The purpose of this paper is to systematically analyze the hiring of new graduates in Japanese companies and to clarify the logic of the hiring practices.

Japanese workers market has witnessed recently a significant increase in the numbers of “NEETs” (those who are not in education, employment, or training) and “Freeters” (young peripheral workers). Discussions about the “Year 2007 problem” also became common. This situation asks for deeper research on the practices of new-graduate hiring in Japanese companies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the kind of factors that affect Japanese companies’ practices in hiring new graduates. In order to investigate the hiring regulation factors in Japanese companies, an interview research is conducted with 21 managers responsible of hiring new graduates in eleven Japanese companies. The result of the research shows that there are two recruitment regulation factors, namely: the organizational factor and the environmental factor.

By explaining the Japanese companies’ practices in recruiting new graduates, this paper provides further explanation to the recruitment strategies in Japanese companies, and provides some suggestions on how to link strategic management and human resource management.

This study explores the relationship between family-friendly workplace arrangements and work morale among Japanese working women and men. Specifically, I address the following three questions: 1) Do formal workplace family policies and informal work-family arrangements enhance Japanese employees’ work morale? If so, are the impacts different for women and men? 2) Does the presence of family unfriendly workplace climate reduce worker morale? 3) Do family responsive workplace arrangements exert stronger impacts on work morale for women than for men? The results suggest that family responsive workplace arrangements are likely to enhance Japanese women and men’s attachment to the employer and reduce the likelihood of their leaving the job, indicating that human resource management that is sensitive to employees’ family needs is likely to bring benefit to the organization. Importantly, present findings show that informal aspects of work, such as supervisor support and job flexibility, have a significant impact on employees’ work morale for both sexes.

The subject of this thesis is to clarify the actual condition of production skills acquired by operators (general workers) in the production site. A case analysis was conducted for a certain stainless steel plant (Factory B of the Company A).

Regarding to skill formation and skill distribution, the following facts have been already pointed out: i) the skill level of the general worker in the production site impacts the productivity of the workplace; ii) “intellectual skill”, the ability to deal with some changes and/or unusual circumstances, is especially important; and iii) the aforementioned skills are formed through the broad range of On-the-Job Training (OJT) and the appropriate management systems of human resource. However, I found that there are some unsettled issues including how the advanced skill was possessed by whom with what degree of ability. Therefore, I conducted the analysis to study the influences of individual attributes, such as one’s educational background and the age, on the skill distribution. The outline of the analysis is as follows.

The analysis was conducted based on the evaluation results for the skill level of all operators (543 persons) in the Factory B. I assume that i) the skill level and the years of experience of an operator correspond each other, since the skills are formed mainly through OJT; and ii) many operators possess the skills required. Therefore, I firstly studied for the distribution of skill levels. As a result, “medium-thick shape” with an experienced-operator group as the center of the distribution was quantitatively observed. Then, I conducted a quantitative analysis regarding the determining factors for the skill level. As a result, it was confirmed that the skill level of the majority of operators who possess the standard capability and work ethic is increased along with the years of experience; and the operator will reach the level 3.5 after about 25 years of service length. The level 3.5 is close to the level 4, the standard level for an operator which shows that an operator has enough skill to conduct problem solving and maintaining operation. Moreover, for the attributes of workers, it was found that their educational background has hardly impacted on the skill formation. However, it was also found that availability of overhead-crane license effects significantly to the skill formation. Consequently, it is suggested that a certain level of intelligence and motivation for skill improvement of operators is important for the “intellectual skill” formation.

Since the facts that the skill distribution shows “medium-thick shape” and the majority of operators will obtain the sufficient level of skills after about 25 years of service length, it is suggests that there is little variability in the individual level of skills obtained. On the other hand, in general, the personnel rating in the ability-based grade system will differ in proportion to the length of one’s service. Consequently, I assume that requirements for evaluation conducted by a company would exist in other than “intellectual skill”. Regariding this question, it is considered that one of the influential answers is the following; “some blue-collar workers are expected to obtain “management skill” including leadership capability in the late stage of their career.”

Actual states are made clear, and determinants are investigated for employees’ work motivations and anxieties, using personnel data and our survey data. Research object here is a Japanese manufacturing company with the scale about one thousand employees. Analytical data are made out combining micro data, provided by the personnel division, and our questionnaire data for individuals. Determinant factors for not only work motivations but for work anxieties are also explicitly investigated. Our results indicate an importance of jobs with discretion and with proper variation, and of appropriate assistances and advices at workplaces. This is different from those indicating the importance of wages (payments by results) and the policy of “procedural justice” (as interviews between supervisor and worker, reports of appraisal results, etc.), in the previous literature related to performance-based personnel systems.

This paper explains the determinants of an appraisee’s satisfaction with a performance appraisal system. For this purpose, 1) we distinguished the satisfaction with the institution from the outcome of a performance appraisal, 2) we adopted the satisfaction with the institution of performance appraisal as an explained variable, 3) we examined the effect of the management procedures and the difference in the effect when the appraisee engages in the different types of jobs.

Based on this, we made a data set that combines an employee questionnaire survey with personnel micro-data. Then this data was used for the estimation. We ware able to control an individual attribute and an appraisal outcome and explain the effects of the management procedure.

Our conclusions are the following; 1) The interview positively influences satisfaction with the performance appraisal system, 2) The degree of consent regarding team’s goals and the fair distribution of the duties, which is not considered by the appraisal procedure, greatly influences it. 3) In addition these effects vary depending on the type of job.