This article empirically examined whether Chinese trade unions (gong hui) have wage effects using the CFPS dataset under the situation that unionsʼ presentative functions in collective industrial relations are questionable. This article took two problems into consideration—the estimation bias caused by unobserved heterogeneity and the endogenous problem brought by self-selection bias. The results indicate that Chinese trade unions have wage effects that could boost the protection of laborersʼ interests. This study reveals that the wage effects are more significant for workers who join self-owned companies or hold rural household registration. On the other hand, the limitations of unionsʼ function are also confirmed. Specifically, workers who joined self-owned companies and workers born in rural areas have lower trade union participation rates. Therefore, they lack formal channels to raise a complaint. Thus, this article implies that improving Chinese trade unions will be an essential issue for the future, including strengthening the implementation of a policy called ʻtrade union membership administrative measuresʼ and enhancing the unionsʼ function in expanding the applicable scope of the labor-management negotiation system.

In this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers of corporations who were perceived by others fostering shared leadership among their jurisdiction teams. The purpose of this study was to understand the process and contents of their behaviors to foster shared leadership. The results were analyzed by M-GTA. Results show that the process by which managers fostering shared leadership among their teams was as follows: Ⅰ . Placemaking phase, Ⅱ . Initiation phase for fostering shared leadership, Ⅲ . Acceleration phase for fostering shared leadership. Regarding the contents of the behaviors, in addition to the behaviors corresponding to the leadership behaviors of the formal leader, which have been shown as antecedents of shared leadership in previous studies, new behaviors were found. Those were behaviors directed toward managers themselves and behaviors related to fostering psychological safety in teams. It was also revealed that some of the leadership behaviors in these phases were demonstrated only by managers, while others were encouraged toward team members to demonstrate same as managers.

This study clarifies how the issues of gender wage gap and disparity by employment types are related, yet separated. Given the high percentage of nonstandard employment in the Japanese labor market and a high concentration of women in nonstandard employment, the inclusion of nonstandard employment is indispensable when evaluating the gender gap. Nonstandard employment has increased significantly since the 1980s, when the Equal Employment Opportunity Law prohibiting gender descrimination was enacted. One of the reasons for the rapid increase in nonstandard employment was “course-based HR management,” which justifies different treatment for employees in different courese. Thus, the gender wage gap has been justified allocation to different HR courses. However, the distinction between standard and nonstandard employment is unclear in terms of work conditions and job contents. Nonstandard employment is defined according to how workers are designated in the workplace rather than by objective criteria such as working hours or length of contract terms. Although some studies have criticized the ambiguity of the nonstandard employment category, most studies takes the category for granted, inadvertently reinforcing the status quo including significant wage disparities. Thus, we need to reconcile the dichotomous views on these two categories, that is the assumption that standard/nonstandard employees are different in terms of job contents and skills and should be treated separately, through empirical research to ensure workplace equity.