This paper describes how organizational practices and systems in Japanese companies affect the retention of highly skilled foreign workers. Recently, many foreigners work in large Japanese companies which sustain traditional employment systems. However, most of them leave the companies after several years, which is considered a problem from Japanese companies because they require long run commitment for their workers. Previous literatures emphasize that foreign workers are reluctant to work in Japanese companies due to career development concerns. This paper focuses on foreign workers' subjective perspectives on career to elucidate their actual decision-making of how organizational factors affect their attitudes about working in the organization. Qualitative analysis of interviews with twenty foreign workers in large Japanese companies, reveals three results. First, organizational practices and systems affecting foreign workers' attitudes toward work in Japanese companies can be roughly divided into four categories, and these factors do not necessarily encourage their intention to leave the organization. Second, organizational factors enhance foreign workers' intention to remain in the company through how the organizations treat them. Third, highly skilled foreign workers have difficulty in choosing their career in Japanese companies because they need to keep up both their personal life in Japan and work in the company.

Downsizing, cost reduction, and layoffs are common in the airline industry today. Moreover, IT and the automated machines substitute employees' works. The employees might feel Role Conflict (RC) and Role Ambiguity (RA). The literature indicates that RC and RA lead to deterioration of employees’ performance (e.g., Rizzo et al., 1970). The purpose of this study is to investigate how emotional labor and emotional competence affect human resource development and organizational performance. Concretely, testing the hypotheses, whether the emotional labor aspects restore the decreasing propensity of trust toward their employer and the increasing propensity of emotional exhaustion. I conducted a questionnaire survey and obtained a sample of 413 flight attendants working for an Asian airline. The collected data were quantitatively analyzed. The finding of this study is, first, deep acting moderates the decreasing propensity of trust toward the employer, when RC is highly perceived by the employees. Second, affective delivery moderates the increasing propensity of emotional exhaustion, while the human service employees are generally prone to increasing their emotional exhaustion, when RA is highly perceived. As a conclusion, while Hochschild (1983) showed that the emotional labor can be commercialized and serve the company's commercial purpose, the result of this study suggests that the emotional labor might use as a psychological prevention tool for employees from emotional exhaustion and burnout. In addition, the emotional competence creates and sustains a long-term growth of the organization.

On March 11, 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake triggered an extremely severe nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, owned and operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). Before the accident, several experts and researchers had repeatedly pointed out a high possibility that tsunami would reach beyond the level assumed by TEPCO, as well as a possibility that such level of tsunami might cause severe accidents. However, TEPCO and the regulatory body (NISA) overlooked these warnings and did not take any preventive measure against tsunami. Consequently, Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was incapable of withstanding the tsunami that hit on the day. Due to these facts, the accident is regarded as a man-made disaster. Even today, more than 6 years after the accident, it has not been revealed why they underestimated the risk of tsunami and couldn't prevent the accident. This article suggests that this question can be partially answered by applying “groupthink” model which was developed by Irving Janis. This study analyzes the descriptions of two official reports on the Fukushima accident by Japanese government and National Diet. As the result, all antecedent conditions, six symptoms of groupthink and six symptoms of defective decision making are found in the accident reports. This study also suggests that an additional antecedent condition "existences of obvious and obscure risks" and a symptom of groupthink "procrastination of problem solving" could be included in the groupthink model.

In Japan, a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) frequently announces his/her voluntary resignation or accepts punitive consequences when a company faces a crisis whether or not he/she is directly involved in the negative event. This study regards CEO resignation and other punitive actions as a form of crisis communication, and it aims to identify the factors that impact the need for this type of communication. Even though CEO resignation is a common type of crisis-related communication in Japan, few studies have focused on it, while some practitioners have claimed that this response is a unique Japanese style of apology. This study examined 88 crises that occurred in Japan over the past 10 years. It provides an explanation for the three most common ways a CEO in Japan could respond to a crisis—resigning, accepting punitive consequences, or not being subjected to any punitive consequences—by addressing locus and controllability, the success of minimizing the damage of the original crisis, and the scale of the damage. The study's results show that a CEO resigns when he/she is the locus of the event and the crisis is controllable or when he/she fails to minimize the damage of the original crisis. A CEO experiences a punitive consequence, such as a salary reduction, when someone else associated with the organization is the focal point of the crisis and the crisis is controllable or the crisis causes damages, such as casualties or health problems. A CEO does not incur any punitive consequences when the locus is outside the company, or no damage is caused, or he/she succeeds in minimizing the damage. These factors broaden our understanding of the meaning of CEO resignation and other punitive actions in times of crisis. However, the effects of a CEO's voluntary actions should be studied to obtain a deeper understanding of the consequences.

