Abstract:To examine the validity and reliability of the Japanese version of the Workaholism Scales developed originally by J. T. Spence and A. S. Robbins (1992), a questionnaire survey of workers in Japanese industrial organizations was conducted. The Japanese questionnaire was developed by back-translation. Added to the original questionnaire were scales for work overload -quantity, work overload -quality, role ambiguity and role conflict. A total of 1,072 workers (962 men, 110 women) returned usable data (response rate = 87.5%). The factor structure and reliability of the workaholism instrument for Japanese male subjects look almost identical to those obtained by the original study in America except that the work involvement dimension was not reproduced as an independent factor, but overlapped with the drive dimension for the Japanese sample. There was a significant impact of workaholism on job stress and health complaints among Japanese male employees.

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Management development systems in the leading Japanese corporations have produced executives and managers who are commonly acknowledged to be among the best in the world. How these systems operate is not well understood. In this investigation of the 13-year career progress and current middle-management situation of 71 college graduates who entered a leading Japanese corporation at the same time, university quality, nature of first job assignment, quality of early dyadic exchange treatment from immediate superiors, and early job performance evaluations by immediate superiors were used to predict management progress at 13 years. Two different models of career mobility were investigated: an early competition (first 3 years) and a later competition (7 years) model. Results generally supported the early competition model suggested by an earlier 7-year study, but notable differences from this earlier investigation were found. In addition, assessments of the current middle-management leadership situation, not included in the 7-year study also were found to be predictable by the early (first 3 years) model. Implications of these results are discussed.Careers of Japanese managers in the leading corporations typically end in the executive suite of either the mother company or a subsidiary (\bshino, 1968). In this process of career development, those who succeed stay with the mother company and can look forward to the status, challenge, influence, and the material and social rewards bestowed on the most valued contributors to the corporation. The others can anticipate a comfortable position for a short time and an early retirement.A critical question is how do these leading corporations ensure that the "best of the best" become the honored corporate decision makers-the executives? What is the nature of the competitive process, and what characteristics render advantage, and how, when, and with what impact? What opportunities are offered, and how are they capitalized upon? These are some of the questions addressed by the Japanese Management Progress Study (Wakabayashi & Graen, 1984;Wakabayashi, Minami, et al., 1980).Two different views of the timing of this career mobility in leading Japanese corporations have been proposed. A process that we call deferred competition was described by Yoshino (1968) and Drucker (1971) and endorsed by Ouchi and Johnson (1978) as one of the unique aspects of Japanese organization.

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