Masako Takahashi

Does the Japanese employment system harm productivity performance?: A perspective from DEA-based productivity and sustainable HRM

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of employment systems on productivity performance in Japanese companies from the perspective of data envelopment analysis (DEA) and sustainable human resource management (HRM). Design/methodology/approach – In all, three employment models including employment indicators in addition to financial indicators are examined between 2006 and 2012 with 2,738 listed Japanese companies. This study verifies robustness of the results by testing multiple DEA measurements and conducting industrial analysis. Findings – The results indicate employment systems influence productivity performance in Japanese companies and the characteristics of Japanese employment systems harm productivity performance. In particular, higher liquidity of human resource is essential contrary to the philosophy of long-term employment. Furthermore, new initiatives such as promotion opportunities for women have not been successful up to now. Research limitations/implications – This stu...

Business cycle turning points based on DEA-discriminant analysis

ABSTRACT Recently, the turning points of business cycle are decided with wide viewpoints after passing a couple of years from the points. This study tries to develop a model for judging the turning points in real-time by using a non-parametric approach, DEA-discriminant analysis, because we have sometimes faced sudden changes of economy and non-parametric approaches are useful for covering these movements. The constructed model succeeds to separate periods in Japanese economic expanding and recession terms, and the model would be helpful for the real-time judgments of the turning points of business cycle.

INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON OF FLEXIBILITY IN INCOME MEASUREMENT AND OTHER ACCOUNTING PROCEDURES: ITS ECONOMICAL, GEOPOLITICAL, AND SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACH.

In order to explain international difference of accounting practice of each country with natural, economical, information, political, social, legal factors, we set four new accounting indices; namely Measurement concentrativeness, Measurement conservativeness, Disclosure concentrativeness, and Disclosure openness, which represented international difference of accounting practice of each country comprehensively, classified 55 countries into several.groups by these accounting indices, and saw the relations between the accounting indices and 29 environmental variables and the relation between each country group and them. Finally, we studied that international difference of accounting practice of each country was one of factors causing international difference of national economic power of each country, or not.