The Faculty of Communication Studies at Tokyo Keizai University celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2015. It's my pleasure to begin my new career during this memorial year.

On the subject of "communication," I have been particularly inspired by Chester I. Barnard's, The Functions of The Executive. According to this classic text, organizations require the following three key elements: "communication," "willingness to serve," and "common purpose." 

As my research field of organizational psychology focuses on the psychology of members of organizations, communication is one of the fundamental concepts in this field.

In the 1970s and 1980s, many organizational psychology researchers worldwide became interested in Japanese organizations, and particularly in the Japanese HR model. The Japanese approach to human resources was one reason why our country was able to achieve such rapid economic growth during the postwar period. 

In 1979, Japan as Number One: Lessons for America by Ezra F. Vogel became an emblematic book of the period. Vogel’s aim was to explore not only Japanese management, but also ways that Western companies might "learn from Japanese organizations," as suggested in the subtitle.

Peter F. Drucker, the most well-known management scholar, explained the purpose of his famous book, Management, in the preface of  the translated Japanese edition: "I intended for Western readers to clarify what the West was able to learn ... from Japanese ways, customs, and tradition."

The Japanese HR model was based on "developing employees." It therefore differed from the HR models focused on "jobs" that were common in the US and many other countries. Research on the Japanese HR model resulted in the creation of many new concepts, which evolved into more universal theories that were applicable to organizations all over the world.

Nevertheless, the Japanese HR Model has become obsolete because, since the 1990s, Japan has suffered from the maturing of its domestic market, the globalization of business, fewer children, and an aging society.

My research approach does not involve changing the Japanese HR model into the US model. Instead, I would like to establish a "new" Japanese HR model.

My theoretical framework is Hegel's dialectic. A dialectic, as expressed by the relationship between its three parts, the "thesis” and “antithesis,” leading to “synthesis," aims to create a new theory by integrating two conflicting concepts.

I hope to build a new theory of organizational psychology by integrating the traditional Japanese HR model with Career Psychology which has been based on the job-oriented HR model of the other countries. It will be a globally applicable theory.

To conduct my research, education, and practice, I look forward to interacting and collaborating with students, HR practitioners, and researchers in organizational psychology.