Japan Journal of Human Resource Management
Online ISSN : 2424-0788
Print ISSN : 1881-3828
Volume 6, Issue 2
Displaying 1-3 of 3 articles from this issue
Articles
  • Hisanobu KAKIZAWA
    2004Volume 6Issue 2 Pages 2-13
    Published: July 01, 2004
    Released on J-STAGE: August 30, 2024
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    It is known that when companies try to reduce their employees by voluntary retirement schemes, the low-ability employees tend to choose to stay while high-ability ones tends to leave. Theoretically, this problem has been analyzed as an adverse selection problem caused by the asymmetric information on the employees’ ability. Some studies have showed that the adverse selection would occur unless the profile of the severance payment is set to give the low-ability employees the information rent.

    This paper investigates the hypothesis using a case of a middle-sized Japanese company which carried out the employment adjustment by a voluntary retirement scheme in 1998. The investigation consists of some interviews with the human resource division and econometric analyses using the personnel data of the company. Besides, the employees who were informally persuaded to leave are excluded from the samples in order to make the analysis only for the choices which were certainly made voluntarily.

    The main analysis is separated in two econometric tests. What is tested first is that whether the voluntary retirement scheme gives the low-ability employees the additional rent or not. Secondly, the difference of the ability level between the leavers and the stayers is tested. Two conclusions can be expected from the theoretical studies. If it is confirmed that the severance payment system present the rent to the low-ability employees in the first test, these people will be observed as the leavers in the second test. Otherwise, the adverse selection will be found out on the difference of the ability.

    As the result of these tests, this company’s case was turned out to be the one which fit to the first expected conclusion. That is, it was shown that the voluntary retirement scheme was designed in which the low-ability employees were given relatively high compensation to leave, and they tended to leave with higher probability than the high-ability ones. This case can be regarded as an empirical evidence of that the adverse selection can be restrained by proper mechanism design to cause the voluntary choice which is desirable for each ability type.

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  • Kaoru HIROTA
    2004Volume 6Issue 2 Pages 14-25
    Published: July 01, 2004
    Released on J-STAGE: August 30, 2024
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    This paper examines the conditions for propelling continued employment of older workers in the First half of 60 years-old generation (the following, older workers) committed in the production spot.

    According to precedence research, it is said, (1) reservation of the occupation which can utilize older workers' capability enough, (2) reservation of the choice of how to work which suited older workers' needs, (3) improvement of the wage system which is flexibly applied to older workers' capability and how to work, are required in order to enable continued employment of older workers.

    Then --this paper-- it clarified about how much such conditions are improved today, using the question paper investigation for the die and mold industry and listening comprehension investigation. Consequently, in older workers' occupation, people may work as the instructor who plays a role of the tradition technology or skill's, and as a person who can step in and be effective immediately on-site worker. Also, there are full time service, and short-time (part time) service in how to work. However, there are few cases that a wage differential is responded to according to older workers' capability, i.e., skill to hold.

    Thus, for continued employment of older workers, it can point out that maintenance of a wages system is behind compared with other two conditions (the occupation, how to work).

    Therefore. in order to promote continued employment of older workers, it doesn't carry out for bundling older workers, but the type division of older workers is carried out depending on how to work and the occupation, and it is necessary to apply the wages system according to each type.

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  • Takumi MIWA
    2004Volume 6Issue 2 Pages 26-37
    Published: July 01, 2004
    Released on J-STAGE: August 30, 2024
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    The development of information society has been changing the architecture of product, organization, and industry. New industrial architecture has modular and network structure. As the progress of these changes, especially in information technology industry in United Stats, the diversity of individual career has been appeared. Someone became an entrepreneur, someone frequently moves to another company or industry, someone works for a company and a research laboratory at same time. These phenomena are expressed to the concept of "Boundaryless Career". At Silicon Valley, various new technologies or modules are produced by many venture companies and laboratories or universities. And they are integrated to a whole system by some big companies as system architects.

    This paper has two research questions.

    1) Has the diversity of career been progressing in Japanese information technology industry? In another words, is there the diversity of individual career orientations?

    2) Which type of job or role does it match for each type of career orientations? Supposedly, the difference of career orientations leads to the difference of individual's behavior and learning style. Therefore, it is supposed that career orientations are concerned with performances of their jobs.

    Based on the survey on software engineers working for Japanese companies, this paper analyzes about above two questions.

    As the result of analysis, five types of career orientations were found. They can be called as Manager orientation, Project orientation, Advance/Universality orientation, Self reliance orientation, Expert orientation. The character of the mare summarized as follows.

    1) Manager orientation

    Those who have this orientation commit to the company and hope to promote and participate in management.

    2) Project orientation

    Those who have this orientation hope to participate and enjoy challenging and various projects.

    3) Advance/Universality orientation

    Those who have this orientation hope to research and find new theories, and to be praised by professionals outside the company.

    4) Self reliance orientation

    Those who have this orientation hope to be entrepreneurs or work like free agents.

    5) Expert orientation

    Those who have this orientation hope to develop their specialties and continue technical job.

    Above five career orientations lead to different behaviors and learning styles.

    Advance/Universality orientation and Self reliance orientation lead to learning advanced technologies and have a try at innovative Research and Development. Therefore, it is supposed that those who have these orientations can produce good results to develop advanced modules or new technologies.

    Advance/Universality orientation leads to communicate with professionals outside the organization too. Hence, those who have it must be able to be good at technology-marketing, and constructing and using a technical information network. At the same time the analysis revealed that this sort of communication is very effective in software development which is typed as operating systems.

    Expert orientation has something in common with Advance/Universality orientation, or Self reliance orientation. But it does not lead to have a try at innovative activities. It is suggested that those who have this orientation are steady engineers, they work under someone who has another orientation.

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