The Special Feature in this issue of Social Policy and Labor Studies includes two papers based on presentations at the plenary session of the JASPS 140^th Biannual Conference in 2020. This Introduction outlines the main points presented in the papers, and discusses the major issues raised by the paper presentations and subsequent discussion. With the vision of the 2020 Tokyo Games as the “Most innovative Olympics ever to stimulate positive global reform,” Diversity & Inclusion was set as the driving motive for realizing the vision. In Japan, expectations are high for the Games, especially regarding their economic impact. In addition, however, several problems have been pointed out, including the possibility that large-scale urban redevelopment could promote social exclusion. Therefore, in this Special Feature, we examine the negative aspects that could result from large-scale urban redevelopment and discuss the expected legacies, notably the promotion of social participation by the disabled and the advance of policies in support of gender/SOGI （Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity）.

What will Tokyo be left with after the Olympic and Paralympic Games ? This article demonstrates that the previous Games have left little positive legacy to the host cities, and that there seems to be no reason to expect otherwise for Tokyo. Applying the definition of “legacy” as “structural changes” caused by a mega-event, it is argued that the widely claimed “economic impact” is unlikely and should not be considered as a legacy. The article then deconstructs the myths of tourism legacies, before detailing the negative legacies of Olympic-related urban development. Finally, it introduces the concept of celebration capitalism as a theory to explain the comprehensive structural changes that the Games truly bring about. Referring to the incidents of recent years, I argue that celebration capitalism seems also to have materialized in Tokyo.

Having already hosted the Paralympic Games in Tokyo in 1964 and Nagano in 1998, Japan will once again be hosting the Paralympic Games in Tokyo in 2021. Those Paralympic Games have generated major impacts on social policymaking, especially related to policies for the disabled and the continued development of disability sports. For example, the 1964 Tokyo Paralympic Games encouraged a shift toward having the disabled leave welfare institutions to live in communities. Moreover, vocational rehabilitation was promoted to help the disabled participate independently in community life. The 1998 Nagano Paralympic Games encouraged the disabled to compete in sports. The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games Organizing Committee has produced 3 visions regarding the Games, one of them stating that the Games should contribute to the creation of an inclusive society. Such positive influences can be seen in Japan. After the bidding for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, the Act for Eliminating Discrimination against Persons with Disabilities was implemented, and other related legislation has since been enacted as well. Paralympians came to take part in the policymaking processes at both national and community levels. There have also been numerous changes since the bidding for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. This paper discusses how the Paralympic Games have influenced the development of social policy in Japan.

A changing political and social environment threatens the mission of American universities, along with the livelihoods of employees. Budget cuts have forced universities to cut costs, and to rely ever more heavily on low-paid and non-regular faculty and staff. American universities have steadily increased their reliance on low-wage employees to operate over the past four decades. The ratio of tenured and tenure-track university faculty fell from 45 percent to 30 percent from 1975 to 2015, while that of contingent faculty rose from 55 percent to 70 percent, even though the latter have the same classroom-performance responsibilities and expectations. Furthermore, graduate students and support staff provide services, ranging from research and teaching to technical support, that are more vital than ever, yet they also suffer poor employment conditions.

　In reaction to these trends, unionization efforts and campaigns for faculty and staff rights have been gathering momentum. Unsurprisingly, these struggles are consistently undermined by the unfriendly political environment that has for years hampered the labor union movement. The obstacles include Supreme Court rulings that have upheld employer-friendly interpretations of labor laws, making it difficult for faculty, staff, and graduate students to claim rights to organize unions and conduct collective bargaining. On the other hand, the recent upsurge in union activism, notably in public education, has provided moral and material support for labor activism, helping to bring improved conditions for some employees. This paper will examine the current situation of faculty and staff employment in higher education, with special attention to organizing activities and to the ways in which the political environment assists or hinders union activity.

The proportion of fixed-term employment is remarkably high in university faculty and staff in Germany. Here, we clarify the employment structure and the employment situations of faculty and staff in German universities to compare with those of other countries. Furthermore, we focus on Humboldt University Berlin and investigate the relationship between researchers’ work and their lives. Through interviews with a service trade union （Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft）, and researchers and staff in the human resources department at Humboldt University, along with analysis of documents from the aforementioned department, we found that employment conditions of academic researchers were structurally more unstable in Germany than in Japan. Nearly all the researchers were employed on fixed-term contracts except for a minority of professors who are appointed as civil servants with unlimited tenure. In contrast, the employment situation of staff such as research assistants was found to have improved significantly in recent years. Fixed-term contracts for academic researchers have a long history and are currently accepted in German society because of good working conditions, including opportunities for flexible arrangement of working time, despite a limited period of employment.

The number of so-called “full-time” part-time lecturers has increased greatly since 1995, doubling from 45,370 in 1998 to 93,145 in 2016. This number accounts for one-third of university instructors. Although highly educated, these “full-time” part-time lecturers are among the government-made working poor, earning less than 3 million yen a year unless they teach more than eight classes a week. The direct cause for the increase of “full-time” part-time lecturers is that faculty posts have been limited relative to the number of graduate students, whose numbers skyrocketed after the introduction of the graduate school prioritization plan in 1991. It was originally intended that part-time lecturers would fill shortages in undergraduate instruction as core faculty members moved to graduate schools in accordance with the graduate school prioritization plan. In short, university operation is now made feasible only through dependence on the system that embeds “full-time” part-time lecturers as a core teaching human resource.

