A structural change of industrial society is now progressing. This phenomenon is called as a development from the manufacturing society to the information society, or coming of knowledge creative society. With the structural change of the industrial society, the management of human resource in companies is also changing thoroughly. Such a phenomenal change is appearing as a change of term from ‘personnel management and industrial relations’ to ‘human resource management’. The change of term is not so important, but a contents of term. A key problem is that what is the difference between traditional personnel management and the new human resource management. It is supposed that the human resource requirements in the present industrial society are changing.

The traditional industrial society was mainly consisted of manufacturing companies. In such type of industrial society, material affluence was sought, machines and equipments system was used as a technological basement of society and productivity and efficiency were in the center of the social value. In this type of society, the central problem of business administration was that how the given goal is efficiently materialized. The requirements of human resource to this business problem were supposed to be a high average ability and cooperativeness. Therefore the personnel management functions were consisted of organizing and motivating those people with average ability and maintaining peaceful relationship with trade unions consisted of those average people.

The new industrial society called information society differs fundamentally from the manufacturing centered society. It is important to recognize their differences in order to know features of the present society. In the information society, people attach greater importance to satisfaction, convenience, comfortableness derived from added value to products and services rather than material affluence. In other words, people's mind satisfaction is pursued in the information society. In such society, therefore, the focus of competition between companies is laid on the differences or added value between products or services. The differences or added value are produced by knowledge or information creativity. Therefore, it is the key for companies to keep valuable human resources in order to win in the market. With the development of globalization of market economy, the information society promotes competition of differences between products or services in the world market.

It is reckoned that the change of term to human resource management reflects such as structural change of the industrial society. Therefore, we can say that the subject of human resource management is concerned to how to educate and develop the knowledge creative personnel. The bringing up and developing knowledge creative personnel is impossible to be attained through traditional methods and techniques of personnel management. Recently, competency management is taken notice as a new method and technique of developing knowledge creative personnel. A competency is understood as characteristics of thinking and behavior resulting high performance or result. The interest to competency management in the U.S. reflects the change of competition focus between companies and the organizational reform to win in the market. The traditional job oriented personnel management system does not work now. Instead of traditional job oriented methods and system, a new merit system is appearing. That is just competency management. The globalization of economy make the global market come into being. The competition between companies in the global market is spread out around added value of products or services. Now we can predict that the competency management as a method and technique of developing knowledge creative personnel become a key central system of human resource management

Traditionally, Japanese labour studies treated the war period (1937-1945) as a “black period” caused by military cliques and they tended to insist on the extraordinary character of measures taken at this time. According to them, it was the post-war reforms which gave birth to present labour institutions (labour organizations, seniority wages and lifetime employment). However, there is a growing literature which, on the contrary, considers that the origin of many present institutions date back to this period when the State had to intervene in labour matters. This paper supports the view of a continuity between war-time changes and post-war reforms.

The paper first draws a bird-eye view of institutional changes from an international perspective. It observes that the period 1935-1950 appears to be a “turning point” in constructing present labour institutions (labour organizations, collective bargaining, workers' participation) in many countries. In the second part, it examines the evolution of wage policies in Japan during the 1937-1945 period. It points out that many of the present Japanese wage and employment practices stem from wage policies of that time, i.e. the concept of living wages, various allowances and harmonization of pay between white collars and blue collars.

The authors contend that a reexamination of this period should be reactivated on the basis of documents free of bias.

This study proposes to clarify the support system which is introduced by regional head-quarters of Japanese multinational corporations (MNCs) in Asia. In order to develop human resources in their subsidiaries, the regional headquarters (RHQs) of Japanese MNCs integrate and manage their subsidiaries located in Asian region. These RHQs are expected to promote effective collaboration of their subsidiaries by facilitating the information-dissemination and promoting of common value among them.

The prevailing researches into the human resource development (HRD) of Japanese MNCs have tended to emphasize that in the Asian region they confront serious problems in seeking for local personnel for developing local management and continuous technology transfer in their local operations. Hence, it is essential for the MNCs to appropriately educate their local employees as a means of the development of local human resource. In addition to the review of relevant literature, an attempt has been made to identify some determinant and influential factors in promoting HRD support system within RHQs, by using the data obtained from my research in Singapore in 1999-2000.

In this study, I have presented current problems and activities which RHQs of Japanese multinational corporations confront by analyzing two major corporations' methods and strategies in supporting the human resource development. There are several major roles of RHQs of Japanese MNCs, such as liaison mechanisms between related organizations, establishment of information dissemination system between branch offices and the like. As each branch of these corporations is under the certain circumstances relating to the local needs, there is difficulty in uniformizing the HRD goal. In fact, local needs and the head offices' standardized program are often contradictive. Thus we must examine applicability of training system to each branch. In order to solve those problems, on the basis of the understanding and accumulated knowledge between RHQ and subsidiaries, their communication must be advanced. Although for generalizing these findings it is required to conduct similar researches into various corporations, this study shows actual system of the sample companies and provide the method for this kind of researches.

After Thai monetary crisis in July 1997, many Japanese & Thai Automobile joint venture companies have decreased sales in domestic market and faced mega-competition in ASEAN area. Many companies have changed market strategy to increase exports. In order to meet the high quality standard of export markets, the transfer of Japanese style management and the development of human resources management have become vital for these companies.

The state of the art on the human resources development at 16 Japanese & Thai automobile joint venture companies has been investigated through the questionnaire and interview research in 1997 and 1999. Thus, it was confirmed how these companies changed the market strategy and improved the human resources development.

From the empirical and case studies, export oriented companies have the following characteristics as compared to domestic market oriented companies. Firstly, export market oriented companies tend to transfer more Japanese style management and develop the local core managers and engineers, having job security with the long-term employment. Secondly, Thai middle managers who work at export market oriented companies have higher job satisfaction because of lots of challenging jobs and training programs for them. From these implications, it is important for the local middle managers to participate in autonomous management and to create knowledge in their work organization.

The purpose of this study was to focus on the relationships between attribute (age, gender, marital status, education, the length of service, job category) and burnout. The investigation was conducted among 587 employees who worked at companies that had experienced downsizing. Burnout was assessed using MBI-GS developed by Maslach.

Regarding the relationships between one of the factors and burnout, it was found that three groups showed a strong tendency to burnout (women, young employees and singles). Conversely, managers were found not likely to burn out. In addition to these findings, community college graduates and employees who worked for 1-10 years at companies were apt to show exhaustion and cynicism.

Concerning the relationships between two combined factors and burnout, this study shows that female college graduates and male & female community college graduates showed a strong tendency to exhaustion. In addition, two groups showed strong inclinations toward exhaustion and cynicism (men 26-35 years and men who had worked for 6-10 years). On the other hand, middle-aged men or male managers were not prone to burn out. Moreover, married men were not likely to burn out, but married women were apt to burn out. These findings suggest that women don't have the effect of marriage about burnout.

Regarding the relationships between three combined factors and burnout, it was found that four groups showed strong exhaustion or cynicism. The first group was male college graduates who were 26-30 years (or worked for 6-10 years or worked as Sogo shoku). The second group was young female lppan-shoku. The third group was male & female community college graduates who worked as Ippan-shoku. The fourth group was unmarried women who worked as Sogo-shoku (or worked for 6-10 years). The author interviewed the personnel manager of the company about these findings. Considering the result of the interview, the implications of these findings were discussed in reference to the Japanese company system and characteristics.