Driving sustainable and competitive transition in enterprise performance management and measurement: The changing role of women in the Japanese labour market

ABSTRACT. The objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between sustainable and competitive transition in enterprise performance management and measurement and the changing role of women in the Japanese labour market. The work correlates the proportion of female employees in leadership positions in relation to the sector type, firm age, profits and encouragement of women’s participation in the labour force over six significant periods. The study also examines correlations between the encouragement of women’s participation in the labour force and high productivity, improvement of work-life balance and higher integration of female staff in the workforce. A questionnaire survey was conducted in 152 Japanese companies as part of the research. Non-parametric tests and exploratory data analysis were used for evaluation. The linear-by-linear test was applied to ordinal categories to determine the trend between the proportion of female employees in leadership positions and the encouragement of women’s participation in the labour force. The results indicate that partial changes have occurred as far as women in the Japanese labour market are concerned and confirm that working women are faced with persistent obstacles in terms of higher integration of female staff in the workforce and improvement of work-life balance. A future research direction worth considering is a study focused on other countries in Asia, comparing the findings with this paper.