Search results

The paper sets out to explore how Japanese workers want to allocate their time to work and private life in different stages of life. To examine whether they prefer to reduce hours in paid work and spend more time on family and leisure.

A statistical analysis was conducted using data from a survey conducted among 3,800 Japanese automotive workers in 2000. Analysis consists of mean comparisons of ideal proportion of work across different stages of life, and comparison of attitudes toward taking leave by age and job type.

The results of this paper show that a majority of Japanese workers, regardless of age and job type, have a strong preference to work constantly without major career disruptions between ages 20 and 60, then reduce drastically the time spent in paid work after job retirement at age 60. The results suggest that, although Japanese today increasingly recognize the importance of integrating work and private life, deviation from the “normalcy” of work life, or constant working over life course, is still unlikely to be welcome.

Data used in this study were collected only among automotive workers. Caution should be used when generalizing the results to a broader range of industries in Japan.

This study addresses a simple but important question whether and how Japanese want to integrate work and private life over life course. This question deserves a close scrutiny to understanding whether a career perspective over life course is changing in today's Japan.

This study examines the impact of work-to-family conflict (WFC) on depression for employed husbands and wives in Japan, the moderating role of own psychological family involvement in the relationship between WFC and depression, and the moderating role of spouses’ family and job involvement in the relationship between WFC and depression.

We use a matched sample of Japanese employed husbands and wives to examine the relationships between inter-spousal dynamics about work–family conflict and psychological well-being.

We found that (1) the effect of WFC on depression was larger for wives, (2) husbands’ and wives’ own psychological family involvement did not moderate the relationship between WFC and their depression, and (3) spousal family and job involvement operated as a moderator only for husbands. While WFC reduced husbands’ depression when their wives were highly involved in their jobs psychologically and behaviorally, WFC increased husbands’ depression when their wives were highly involved in family at both psychological and behavioral levels.

Employers need to take into account the importance of looking simultaneously at the ways employed husbands and wives work when trying to understand how workplace conditions may be changed to ameliorate psychological well-being for spouses.

This study suggests that an experience of conflict between work and family is likely to deteriorate the psychological well-being for employed husbands and wives in non-Western contexts like Japan. Furthermore, spousal involvements in family and work domains are likely to play moderating roles in the relationship between WFC and depression.

The purpose of this special issue is to report on the current state of Japanese corporations and inform the world of elements which have been sustained or changed to contribute to the emergence of a new management model in Japan.

This special issue is based on a survey of 1,800 employees of Toyota Group companies aiming to investigate how wages and promotion affect motivation.

The first section focuses on “continuity of tradition”. In this section, two papers are presented to report an analytical framework and some findings to account for traditional and changing models of Japanese career development.

This special issue focuses on the “Japanese economic miracle”, which happened in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, which attracted attention from both business and academic communities.

The purpose of this paper is to comment on the articles presented in the Special Issue of Career Development International on “Change and continuity of traditional Japanese careers” (Vol. 11 No. 3).

Commentary is provided to contextualize traditional careers and a quick overview is presented on the likely forces of change at work in Japan.

Continuity is seen as being more prominent in Japan than change because the so‐called employee sovereignty model of organization still holds sway in most large Japanese firms.

The paper offers some observations, exhortations and prophecies that pertain to the research reported in the Special Issue and locates this work in a context slightly one‐off from the work itself.