitive and behavioral processes.

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The purpose of this study was to examine whether and how working fathers’ taking parental leave affects career self-reliance and work-family facilitation. I asked 653 married male workers with children under 10 years of age to answer a questionnaire on the internet which consisted of psychological variables of career self-reliance (clarity of career self-image, career development motivation, and career self-responsibility awareness), career self-reliance behavior (adaptation to environmental changes, career development behavior, networking behavior, and proactive job behavior), and work-family facilitation (work-to-family facilitation and family-to-work facilitation). As a result of multiple regression analysis, it was clarified that parental leave promoted clarity of career self-image, career development behavior, adaptation to environmental changes, proactive job behavior, and networking behavior. In addition, it was shown that parental leave promoted work-to-family facilitation.

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The current study examined the effects of transformational leadership and narcissism on the group norm succession orientation. A total of 400 business persons participated in an online survey. Results showed that 1) those who with high transformational leadership and low narcissism tended to try to stop passing down undesirable group norms to their younger generations, but those who with low transformational leadership and high narcissism did not. 2) It was shown that those who have low transformational leadership and high narcissism tend to think that their generation has the right to make decisions when passing down their group norms to the younger generations. In addition, it was shown that passing group norms down can be a means of reinforcing their superiority to the younger generations for superiors who have higher narcissism.

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The purpose of this study is to examine the process of promoting male parental leave in enterprises. Semi-structured interviews were conducted for 12 private enterprise promoting male parental leave. The verbal protocols for each participant were analyzed by Modified Grounded Theory Approach (M-GTA). As a result, 59 concepts in 26 categories were created based on the data. The results are summarized as follows: (1)Enterprises that promote male parental leave position work-life balance as a management strategy. (2)Specific measures to promote male parental leave include formulating promotion rules and cultivating culture. (3)As a result of promoting male parental leave, results such as realization of work-life balance and strengthening organizational structure can be obtained.

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Organizational politics is an issue for all corporate employees but there are not many empirical studies in Japan. Therefore, in this study, we examined the reality and function of organizational politics in Japanese companies. The subjects were 7 managers (managers and team leaders; 5 men and 2 women) working in large Japanese companies with over 1,000 employees. In order to grasp the actual state of politics within the organization, data was obtained from semi-structured interviews, and the results were integrated using the KJ method under the nameplates “Ⅰ. Do well with others other to advance work” and “Ⅱ. Follow roles and procedures”. The results show that managers of Japanese companies show a tendency to carry out their work while observing officially recognized rules. In addition, in order to make proposals in a short time or to create an environment where it is easy to work even after passing proposals, organizational politics were functional. Based on these results, organizational politics were organized into three positive functions: (a) control function, (b) stagnation avoidance function, and (c)harmony function.

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