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Litigation and courts have been important arbiters of labour policy reforms aimed at redressing Japan's growing social inequality. This article considers seven lawsuits brought by non-regular workers, who sought to use Article 20 of the 2012 Labour Contracts Act to gain equal pay for equal work. All seven cases reached Japan's Supreme Court amid Abe Shinzō's 2018 labour reforms. The Court's interpretations reaffirmed employer discretion in categorising employees as a reasonable principle, albeit one which limits the law's power to redress wage inequality. However, the Court also found the non-provision of various minor benefits to be unreasonable. These outcomes evince a pattern in which litigation marginally transforms reformed labour policy into institutional support for greater equality of compensation and benefits between workers of different statuses. More than advancing equal pay for equal work, the outcomes of these cases support recent government-industry campaigns to boost productivity by encouraging increased use of job-based treatment and diversifying Japan's employment system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has demonstrated that individuals improve their performance of a task after observing and evaluating others perform that task, a phenomenon known as the observer effect. Most of the research has demonstrated this when the observers were aware that their performance of the task was also being observed, suggesting that reactivity may play an important role. The current study examined this by evaluating the impact that observing others’ safety performance had on the observers’ subsequent safety performance under reactivity and nonreactivity conditions. Results suggest that the observer effect might be more robust when observers are aware that their performance is also being evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We aimed to identify longitudinal leisure activity profiles among working adults and their links to recovery experiences and job performance. Leisure activities, recovery experiences, and job performance were investigated among 831 employees using survey data collected in spring 2013 (T1) and 2014 (T2). Through latent profile analysis (LPA), four stable longitudinal leisure activity profiles were identified. "Social Sports(wo)men" (46%) engaged in physical and social activities but rarely in creative or cultural activities. "Active Artists" (23%) pursued all leisure activities, particularly creative activities. "Socially & Culturally Inactives" (17%) exercised frequently but seldom engaged in social, cultural or creative activities. "Inactive Soloists" (14%) spent little time on physical activities. "Active Artists" reported most beneficial recovery experiences and job performance. Our results corroborate the importance of leisure activities (particularly diverse and creative activities) in facilitating recovery from work stress and job performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doctoral research into competence for social work practice engaged with 17 participants who drew upon their experiences of being practice educators and registered social work practitioners and the analysis of data suggested they identified a difference between competence to pass a final placement and capability for social work practice. Baseline social work knowledge, skills and values will enable a student to pass a final placement however, research data suggest that the individual’s approach to learning, emotional intelligence and resilience give confidence that they are more likely to be able to cope in a social work role. Practice educators intuitively recognise these characteristics and this article argues that in addition to working with students, practice educators are ideally situated to support individuals throughout their post qualifying social work learning journey. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The use of mixed-preference reinforcer delivery (i.e., the random delivery of a set of items with varying degrees of preference for each individual) with employees has been found to produce moderate levels of responding in an analog setting; however, mixed reinforcer delivery may not conform to the recommendations made by some popular writers in organizational behavior management. The current investigation used a progressively thinning high-preference stimulus delivery procedure to investigate the use of mixed reinforcer delivery with 5 employees. Results indicated that most participants did not reliably complete work when the percent chance of earning a high-preference item dropped below 100%. These results do not support the use of varied reinforcers in applied settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]