In the first stage of the information technology era, we have witnessed the work situation similar to that of the mass-production era in which technology dictated human work. These developments remind us of the epoch-making researches reported by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations which advocated the co-optimization of social and technical systems in designing work place organizations. Therefore, an empirical investigation was conducted if the sociotechnical systems approach is valid in information technology era.

As a result of regression analysis with productivity, adaptability to change and job commitment as the dependent variables, the sociotechnical systems model was generally supported. In particular, for all three dependent variables, IT variables turned out statistically significant with work place climate as the most dominant social factor. Further, statistically significant specific IT variables differed from case to case, and in the case of job commitment, two IT variables turned out negative. These findings suggest that Japanese corporations are making careful use of IT for purposes of increasing productivity and adaptability to change, but not sufficient considerations are given to employees’ job commitment.

In order for Japanese manufacturing companies to build the sustained competitive advantages, it is necessary to provide the new products that are highly original and are continuously suited to customer needs. Hence, it is necessary to encourage leadership that promotes resarchers’ creative performance In this study, analyzed intrinsic motivation and communication, which were regarded as the factors that affect creativity, were analyzed, and the mechanism whereby leadership promotes creative performance of researchers were clarified.

Researchers and their leaders and leaders’ supervisors from 7 companies of industrial parts suppliers participated in the present study. The questionnaires were collected from 645 researchers and 112 project leaders and 22 managers. As a result of analysis, the following was found.

First, transformational leadership is positively related to creative performance of researchers. Further, intrinsic motivation and intra-project communication mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and creative performance. Second, non-controlling leadership is not related to creative performance of researchers significantly. Nevertheless, it moderates the relationship between transformational leadership and creative performance in such a way that for researchers under stronger non-controlling leadership, transformational leadership has a stronger, positive relationship with creative performance than for researchers under weaker non-controlling leadership. Third, gate-keeping leadership is positively related to creative performance of researchers. Moreover, intrinsic motivation, intra-project communication, and internal communication mediate the relationship between gate-keeping leadership and creative performance.

Certainly, transformational leadership promotes creative performance of researchers.

However, its effect is encouraged by non-controlling leadership.

Furthermore, gate-keeping leadership also promotes creative performance. Hence, managers should focus on not only performance as researcher but also researcher’s leadership, when they select researcher as leader. Moreover, it is necessary to develop leadership systematically.

The influence of qualitative mainstreaming of non-regular employees upon their degree of job satisfaction has been studied mainly based on part-timers. The qualitative mainstreaming means part of the part-timers work as same volume and or same kind of job as regular employees. The past studies have focused on the fact that these part-timers do not find satisfaction in the wage differences with regular employees. However, there are several kinds of non-regular employees other than part-timers in the Japanese labor market, such as contract employees, temporary agency workers and so called quasi-part-timers whose working hours are almost the same as those of regular employees. And the past studies have not sufficiently focused on the matter considering the diversification of employment status.

In this paper, using the micro data which was collected by JILPT, the degree of job satisfaction of some types of non-regular employees is analyzed. It will be considered to what extent the personnel policies of individual businesses and the quantitative or qualitative mainstreaming affect the degree of satisfaction of contract employees, short-time part-timers and long-time part-timers.

The main fact findings are as below;

Firstly, company personnel policies toward non-regular employees may lower the level of satisfaction. This is proved from the low level of satisfaction of non-regular employees working at companies with such systems as a “Non-regular to Regular conversion system” for contract workers and training policies for long-time part-timers. One background that can be imagined is that such company plans for the non-regular employees do not cover all such workers, and discontent may arise towards those particular non-regular employees that are eligible for such plans. Secondly, the results using the non-regular employees’ own self-awareness toward the nature of their job as an indicator of a qualitative mainstreaming ended up being cleared. Specifically, contract employees conscious of themselves doing “non routine work” or the “same work as regular employees,” have low satisfaction with job as a whole, wages and training.