Nihon University has been firing part-time lecturers and reducing their classes since November 2017, and the Union of University Part-Time Lecturers in the Tokyo Area has worked to protect the professors. I was elected Employee Majority Representative for the Economics Faculty for the 2018 academic year, and in 2019, I advocated the following two policies. First, if the Dean of the Faculty of Economics forces through the dismissal of part-time teachers, rejects the extension of teaching contracts, or decreases the number of classes, I would use my authority as Majority Representative to oppose the policies. Above all, I would refuse to conclude an Article 36 agreement, which is necessary to allow employees to work overtime. This would be a serious measure since full-time professors have heavy educational burdens, working in excess of the standard for class hours and doing considerable overtime. There were four concrete proposals. 1） The standard teaching load of five classes a week should be regarded as a 40-hour work week covering the entire year on the grounds that full-time teachers need to prepare classes, study, and perform university duties. 2） Additional classes, especially graduate school courses, should count as 120 hours overtime per class. 3） If full-time teachers conduct these additional classes, they should receive not the standard additional class allowance but overtime payment. 4） The upper limit of overtime work under an Article 36 agreement should be 360 hours.

There is great potential for utilizing the authority of the Employee Majority Representative to improve work conditions for non-regular faculty members and other university staff.

This paper regards the ethics of care as the theoretical foundation of social welfare, despite the fact that in the public/private dichotomy it has been considered to be applicable only to the private sphere. By investigating, with reference to the ideas of several care ethicists, what an ideal social welfare policy should be from the viewpoint of the ethics of care, this paper demonstrates that contemporary Japanese disability policy is characterized by liberalism （the ethics of justice）. Liberalism presupposes a ‘strong’ individual as the target of disability laws. In contrast, the ethics of care deems human vulnerability as natural and inevitable.

Accordingly, this paper argues that we should adopt the perspective of the ethics of care as an alternative to that of liberalism when examining the nature of social welfare policy. We as a species are vulnerable, and our lives are relational and mutually interdependent. This reality of human nature should underpin social welfare policy.

SHRM, which is basically management- and finance-oriented, developed in the U. S. in the 1980s. The core concept of SHRM is there must be a link between human resource management and corporate performance （the HRM-P link）. That is, if human resources are obtained and utilised strategically, they must become the source of competitive advantage and help organisations or firms improve their performance. However, some British and Japanese scholars criticise SHRM for its theoretical defects :

⑴There is a critical shortcoming regarding how to demonstrate the HRM-P link. Most research is simply quantitative and does not address the links between HRM and corporate performance. That is, researchers conduct ‘measurement without theory’.

⑵Because of its increasingly finance-driven orientation, SHRM has abandoned a great deal of information regarding human behaviour accumulated by the earlier theory of personnel management, with its strong regard for behavioural science, to become a “human-less” theory. The discarding of such important insights means that SHRM analyses lack humanity. Moreover, it may not be an overstatement to say that the finance orientation of SHRM should be reconsidered in light of the growing importance of CSR.

In this paper, I will demonstrate that these criticisms are valid, and will discuss them in detail by scrutinising the SHRM literature. In addition, from a practical viewpoint, I will suggest future directions for HRM research.

This study investigates the future direction of European welfare states by analyzing social expenditure fluctuations and related variables in 28 EU （European Union） countries. Although social expenditures respond to social and economic changes, they are also affected by unique features of each country, including its values, norm awareness, and institutional structure. In addition, member countries are required to follow the strict fiscal discipline imposed by the EU following the sovereign debt crisis. As a result, under structural and fiscal constraints, convergence in the movement of social expenditures in the EU has slowed. The present trend is toward maintaining or strengthening the characteristics of each welfare state group. From the perspective of social expenditures, the European welfare states can be expected to converge within three groups. The first group consists of social democratic states that emphasize in-kind benefits in response to new social risks. The second group includes Southern European states, liberal states, and new EU member states that emphasize cash benefits responding to traditional social risks. The third group consists of conservative states that are gradually addressing new social risks.

With the growing number of student loan defaulters drawing attention in East Asian countries, expectations are growing for the Income-Contingent Loan （ICL） scheme, in which the monthly amount of repayment can be adjusted in accordance with the borrower’s financial situation. Previous studies, however, have primarily focused on the feasibility and effectiveness of the ICL scheme. Few studies consider which factors reduce repayment burdens on borrowers.

To better understand the relevant variables, this paper examines cases in South Korea, which in 2010 became the first nation in East Asia to introduce the ICL scheme. To analyze the conditions influencing the design and introduction of the ICL scheme, interviews were conducted with 16 ICL borrowers, demonstrating that they regard student loans as “rational investments” rather than “debts”, and revealing that both the internal mechanism of ICL, such as its flexible repayment process, and the external conditions, i. e., the government’s utilization of national student loans as a social service to support young people, help to ease repayment burdens on borrowers.