Telework in a Land of Overwork: It’s Not That Simple or Is It?

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted labor markets around the world. Workers and corporations scrambled to adjust their workstyles to a new normal, by avoiding the commute and working remotely from their homes or elsewhere. Japan is a country that stood out for its inability to adjust to the remote work environment. Comparative statistics show that Japan reported the lowest number of people engaged in remote work among the OECD countries, as well as the lowest percentage of corporations that offered remote work policies. In this article, I investigate why telework in Japan is difficult. The lack of telework in Japan may seem paradoxical, given the country’s reputation for being technologically advanced. I argue that it is not the technological infrastructure that is lacking in the Japanese workplace, but distinct features of work embedded in Japanese culture and its collectivist roots that prevent the effective implementation of telework. I rely on recently published data from various sources, and apply key sociological theories such as implicit contracts, gift exchange, dramaturgy, and impression management to substantiate my main arguments. The paper concludes by drawing on implications for the future of work in Japan.

International Trade, Wages, and Unemployment

Traditional trade theory has focused on the allocation of resources between various sectors of the economy and how it changes in response to trade liberalization while maintaining the assumption of free mobility of resources across sectors within an economy. This simplifying assumption is at odds with empirical evidence which shows considerable frictions in the movement of resources between sectors, at least in the short to medium run. Workers who lose their jobs in the import competing sector may find it hard to find a job immediately in the export sector. This has given rise to a growing literature that incorporates frictions in the mobility of factors of production in general, and labor in particular, in trade models. This article surveys the literature on trade and unemployment where unemployment is caused by search frictions or wage rigidity of some kind such as minimum wage, efficiency wage, or implicit contracts. While the focus is on unemployment, any model studying the impact of trade on labor markets features wage effects, too, and a brief discussion of wage effects is also provided. Trade affects unemployment in these multi-sector models through two main channels: sectoral unemployment rates and intersectoral reallocation of resources. In newer trade models with heterogeneous firms, trade can change unemployment by affecting the allocation of resources within a sector. While the theoretical models in this literature identify various channels through which trade liberalization affects unemployment, many of these channels have opposing implications for unemployment, rendering the net effect of trade liberalization on unemployment ambiguous in many settings. This has also given rise to an empirical literature studying the implications of trade liberalization on unemployment.

Rethinking the Concept of Equity in Accounting: Origin and Attribution of Business Profit

In this paper I reconsider the concept of equity in corporate accounting from the perspective of the origin and attribution of business profit. In both Financial Accounting Standards Board’s (FASB’s) and International Accounting Standards Board’s (IASB’s) Conceptual Frameworks, shareholders’ equity is synonymous with a firm’s net assets. However, it is not the sole definition of equity. We may regard equity as the interest in the corporate capital itself. From this viewpoint, shareholders’ equity consists of retained earnings attributable to shareholders’ as well as invested capital provided by them. We should note that, under the current corporate accounting system, shareholders are assumed to be the sole residual claimants. However, the existence of implicit contracts in corporate activities implies other residual claimants in addition to shareholders. If shareholders are not the sole residual claimants, it is necessary to revisit the proprietary theory under which equity is identical to shareholders’ equity. In this paper I reconsider the significance of the entity theory, which emphasizes an entity as an organization comprising various stakeholders and attributes business profit above shareholders’ expectations to an entity itself. The ownership interest cannot generate the excess profit by itself. Without firm-specific investments by employees and/or entrepreneurial activities by managers, the excess profit would never emerge. We should critically examine the foundation of the current corporate accounting in order to design a more equitable and efficient corporate accounting in which business profit is attributable not only to shareholders but also to other stakeholders who contribute to its generation.

Military Covenants and Contracts in Motion: Reservists as Transmigrants 10 Years Later

This article reexamines and develops the analytical metaphor of “Reserve Soldiers as Transmigrants” in three directions. First, we advance the notion of transmigration by linking it to the explicit and implicit “contracts” or agreements struck between the military and individuals and groups within and outside of it. Second, we show that the “management” model of reserve forces is not just an administrative matter but that “negotiating” with reservists involves wider issues that include managing identity, commitment, and the meaning attached to military service. Third, we examine the institutional and political meaning of the reserves at the macro sociological level. The juxtaposition and interplay of two models—transmigration and multiple contracts—allows us to introduce structural elements into the movement of soldiers between the military and civilian society, and add a dynamic dimension to the contents of the implicit contracts that organize reservists’ relations with the state and military.

‘Discrete’ and ‘Relational’ Approaches in Implied Contractual Relationships

In the commercial field, the practice of doing business through a series of fixed-term contracts that are renewed from time to time between the same parties, but not expressed in any framework contract, is a fairly frequent phenomenon – usually known as ‘implied contractual relationships’ or ‘implicit contracts’ – which, however, does not seem to be always recognised in the courtrooms of many legal systems. It is usually believed that a ‘discrete’ approach to the contract – to recall Macneil’s famous distinction between discrete and relational contracts – can more easily result in the non-recognition of the legal value of implicit contractual relationships, while a ‘relational’ perspective would allow to look more closely at the economic transaction as a whole, thus leading to the acknowledgment of implicit contracts. In this paper I will try to examine the same issue from the discrete perspective (with reference to the English system), the relational perspective (with reference to the Japanese legal system) and a third perspective taken by the Italian system, in order to show the actual differences between the relational and discrete approaches to the contract and what remedies are most effective.