Since its emergence as an alternative work arrangement in the organizational field, telework has been the object of considerable debate. Various obstacles have been noted regarding the instigation of corporate telework programs ranging from the existence of inadequate technological platforms to inappropriate workflows and/or performance evaluation systems, or the perceived antagonistic mindset of managers. Such perceived obstacles, many of which are tenaciously held, represent a significant impediment to the greater uptake of corporate telework. Given the persistent nature of such beliefs, it is clear that both academic research and human resource management (HRM) have failed to communicate convincingly accepted knowledge regarding the requirements for the successful adoption of telework. This paper outlines frequently raised objections and classifies them into a few broad groupings. It further explores the complicated interplay between these issues, and finally proposes a research agenda in the HRM field as an initial attempt to rectify the current stalemate. Data is taken from a survey on corporate telework conducted by the Japan Telework Association in 2002.

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The concept of telework has received a great deal of attention around the business world in recent years. And also, it has been widely reported that telework actually has numerous merits. Thus, many researchers have speculated that the number of teleworkers will rapidly increase in the near future. On the contrary, there are few research which point out telework's demerits. Especially, it has been argued that limitations on communication between workers as well as with managers are the considerable demerit of telework. However, there has been no research that empirically verify this problem. Therefore, despite this strong belief by many researchers, the real picture of this problem is still unknown. We have conducted a field survey research to verify whether telework generally leads toward lack of communication. Then we have presented some hypotheses based on our findings. To achieve the aim of this research, we analyzed day-to-day job related communication data that are collected through log-sheets from two telework groups, and then investigated their communication patterns. Finally, based on our findings, we have suggested some hypotheses and implications on the communication problem in telework environment.

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SOHO (Small Office Home office) becomes a hot topic in the mass media etc. and the number of SOHO workers goes on increasing steadily for several years. SOHO workers can do the work at home or wherever, along with the development of improved information technology and the diffusion of network. It is the first step to create an environment to realize the needs of SOHO worker's. But SOHO workers are facing to some problems after they become sole proprietors, such as the problem of raising funds, the heavy tax system, the development of business partners, and the lower social cognition of SOHO workers. In order to solve these problems, several supporting organizations are formed, such as public agencies, private enterprises, non-profit organizations (NPO), SOHO workers network etc. Each sector attempts to support the development of SOHO, which provide hardware and software including office, training programs, and so on. This thesis presents a case study of MITAKA city in Tokyo, which makes local authorities as a policy to support the development of urban industry. This thesis is organized as follows. In chapter 1, the background of building SOHO CITY in MITAKA and the features of supporting system are described. And I take up the survey results that are evaluated by SOHO workers. In chapter 2, the features of the SOHO workers in MITAKA and the problems of SOHO are illustrated. In chapter 3, the actual situation of SOHO workers is expressed by using transaction cost approach. Now, the costs of information searching can be reduced due to the development of information technology. On the other hand, the credit costs are increasing. In order to decrease the credit costs. I insist on making a community. Community builds a future-oriented relationship between person and person. It is possible to solve the problem by making a community. The successful community cases of "RAKUTEN-ICHIBA" and "WASEDA Shopping Association" are also introduced in this section. Finally, chapter 4 concludes the thesis. I compare successful community with SOHO support plan of MITAKA. I make it appear that MITAKA has to establish community next phase, and propose a SOHO community model to support the development of MITAKA.

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Recently SOHO-business has received much attention, nevertheless its figure has not been revealed yet actually. For instance, it is not easy to classify SOHO-workers by what kind of business they do because most of them do several kinds of jobs at the same time. Besides, not a few SOHO-businesses end in failure on the stage of developing businesses actually, which is merely considered to be caused by a lack of earnest in their business because SOHO is considered as a easy way of starting off businesses. However, there are not a few cases that light-hearted ideas lead to great success in SOHO businesses. So, in this paper, analyzing data on survey for SOHO-workers, a way of classifying SOHO-workers by skills needed in their businesses is proposed. Further, factors which decide earnings of SOHO-business are discussed.

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Workflow Management System (WfMS) and Knowledge-Based Email System (KEMS) have been proven to be valuable tools for use in increasing the efficiency of distributed work teams. However, traditional WfMS and KMS are inadequate for managing net-based information exchanges, which are extremely more frequent as lack of opportunities for face-to-face communication increase. In this paper we present a new information management approach that features integration of structured workflow scenarios into KMS. Compared with traditional WMS and KMS, this approach offers (1) flexibility in control of document routing and dissemination, (2) ability to information automate collecting and organizing work by managing the information with workflow context. The use of these capabilities is illustrated in a scenario-based email system.

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So far many researchers proposed the definitions of SOHO. SOHO is often viewed as a new work-style and as a new business system. However, it also seems to be defined as a new life-style. The concept of SOHO is resemblant to home-based work and venture business. From the viewpoint of SOHO as a new life-style, the distinction among them is deemed to be more clearly. The paper examines that this viewpoint is indispensable to distinguish among these related concepts.

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As the symbolic work style in network society, SOHO attracts attention. SOHO differs from working for an organization like the big business. It is a completely new business style. This study shows that SOHOs are centralized on the big city such as a metropolitan area, and discusses the SOHO's new work style as the new organization model in an Internet society.

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It is generally thought that the implementation of Telework in the large-scale system development is easy. But, the system development have many types. How easy to implement Telework is different by types. The aim of this paper is to clarify barries to Telework in the large-scale system development situation, based on my system-engineer's experience. And, I wish to give a clue to the introduction of Telework

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