This paper aims to clarify how people differentiate the past and future from the present through everyday practice in organizational life, adopting both theoretical and empirical approach. This research especially focuses on event time (Jaques, 1982), because either in retrospect or future-perfect thought, within which people differentiate the past or the future from the present, there is always a recognition of “event” beforehand. At this point, K. Weick and N. Luhmann have a common perspective. Weick's terms used in the theory of organizing implies his idea that with enactment or sensemaking, people recognize and divide present from past or future. Compared to Weick, Luhmann indicates present as a double distinction of reversibility and irreversibility (Luhmann, 1984), and that decisions within organizations separate its past and future. At this point, Luhmann has more emphasis on transitions of tense (past-present-future) than Weick, and thus he clarifies peoples' ability to control their tense within organizational life. And those may enable organizations to hold more time for exploitation intentionally which is essential for innovative creation. After examining the theoretical background, this paper applies theoretical perspective to an empirical study and illustrates how members' time representation in one Japanese internet content company can be understood with their decision making. In addition to it, this paper also considered how organizational structure relates to its recognition of time.

Agents that has been addressed social issues are frequently unable to scale up their activities. Therefore, the effect of social innovation has been limited to specific regions. It is necessary to build cooperative relationships between various organizations in order to diffuse social innovation. The key point for making this function effectively is interorganizational trust on networks. The purpose of this paper is to consider the following two research questions. The first question addresses what type of interorganizational trust is built by networks and how it develops. The second addresses how interorganizational trust facilitates the development of networks. The analytical method used in this paper is a qualitative analysis based on a case study. I made a comparative analysis of the case which interorganizational network has developed and the case in which it has collapsed. The following results were obtained. Interorganizational trust built by networks is affective trust. The networks make it possible to build affective trust quickly, and make the relationships between organizations long-term and strong. Cognitive trust is required when building networks and is built by temporary interaction between organizations. By interacting with cognitive trust and affective trust, the level of affective trust increases and activities in the networks evolves. This means that network members are motivated to develop their network. As this motivation develops to the behavioral level, the possibility of social innovation diffusion will increase.

The purpose of this research is to show the importance of focusing on spatial structure in organization theory. The spatial structure in this research refers to workplace settings (i.e. work spaces, facilities, workplace environment). Many studies in architecture and environmental psychology have revealed that the design of workplace settings affects the activities of staff using the workspace. In Europe and the United States, empirical research has accumulated in a small number of fields of business management studies (especially organization theory). On the other hand, Japanese researchers have not given sufficient attention to the relationship between workplace settings design and organization member activities in business management studies. However, in recent years, there have been relatively slight changes in such trends. Therefore, in addition to previous research that was mainly conducted in Europe and the United States, this study reviews research of organization theory relating to the design of workplace settings, which has been addressed in our country, and clarifies the current findings. Specifically, this research chose two independent variables, namely the distance between the members of the organization, and the degree of openness of the workplace (i.e. private or shared rooms, presence or absence of partitioning) and focused on the relationship between these variables and organization member activities (especially communication). Based on this work, in conclusion, we present some issues to be addressed in future empirical research.

This paper proposes three ideas for the possible roles of an organizational studies researcher (hereafter referred to as an OSR) when practicing the narrative approach described by Yoshinaga and Saito (in press). First, in order to device a method for extracting diverse narratives, it is necessary for an OSR to have a sufficiently trusting relationship with the practitioners. The positive attitudes of the practitioners trying to incorporate an OSR in order to encourage diversity management and of the researchers that are trying to contribute to co-constructing narratives in the field are required. Therefore, the OSR must appeal to the practitioners and demonstrate that the researcher can become someone who will promote diversity management within the organization. Second, by witnessing how the narrative approach is practiced, an OSR can be involved in the field without interfering with the autonomy of the practitioners. In addition, the OSR will be able to present positive meaning for each practitioner's practice. Finally, for an OSR to administrate the organizational practice of a narrative approach, after OSRs have been grouped into teams, they can conduct a process that consists of four steps: 1) a dialogue between the OSRs, 2) a presentation of the dialogue summary to the practitioners, 3) a dialogue with the practitioners and the researchers, and 4) a dialogue between the practitioners. The process needs to be designed as action research.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the importance of narrative approach in organization studies and practice. Narrative or story has discussed organization studies and practitioners in several years. Each of the studies clarify the life world among organizations, or invent tools of organizational change. However, such studies or practices has not sufficiently reviewed critically. As a result, it is unclear that why we should discuss narrative seriously. This paper clarifies the theoretical importance of narrative approach and clarify the theoretical and practical contribution in organization studies and practices in contemporary managerial condition. Future challenges of narrative approach will be discussed in conclusion.