The Dynamics of Poverty and the Promotion of Transition from Non‐Regular to Regular Employment in Japan: Economic Effects of Minimum Wage Revision and Job Training Support

Comparison between Japan and other advanced countries shows that the relative poverty rate is high in Japan, and that many of the poor households are those with a non‐regular worker. As for mobility between income classes, the proportion of households remaining in the poor class for a long period of time in Japan is close to the average for EU countries. The panel estimation of its effect on wages shows that the raising of the minimum wage is statistically significantly associated with an increase in wages of non‐regular workers, in particular, female, but does not seem to decrease employment. The result shows that for male non‐regular workers, firm‐provided training promotes their transition to regular employment, and that for female non‐regular workers, occupational training promotes their transition to regular employment at different firms.     

Intra‐firm differentiation of compensation systems: evidence from US high‐technology firms

While scholars have long recognised the influence of firm decisions on aspects of compensation (e.g. pay level and pay mix), prior compensation studies offer an ambiguous understanding regarding their scope. Some studies argue that firms customise compensation decisions according to employee groups, whereas others assume that firm compensation decisions apply uniformly throughout a firm. To address this research gap, the current study analyses pay levels and pay mixes for R&D employees and administrative employees in US high‐technology firms. Our empirical analyses show that firms make distinct compensation decisions for these two job families, but these decisions are ultimately consistent. These findings highlight firms' intention to strike a balance between customising compensation systems according to employee groups and maintaining internal consistency. Our findings add interesting insights to the strategic HRM and talent management literatures, which claim that firms should differentiate among employees when designing HRM systems.     

The Relationships of Informal High Performance Work Practices to Job Satisfaction and Workplace Profitability

Recent empirical evidence reveals considerable divergence between management reports and employee reports regarding organizational high performance work practices (HPWPs). This divergence implies that employees may not participate in some HPWPs that are formally present in their organizations, but also, that employees may participate in HPWPs that are not formally present in their organizations. In this study, we examine the implication of the latter case (i.e., employee participation in “informal” HPWPs) for employee‐level and organization‐level outcomes. Our analyses, using data from the Statistics Canada Workplace and Employee Survey, suggest that employee participation in informal HPWPs is associated with enhanced job satisfaction and workplace profitability in a similar way as employee participation in formal HPWPs is associated with these outcomes.     

Minimal Entropy Martingale Measures of Jump Type Price Processes in Incomplete Assets Markets

We consider the incomplete assets market and assume that the market has no-arbitrage. Then there are many equivalent martingale measures associated with the market. Among them, a probability measure which minimizes the relative entropy with respect to the original probability measure P, has a special importance. Such a measure is called the minimal entropy martingale measure (MEMM). In a previous paper, we have proved the existence theorem of the MEMM for the price processes given in the form of the diffusion type stochastic differential equation. In this article we discuss the MEMM of the jump type price processes, or especially of the log Lévy processes, and we give the explicit form of MEMM.     

Small business in Japan: A historical perspective

Small firms have been considered to be an important element of the industrial structure in Japan since the turn of the century. In this paper the history of small business in Japan is examined. In particular, the dramatic development of the technological and managerial ability of small firms within the last two decades is analyzed. Under the regime of rapid industrial restructuring in Japan, small firms are identified as developing their own diversive management strategies, especially with respect to international trade and the implementation of information and high technology.     

UNDERSTANDING INNOVATION AS A COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEM: CASE STUDIES FROM SHIMADZU AND NEC

Abstract. This paper describes innovation from the viewpoint of biologic evolution, a complex adaptive system. First, three characteristics of complex adaptive systems – variation, interaction and selection – are explained. Second, we propose that variation in R&D activities is brought about by innovation seeds, which can be subdivided into reproduction and mutation types. Third, taking into account the concept of an innovation seed, we propose our innovation creation process model. Finally, our proposed concept is validated through case studies of (i) a mass analyser business by Shimadzu and (ii) a carbon nanotube business by NEC.     

Overcoming coordination failure using a mechanism based on gradualism and endogeneity

We examine three tools that can enhance coordination success in a repeated multiple-choice coordination game. Gradualism means that the game starts as an easy coordination problem and moves gradually to a more difficult one. The Endogenous Ascending mechanism implies that a gradual increase in the upper bound of coordination occurs only if coordination with the Pareto superior equilibrium in a stage game is attained. The Endogenous Descending mechanism requires that when the game’s participants fail to coordinate, the level of the next coordination game be adjusted such that the game becomes simpler. We show that gradualism may not always work, but in such instances, its effect can be reinforced by endogeneity. Our laboratory experiment provides evidence that a mechanism that combines three tools, herein termed the “Gradualism with Endogenous Ascending and Descending (GEAD)” mechanism, works well. We discuss how the GEAD mechanism can be applied to real-life situations that suffer from coordination failure.     

Theoretical and experimental investigations of the performance of keyword auction mechanisms

Two keyword auction mechanisms, the Generalized Second‐Price auction (GSP) and the Vickrey‐Clarke‐Groves mechanism (VCG), were compared theoretically and experimentally. The former is widely used in practice; the latter is not, but it has a dominant strategy equilibrium where all participants bid their true values. In the theoretical investigation, by applying the “locally envy‐free Nash equilibrium” to the VCG, we found that the allocations are efficient and that upper and lower bounds of the auctioneer's revenue coincide in the two mechanisms. A laboratory experiment, in which the revenues and efficiencies were similar in both mechanisms, supported this result.     

Designing division of labor with strategic uncertainty within organizations: Model analysis and a behavioral experiment

For managers who are responsible for designing the division of labor, there are prototypes such as the divisional and functional designs, but insufficient knowledge of what to consider when selecting them. To address this shortfall, we developed a multiple economic game model with a two-step structure to examine the strategic interdependence between the two prototypes. We analyzed the model from three different perspectives: a traditional analysis, an equilibrium analysis, and a behavioral analysis followed by a laboratory experiment. While the first analysis revealed that the functional design would outperform divisional design when individual decisions are exogenous, the game theoretic equilibrium analysis demonstrated that the two prototype designs have similar equilibria when individuals are rational. However, assuming that individuals made autonomous decisions with accessible information under given organizational structures, behavioral analysis derived predictions that the divisional design was more likely to produce favorable consequences than the functional design. This prediction was confirmed by the economic experiment in the laboratory. These results imply that the strategic uncertainty within organizations differs according to the designs and affects organizational consequences.