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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 conclusions for the direction that American policy might take in order to raise productivity in the United States. He advocates encouraging the diffusion of participatory HRMPs (both information-sharing and financial), supporting these programs once they are adopted, and recognizing the beneficial role of unions in employee participation. As to the role of government in fostering these programs, Kato found that in Japan government has played an informal and indirect role, primarily in the areas of data gathering, information dissemination, and education, rather than a direct role through interventions such as tax incentives (which are currently available to US firms adopting financial HRMPs).

With a growing prominence of sophisticated econometric research in a much-expanded field of New Economics ofParticipation (NEP), it is of particular value to learn about real-world examples of participatory and labor-managed firms in the advanced market economies through extensive case studies. In this volume of 'Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory and Labor-Managed Firms', the authors present such case studies. The real-world examples of participatory organizations described vividly in this volume will help researchers in NEP to design empirical strategies better, and to interpret their econometric results more sensibly. Furthermore, they will help policymakers and practitioners in their efforts to construct better public policy and design management practices.

This paper explores theoretically and empirically potentially important yet often-neglected linkage between task coordination within the organization and the structure of organization and bundling of HRMPs (Human Resource Management Practices). In so doing, we also provide fresh insights on the interplay between the firm's technological and output market characteristics and its choice of HRMP system. We begin with constructing a team-theoretic model and derive three task coordination modes: vertical control, horizontal coordination, and hybrid coordination. The model provides rich implications about complementarity involving task coordination modes, HRMPs, training and hiring, and management strategies, and illustrates how such complementarity is affected by the firm's technological and output market conditions. Guided by the theoretical exploration, we analyze unique data from a new survey of Japanese firms which provide for the first time data on newer forms of HRMPs adopted by Japanese firms (such as cross-functional offline teams and self-managed online teams). One novel finding (which is consistent with the theory) is that the adoption of both self-managed online teams and cross-functional offline teams usually arises in firms with shop-floor committees while the introduction of cross-functional offline teams alone often takes place in firms with joint labor-management committees. We also confirm implications from our theory that firms in more competitive markets are more likely to adopt both types of teams while firms facing more erratic price movement tend not to adopt self-managed online teams. -- HRM systems ; task coordination ; teams

On the causes of soft budget constraints : firm-level evidence from Bulgaria and Romania / Greetje Everaert, Antje Hildebrandt -- The incidence and determinants of employee share ownership and profit sharing in Europe / Andrew Pendleton, Erik Poutsma, Jos Van Ommeren, Chris Brewster -- The use of profit sharing when workers make decisions : evidence from a survey of manufacturing workers / Christopher P. Adams -- Specific human capital and partial employee ownership : a transaction cost analysis / Nicholas Wilson, Hao Zhang, Andrew Robinson -- Union-firm bargaining over long term benefits / Jan Erik Askildsen, Norman J. Ireland -- Comparative systems, destructive trade and world distributive justice / Jaroslav Vanek -- The effects of new work practices : evidence from employer-employee data / Tor Eriksson -- Participation, cooperatives and performance : an analysis of Spanish manufacturing firms / Jos(c)ØeAlberto Bayo-Moriones, Pedro Javier Galilea-Salvatierra, Javier Merino-D(c)Øiaz de Cerio -- Unions and productivity growth : a meta-analytic review / Chris Doucouliagos, Patrice Laroche -- Do ESOPS motivate employees? Worker effort, monitoring and participation in employee-owned stock ownership plans / Agustin J. Ros -- Introduction / Takao Kato, Jeffrey Pliskin. - This volume of Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory and Labor-Managed Firms consists of ten original papers. The first five papers address the effects of institutions of governance (at the workplace and corporate levels), including new forms of workplace governance (e.g., self-directed teams), a traditional form (or trade unions) and financial participation schemes. The subsequent three papers turn to the issues of the determinants of the incidence of such institutions, followed by two theoretical contributions. The paper by Tor Eriksson introduces a new survey of participatory employment practices in Danish firms, and connects these practices to productivity gains for the firm and wage gain for workers.Jose Alberto Bayo-Moriones, Pedro Javier Galilea-Salvatierra, and Javier Merino-Diaz de Cerio introduce a new telephone survey of participatory employment practices in 965 manufacturing establishments in Spain, and investigate whether these practices lead to gains for the firm and workers. While the above two papers focus on new institutions of workplace governance, the next paper studies a traditional institution of workplace governance, i.e., trade unions. Chris Doucouliagos and Patrice Laroche conduct a meta-analysis of the effect of unions on productivity growth. All three papers so far concentrate on non-financial aspects of governance. The next two papers tackle such financial aspects. The contribution by Agustin Ros is an empirical study of the effects of employee ownership on effort/shirking and horizontal monitoring based on rich survey data collected by the author on an employee owned firm and 6 comparable private firms.The paper by Everaert and Hildebrandt contributes to the literatures on transition economies and participatory firms by examining the determinants of the incidence of soft budget constraints (SBCs), in particular enterprise ownership structure (including different forms of private ownership). The next three papers turn to the issues of the determinants of participation. Andrew Pendleton, Erik Poutsma, Jos Van Ommeren and Chris Brewster use a unique cross-national survey of financial participation schemes in 2,506 establishments in 14 EU countries, and try to study the determinants of the adoption of such schemes. Christopher Adams uses rich data on 1,153 product line workers in 162 British private sector manufacturing establishments to examine the use of group incentives (profit sharing or employee share ownership) and worker participation in decision making (specifically over the range of tasks performed).The paper by Nicholas Wilson, Hao Zhang, and Andrew Robinson is an empirical study that examines hypotheses arising from a transaction cost economics (TCE) framework to explain employee share ownership. The last two papers are theoretical contributions. Jan Erik Askildsen and Norman Ireland carefully develop a model of bargaining by a union and a firm over future benefits (e.g., a defined benefit pension) when workers may not receive these benefits either because the firm goes out of business before the benefit is to be paid or the worker leaves the firm before the benefit is vested. In his paper Comparative Systems, Destructive Trade and World Distributive Justice, one of the pioneers on the broad field of participatory and labor managed firms, Jaroslav Vanek, extends earlier work by presenting an analysis of the impact of international trade in today's globalized economy

