The mechanism of employment portfolio formation : empirical study through qualitative analysis

If the term “employment portfolio” is defined as securing the staff numbers required to accomplish certain work and assigning the work between them, its definition also refers to how the personnel of a workplace is composed from different employment types, including the extent to which non-regular workers are used. Over around the last twenty-five years, Japanese companies have increased and developed their use of non-regular workers, but a clear picture of the mechanism that encourages companies to use non-regular workers has not yet been formed. In order to elucidate that mechanism, it is necessary to analyze how those on the demand side (the companies) form the employment portfolios of their organizations. Analysis was conducted regarding the way in which companies form their employment portfolios, focusing on the responsibility centers (what the responsible persons in an organization are responsible for) and the approaches (the methods of deciding staff numbers and payroll budgets). The analysis revealed that the approach is determined according to which type of responsibility center the organization falls under, and the approach in turn determines how the employment portfolio is formed. This sequence is the mechanism of employment portfolio formation as defined in this paper.