We report the first results for Japanese firms on the effects of clusters of participatory employment practices (or participation/employee involvement at the top level as well as at the grassroots level, and financial participation) by estimating production functions using new panel data. We...

Takao Kato outlines the types of human resource management practices (HRMPs) used in Japan and the effect of these employee participation programs on employee productivity and economic competitiveness. From these findings about the effects of HRMPs on Japanese productivity, Kato draws several...

Using both quantitative data from national surveys and qualitative data from our own field research, this paper provides evidence on changes in participatory employment practices in Japan during the economic slowdown in the 1990s. Overall, consistent with the complementarity of such practices...

Does competitive pressure foster innovation? In addressing this important question, priorstudies ignored a distinction between discrete innovation aiming at entirely new technologyand continuous improvement consisting of numerous incremental improvements andmodifications made upon the existing...

By using a large new panel of individual data, including objective measures of workerperformance, we provide some of the most rigorous evidence to date on several relateddimensions of enduring debates surrounding upward-sloping earnings-tenure profiles...