Governments around the world are increasingly aware of the need to promote the creation of not just more jobs, but also better jobs. This paper provides new evidence and insights on changes (and lack thereof) in Japan's labor market segmentation between the primary (good job) segment and the secondary (bad job) segment over the last twenty-five years. During this time, the Japanese economy transitioned from a high-growth era to the Lost Decade to a quiet recovery. Specifically, we take advantage of the Japanese government's recent relaxation of its data release policy, and analyze micro data from the Employment Status Survey (ESS) from 1982-2007. First, the literature often defines the primary secondary segments, using information on whether or not a worker is on a fixed-term contract or on an indefinite contract. We provide new evidence that such a de jure definition of labor market segmentation is less useful than an alternative de fact definition—whether a worker is termed a standard employee (seishain) in the place of his or her employment. Second, using our preferred de facto definition, we confirm that the size of the good job segment relative to the bad job segment has been indeed falling steadily over the last three decades. However, when we take into consideration transition from self-employment to employment, the most significant compositional shift of the Japanese labor market over the last decades is found to be a steady and substantive shift from self-employment to the bad job segment. Such a shift is found to be particularly notable for women, dwarfing any transition from the good job segment to the bad job segment. We further find evidence that such a compositional change from self-employment to the bad job segment is likely to be a shift from one type of bad jobs to another type of bad jobs rather than from good jobs to bad jobs. As such, our findings cast doubt on the popular narrative of the steady deterioration of job quality. However, for one particular group of Japanese workers – youth – we find compelling evidence in support of the popular narrative. This is especially true for the progress that young women made in enhancing their share of standard employment during Japan's high growth decade in the 1980s; it was found to be entirely undone during the Lost Decade. Lastly, we provide evidence pointing to globalization as a possible underlying force behind the changes in the compositional shift of the Japanese labor market.

Taking advantage of a recent relaxation of Japanese government's data release policy, we conduct a cross-national analysis of micro data from Japan's Employment Status Survey and its U.S. counterpart, Current Population Survey. Our focus is to document and contrast changes in long-term employment and job security over the last twenty five years between the two largest advanced economies. We find that in spite of the prolonged economic stagnation, the ten-year job retention rates of core employees (employees of prime age of 30-44 who have already accumulated at least five years of tenure) in Japan were remarkably stable at around 70 percent over the last twenty-five years, and there is little evidence that Japan's Great Recession of the 1990s had a deleterious effect on job stability of such employees. In contrast, notwithstanding its longest economic expansion in history, the comparable job retention rates for core employees in the U.S. actually fell from over 50 percent to below 40 percent over the same time period. The probit estimates of job loss models in the two nations also point to the resilience of job security of core employees in Japan, whereas showing a significant loss of job security for similar employees in the U.S. Though core employees in Japan turned out to have weathered their Great Recession well, we find that mid-career hires and young new job market entrants were less fortunate, with their employment stability deteriorating significantly. We interpret the findings, based on the theory of institutional complementarity, and derive lessons for policy makers around the world who are currently facing their own Great Recessions and developing effective policy responses.

Taking advantage of a recent relaxation of Japanese government's data release policy, we conduct a cross-national analysis of micro data from Japan's Employment Status Survey and its U.S. counterpart, Current Population Survey. Our focus is to document and contrast changes in long-term employment and job security over the last twenty five years between the two largest advanced economies. We find that in spite of the prolonged economic stagnation, the ten-year job retention rates of core employees (employees of prime age of 30-44 who have already accumulated at least five years of tenure) in Japan were remarkably stable at around 70 percent over the last twenty-five years, and there is little evidence that Japan's Great Recession of the 1990s had a deleterious effect on job stability of such employees. In contrast, notwithstanding its longest economic expansion in history, the comparable job retention rates for core employees in the U.S. actually fell from over 50 percent to below 40 percent over the same time period. The probit estimates of job loss models in the two nations also point to the extraordinary resilience of job security of core employees in Japan, whereas showing a significant loss of job security for similar employees in the U.S. Though core employees in Japan turned out to have weathered their Great Recession well, we find that mid-career hires and young new job market entrants were less fortunate, with their employment stability deteriorating significantly. We interpret the findings, based on the theory of institutional complementarity, and derive lessons for policy makers around the world who are currently facing their own Great Recessions and developing effective policy responses.