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This study aims to describe how a work team adapted to its fluctuated and severe environment by changing from “lean” to “over-lean” mode. To do this, the author investigated the relations among productivity, the vertical division of labor, and group leaders' behavior in a Japanese automobile assembly plant.

The authors conducted field study at an assembly plant for five months. They collected three plant-level data to investigate the capability of its shop floor: transition of production volume; transition of the number of workers; and productivity. And they collected two types of workforce data: skill map and work shift. Moreover, they videotaped the behavior of group leaders on several days and analyzed them through a time study.

The work team of this study achieved high productivity even in its tough environment. However, the authors' time study of group leaders showed that the group leaders, who usually engage in some management activities outside of the production line, did many tasks within the line. This indicates the team had a weakness toward the change of team members. Changing to this over-lean mode enabled the team to survive in a short-run, but maintaining the mode has a weakness in enhancing long-term competitiveness.

This study proposes a balance between the two modes is required for organizations if they are to survive their severe and fluctuating environments.

This study aims to examine the relationship between self-perceived talent status (SPTS) and positive employee outcomes (work engagement and organisational commitment), mediated by organisational justice (distributive and procedural justice). The authors define SPTS as employees’ self-conceptualisation of talent, formed by inferring the organisation’s initiatives regarding training and development opportunities and through informal recognition by others.

The authors measured SPTS using eight items on a five-point scale. Through an internet survey company, the authors initially surveyed 1,207 full-time employees from 300 Japanese companies with ≥ 300 employees. In the second round of the survey, conducted after approximately two weeks, 876 (82.9%) responses were collected from the initial 1,207 respondents, which were used for the final analysis.

SPTS was directly and positively related to work engagement, organisational commitment, distributive justice and procedural justice. In learning organisations, SPTS was positively but indirectly related to work engagement and organisational commitment, mediated by distributive justice. In non-learning organisations, SPTS was positively but indirectly related to work engagement and organisational commitment, mediated by procedural justice.

Given SPTS’s positive impact on employee outcomes, to eliminate the information asymmetry between organisations and talent due to strategic ambiguity, organisations should increase SPTS by helping talents perceive the plethora of development opportunities in the talent pool.

The results demonstrate the utility of SPTS for improving employee outcomes based on strategic talent management (TM) mechanisms including talent rewards, talent development opportunities and promotions. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that distributive justice plays an important role in the build-based TM context of learning organisations.

The debate on taking ‘the profit out of crime’ in most countries has been linked to an increasing recognition of the threat to national and international stability represented by organised crime groups. These groups, in so far as their goal is financial gain, are businesses and are therefore often structurally and operationally able to take full advantage of services provided by other groups or on occasion work with such through an associated or integrated strategy. One of the most lethal organised crime groups in this respect are the Yakuza, or ‘Boryukudan’. The sum total of their criminal activity produces an annual yield of countless millions through various ‘activities’ including money laundering and corporate blackmail. The majority of these activities are carried out by centralised organisations capable of operating through a host of jurisdictions. It has become quite evident, particularly with respect to the last 15 years, that the Yakuza have been able to obtain a powerful ‘stranglehold’ over the economic sectors in several different countries. It will be the purpose of this paper, therefore, to analyse the severity of this impact with particular respect to the situation in the USA and Japan. With the advent of an ever diversifying global marketplace, the opportunities seem endless. And the ‘nightmare’ for law enforcement agencies has just begun.

This paper aims to study the effect of piston skirt design parameters on the dynamic characteristics of a piston–cylinder contact.

This paper focuses on an analysis of the piston dynamic response. The oil-film pressure and the structural deformation were approximated, respectively, by finite difference method and finite element method.

The results show that the design parameters such as clearance, offset and the axial location of piston pin have a great influence on the dynamics of the piston and hence on the piston slap phenomenon and the frictional power loss.

All the results mainly focus on the slap noise of the engine and can be used in the piston–liner development at the development of the engine.