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This study aims to examine how the COVID-19 pandemic affected telework initiatives in Japanese companies and investigate the factors that affect telework based on the technology, organization and environment (TOE) model, through the analysis of published documents.

Document analysis was adopted. Documents were collected from English news articles in the Nikkei Asian Review and Nikkei Asia which cover Japan's economy, industries and markets. The results of surveys by the Persol Research Institute and Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry were also provided to discuss factors promoting and hindering telework. Content analysis was adopted to analyse the documents.

COVID-19 had an unavoidable impact on the implementation of telework that the government had previously failed to instigate. Japanese listed companies tend to implement telework, whereas small- and medium-sized companies are struggling. The ratio of telework has been low even after the declaration of the state of emergency because there exist organizational, technological and environmental barriers to telework in Japan.

This study contributes to discussions on work style reform by focusing on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on telework. This research also gives new insight into operationalization of telework in organizations not only in Japan but also in other countries known for low rates of telework and inflexible work styles such as Korea.

In Japan, health-care systems have long been supported by physicians' long working hours. To solve this problem, there is an urgent need to improve the working environment for physicians while practicing patient-centered medicine and controlling health-care costs. This paper aims to examine the effect of task shifting to nurses and discuss its usefulness from the perspective of health-care value co-creation.

This paper analyzes task shifting to nurses in acute care hospitals in Japan as a solution for the shortage of anesthesiologists. The authors discuss how the value was created from the perspective of the health-care ecosystem, with conceptual consideration of the value co-creation mechanism through patient-centered practices.

The study showed that task shifting initiatives in Japan can improve the motivation of nurses through human resource development while maintaining high quality. The study also suggested that task shifting from physicians to nurses may contribute to improving net income and maintaining the health-care system.

The findings are highly reproducible and can be immediately applied to initiatives at other medical institutions in Japan. Furthermore, it is suggested that these findings might provide some perspective on the realignment of fragmented healthcare in the USA.

It was confirmed in practical terms that micro-level initiatives have an impact on the macro level as well. In addition, the academic presentation of the concept has contributed to the deepening of value research.

The primary purpose of this descriptive study was to compare the levels of, and relationships among mental health problems, mental health shame, self-compassion, work engagement and work motivation between workers in Japan (collectivistic and success-driven culture) and the Netherlands (individualistic and quality-oriented culture).

A cross-sectional design, where convenience samples of 165 Japanese and 160 Dutch workers completed self-report measures about mental health problems, shame, self-compassion, engagement and motivation, was used. Welch t-tests, correlation and regression analyses were conducted to compare (1) the levels of these variables, (2) relationships among these variables and (3) predictors of mental health problems, between the two groups.

Dutch workers had higher levels of mental health problems, work engagement and intrinsic motivation, and lower levels of shame and amotivation than Japanese workers. Mental health problems were associated with shame in both samples. Mental health problems were negatively predicted by self-compassion in Japanese, and by work engagement in Dutch employees.

The novelty of this study relates to exploring differences in work mental health between those two culturally contrasting countries. Our findings highlight potential cultural differences such as survey responding (Japanese acquiescent responding vs Dutch self-enhancement) and cultural emphases (Japanese shame vs Dutch quality of life). Job crafting, mindfulness and enhancing ikigai (meaningfulness in life) may be helpful to protect mental health in these workers, relating to self-compassion and work engagement. Findings from this study would be particularly useful to employers, managers and staff in human resources who work with cross-cultural workforce.

This paper studied organizational culture in two different countries during the COVID-19 lockdown, a stressful social and labor context that obliged entire working populations to telecommute from home. We considered how people have coped with this new scenario, bearing in mind that one of the most relevant aspects of organizational culture and climate is the face-to-face interactions that take place in offices. With telework, that important physical relationship disappears and, since body language has its own grammar, work-related messages logically become open to misunderstanding between leaders and subordinates, as well as among peers.

An anonymous questionnaire (in Spanish and Russian) was distributed through the LinkedIn social media platform. The study intended to capture responses from white-collar professionals with managerial profiles, including those occupying high and medium-level positions, consultants, section directors, and project managers across different industries in both the countries. We collected 142 responses from Spain and 115 from Kazakhstan, with a total of 257 valid responses. Principal component's analysis (PCA), to obtain factorial axis was applied. We then performed a factor analysis of those principal components using Coheris Analytics SPAD 9.1.

