This paper attempts to document how employees' perceptions of organizations' human resource management (HRM) practices influence their work behavior and outcomes, including the level of turnover intentions and job quality improvement, in a Japanese organizational and management context. In particular, an examination was made to clarify the mediating role of person-environment (P -E) fit and multiple aspects of work commitment to reach possible explanations of the relationships between perceived HRM practices and employees' behavioral outcomes, following recent work that studied the above linkages. The results of structural equation modeling using a sample of 1052 healthcare service employees in Japan provided basic support for the idea that the effects of HRM practices and employees' behavioral outcomes are neither direct nor unconditional. Moreover, employees' evaluations of their fit and commitment to their organizations were found to be the important mediators of the relationships between perceived HRM practices, while their evaluations of their fit to and involvement in their jobs were not. The findings are used to discuss why the specific forms of P-E fit and work commitment appear salient in Japanese organizations. The generalizability of the findings and the limitations of the study are discussed.

Using the longitudinal survey data of newcomers working for Japanese firms, this study demonstrates that the socialization tactics used by Japanese firms were positively related to the degree of socialization of newcomers, which eventually correlated positively with the time-series differences in organizational commitment and achievement motivation from the first year (T1) to the second year (T2) of their organizational entry, and negatively with the longitudinal change in turnover intention from T1 to T2. In addition, the results show that the newcomers' attitudes toward their pre-entry job search efforts, as with their entry (T1), had a negative influence on the change in value commitment from T1 to T2, indicating that those who rated their past job search activities as successful tended, as of their entry into the organization, to diminish their level of acceptance of their organization's values over a year. Findings are used to discuss how firms can effectively manage their entry-level employees to facilitate their adjustment and retention.

Multinational companies (MNCs) often invite foreign subsidiary employees or inpatriates to their headquarters (HQ) to internalize the MNCs' corporate values and transfer those values to their subsidiaries after repatriation. However, there is a lack of understanding about how and why inpatriates internalize these corporate values during their HQ experiences. By integrating the perspectives of international adjustment and organizational socialization with that of on-the-job learning, we develop a model wherein the job-related and psychosocial factors that inpatriates encounter at HQ promote their internalization of corporate values. Using a sample of 110 foreign subsidiary employee-supervisor dyads from the HQ of a Japanese MNC to which the employees were assigned as inpatriates, we found that developmental job assignments and psychosocial mentoring during inpatriation influenced the internalization of corporate values, which was partially and sequentially mediated by proactive socialization behavior and organizational identification. This study's findings have significant implications for the theory and practice of inpatriation management, particularly with regard to how MNCs promote the internalization of corporate values among inpatriates.

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This study documents the influence of both pre‐ and post‐entry factors on newcomer socialization. Using time‐lagged survey data from 137 new employees from private sector organizations in Japan, our empirical analyses showed that newcomers' pre‐entry career maturity was significantly related to their post‐entry adjustment outcomes through person‐organization (P‐O) fit perceptions at entry. Career maturity was also significantly and positively related to pre‐entry job search effort, as well as to P‐O fit at entry. Furthermore, the results indicated that the effectiveness of supervisor and coworker support for enhancing newcomer adjustment varied depending on the level of P‐O fit perception at entry. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed, and directions for future research are suggested.