We examine the relationship between employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and financial performance based on data taken from a Japanese hotel company over a six year period, along with literature reviews from the fields of accounting, marketing and organization theory. The originality of this study is based on the longitudinal data collected from a hotel company that is representative of the characteristics of the hospitality sector in regards to the direct interaction that takes place between employees and the customers, as well as the demonstration of the simultaneous relationships between the gross margin per available room, customer satisfaction, service quality, and employee satisfaction. The results provide a valuable basis not only for Japanese hospitality companies using employee satisfaction measures, but also for studies on nonfinancial performance measures such as the balanced scorecard and the service-profit chain.

The purpose of this article is to construct a theoretical model for process costing under the FIFO method, for any given two costing periods using the method of non-neglecting normal wastes, whereby direct materials are input at the beginning of the production process and waste accrues at a certain point in the process, but dispensing with the traditional assumption that “no waste accrues from beginning inventories of work in process”. The article also shows the correct calculation methods for the “cost of the beginning inventories of the work-in-process” and the “cost of the waste accrued therefrom”. This article further introduces the conversion coefficient of product equivalent of waste in place of the “rate of completion of waste” to measure waste costs. Lastly, this article proposes a new method to calculate the conversion coefficient for the work in process and shows that setting the maximum value for the completion ratio (conversion coefficient) to 1 under the conventional method is not necessarily valid.

In this paper, I investigate how Japanese firms respond to mark-to-market accounting from an earnings management perspective. I hypothesize, and find evidence to show, that Japanese firms offset expenses occurring from income-decreasing extraordinary items through both accruals management and real earnings management. I also present evidence that firms with growth potential tend to manage earnings by using real earnings management. I also obtain evidence that, unlike manufacturing firms, nonmanufacturing firms tend to manage earnings upward by using overproduction.

This paper investigates the relationship between sophisticated capital budgeting techniques and the performance of Japanese firms. This is the first study in a Japanese context and the result shows a weak correlation between sophisticated techniques and the performance of Japanese firms. In addition, this paper focuses on capital budgeting processes, especially the combined use of sophisticated methods and ex-post follow-up. This original view has not been considered in previous studies. As a result, this paper provides evidence for positive correlation between firms' performance and sophisticated capital budgeting processes.

Recently, it has been more realized that intangible assets such as brand have significant impact on company performance and corporate value. This paper investigates empirically brand impact on Japanese companies' performance. For this purpose I selected from “Brand Japan” issued by Nikkei BP Consulting three indices; awareness, favorableness, and attractiveness distinct from others, to analyze relationship with financial figures. The results show that the attractiveness distinct from others has a positive association with the financial figures. The attractiveness distinct from others represent unique brand association and it is pointed out that it is important in selecting this brand from other brands. Implication of this study is for company performance, out of the brand power indices the attractiveness distinct from others is important.