Productivity Effects of HRM Policies and Management Quality

With digital transformation (DX) accelerating during the pandemic, the employment system is undergoing a major transformation, including a shift to job-based employment. Many traditional companies are being forced to reform their HR systems around job standardization, HR decentralization, and employee autonomy in career development. The importance of general human capital investment will increase, and reskilling will become the biggest management challenge, as more and more companies provide opportunities for self-improvement, work to improve the skills of middle managers, develop management talent, and engage in health management policies.

The purpose of this project is to clarify how changes in the employment system affect corporate performance, what the return is on investment in human capital, including health investment, and how much progress has been made in management efforts to develop management talent and increase the diversity of the management team. In addition, we would like to promote the use of newly obtained data, contribute to the theoretical development of labor economics and behavioral economics, and conduct exploratory research from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, as well as identifying research questions that are important in light of the policy issues at hand.

Specifically, we will focus on the following 13 topics. (1) the determinants of long working hours, the effects of policies, and the relationship with career development; (2) communication and innovation in organizations; (3) the effects of long working hours and employee personality traits on mental health; (4) the effect of white-collar process improvement; (5) adaptation, coordination, and outsourcing; (6) the productivity effects of health management policies; (7) bias in 360-degree feedback; (8) external recruitment and internal sourcing of human resources; (9) the risk of social isolation and loneliness of workers in the workplaces; (10) engagement and productivity and the role of middle management; (11) management team composition and development of top managers; (12) spread and effectiveness of work style reform; and finally (13) human resource allocation and performance of overseas offices in multinational companies.

October 11, 2021 - March 31, 2024

(During the research project period, the research activity period is set from October 11, 2021 to September 30, 2023, and the data usage reporting period is set from October 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024.)