Career Development of College Students through Part-Time Work: The Role of Leader-Member Exchange and Taking Charge Behavior

This study examines the potential benefit of college students' part-time work on their career development by focusing on leader-member exchange (LMX) and taking charge behavior in the workplace. Using a sample of Japanese college students, results from this study indicate that taking charge behavior in part-time work mediates the relationship between LMX quality with supervisors and career development (focus of career exploration, self-efficacy toward postcollege employment and proactive career behavior). The results also indicate that proactive personality and conscientiousness moderate the relationship between LMX quality and taking charge behavior, and that job autonomy and skill variety moderate the relationship between taking charge behaviors and career development. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.part-time work, leader-member exchange, taking charge behavior, career development, college student

Top Management Characteristics of Foreign MNC Affiliates and Affiliate Performance in Japan : Knowledge-Based and Upper Echelon Perspectives

Drawing from the knowledge-based view of MNCs and the upper echelon perspective, we examine the relationship between top management characteristics of MNC affiliates and affiliate performance. Using a sample of 643 foreign MNC affiliates operating in Japan, we found that when the length of an affiliate operation was shorter, the affiliate performed better under the expatriate managing director rather than the Japanese manager. We also found that when the size of an affiliate was larger and the length of operation was shorter, the affiliate performed better under the larger rather than smaller proportion of expatriates in top management teams. Implications for research and practice of top management staffing of MNC foreign affiliates are discussed.

Organizational Justice for Managing Human Resources

To achieve a truly fair way of managing people in organizations and increase organizational competitiveness, designing procedures and structures of human resource management systems appropriately is not sufficient. What are needed in advance are top management's moral or ethical aspirations for justice and the establishment of justice climate based on such a moral concern. This argument is supported academically by the recent advancement of the research on organizational justice, especially the advancement of the understanding of justice motives from instrumental and social to moral perspectives, and the development of the macro-level justice climate construct.organizational justice, human resource management, moral concerns, justice climate

Internship Experience and Organizational Attractiveness: A Realistic Job Fit Perspective

Although job seekers often rely on indirect or inaccurate information to assess the attractiveness of potential employers, internship experience provides more realistic and accurate information, which may influence organizational attractiveness. Through the ex-ante and ex-post (i.e., pre-internship and post-internship) research design with a sample of Japanese undergraduate students in a university-sponsored internship program, we found that, although organizational attractiveness on average declined after the internship, skill variety and feedback from employees in the internship job were positively related to perceived needs-supplies (NS) fit beyond the effect of its pre-internship level. The NS fit, in turn, was related to organizational attractiveness beyond the effect of its pre-internship level. Moreover, some of the above mediating effects were stronger for interns with high social skill and/or high self-esteem. Our findings highlight the importance of the effect of internships on college students’ school-to-work transition