The first finding herein points to the fact that the same experience had different consequences in these two different places, which can be traced back to national-cultural values. Spain and Kazakhstan share some common values and, at the same time, are culturally opposite. People fear uncertainty and one of the best ways to avoid this feeling is to provide them with technical and emotional support to manage a situation. During the COVID-19 lockdown, professionals from both countries expected their bosses to be assertive, driven, attentive and encouraging. And it seems they got just that. Secondly, a robust structure is mandatory for feeling secure: workers reported devoting more hours to telecommuting at home and even felt that their jobs were invading their personal lives, but they handled it because they knew to whom they should report. Procedures, rules, and methods were clear enough to avoid uncertainty. They even invented new rituals, patterns and practices that helped to reinforce their sense of belonging to the team. On top of this, in their responses, they noted that leaders acted consistently, even admirably, during lockdown and, for this reason, they gained their subordinates' respect.

Responses from female participants more than doubled those from males in this sample. Women are assumed to prefer flexible working conditions so that they can better take care of children and/or elderly or dependent persons, but this could just be a long-standing bias. On the other hand, the incorporation of women into professional life has feminized work environments, translating into more concern for workers' personal circumstances and more awareness of the human relationships therein. Thus, independent of the country studied, gender is another factor to consider for future research.

This article proposes further exploratory study of how organizational contexts are affected by unexpected, informal and even radical changes, as well as of organizations' ability to manage said changes by looking to their cultural values.

Facing a common enemy— the coronavirus— seems to have made workers more positive and less prone to complaining. Workers have been resolute and have tried their best not only in their individual work, but also with their co-workers and teams. The data suggests that, even when analyzing two diverse countries in terms of their cultural historical, and sociological contexts, companies' reactions impacted their employees somewhat similarly and engendered similar responses. At the same time, the reactions of Spanish and Kazakhstani professionals vary on certain aspects, and, surprisingly, converge in terms of avoiding uncertainty, which suggests a conservative reaction in both countries. This study concludes that structure (clarity of procedures, norms, patterns) and leaders' recognition of their employees' efforts to overcome uncertainty were of utmost importance.

This study aims to examine how companies persuaded their employees to be present at offices during the COVID-19 pandemic and how remote and non-remote work practices affected employee performance.

Firm strategies are assumed to follow the principles of legitimacy and efficiency. However, these principles are often contradictory and incompatible. This study explored how companies legitimized non-remote work during the pandemic in Japan, and how in-person work practices affected individual employee productivity. The authors conducted a survey in the country, and the collected data was quantitatively analyzed.

On the basis of our empirical study on institutional work providing rationales for maintaining existing business practices, the authors found that Japanese companies often used institutional logics that included the inevitability of employees’ obedience to company policy, the lack of employees’ digital resources at home and the necessity of face-to-face customer dealing to legitimize their non-adoption of telework, even amid the emergency. The findings also indicate that the adoption of in-person work was negatively related to individual employee performance.

The current study aims to make a theoretical contribution to the literature on institutional maintenance and institutional work, which, till now, has only focused on institutional change rather than institutional maintenance. Second, few studies have empirically investigated the contradiction between legitimacy and efficiency, although the literature on organizational legitimacy assumes that individuals and organizations are not always rational.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the roles of a supply chain management (SCM) department. To achieve that, this study empirically examines the relationship between internal supply chain structure and operational performance, using survey data collected from 108 Japanese manufacturers.

Based on a literature review of not only organizational theory but also other fields such as marketing, logistics management, operations management and SCM, this study focused on two structural properties, formalization and centralization and divided operational performance to firm-centric efficiency and customer-centric responsiveness. To examine the analytical model using these dimensions, this study conducted a structural equation modeling.

The correlation between centralization of operational tasks and centralization of strategic tasks, the impacts of centralization of both tasks on formalization and the effect of formalization on responsiveness performance were demonstrated. In addition, the reasons for formalization not positively influencing efficiency performance were explored through follow-up interviews.

Manufacturers need to formalize, as much as possible, a wide range of SCM tasks to realize operational excellence. To establish such formalized working methods, it is effective to centralize the authorities of both operational and strategic tasks in a particular department. In addition, inefficiency due to strict logistics service levels is a problem that all players involved in the supply chain of various industries should work together to solve.

The theoretical contribution of this study is that the authors established an empirical process that redefined the constructs of formalization and centralization, developed these measures and examined the impacts of these structural properties on operational performance.