Motivating Japanese National Civil Servants:Effect Of Performance Based Personnel Management System

This thesis argues that the performance based evaluation in personnel management systems,and promotion and salary incentives which are system's results,are more beneficial to raise the motivation of the Japanese national civil servants for better work.The research question is,"is the performance based personnel evaluation system more beneficial in raising the motivation of the Japanese national civil servants?" Within the theoretical research framework of the expectancy theory,motivation equals to multiple of "expectation to achieving the goal and getting the rewards" and "the value of rewards." Better performance evaluation system and personnel management system giving fair and correct evaluation can satisfy workers,and rewards will be more high valued when decided based on this evaluation.Thus,utilizing performance based personnel management system will leads to the Japanese national civil servant's motivation for better work.The research methods of this thesis are case study and investigation questionnaire.There are cases of two Japanese local governments and Singapore,which are utilizing the performance based personnel management system that are the better cases which Japanese government should learn from.Furthermore,I have done a qualitative questionnaire survey with the Japanese national civil servants to collect and analyze their opinions towards theirs job and personnel management systems.In conclusion,from the findings of this research,policy implications are,first,to utilize the "self-assessment evaluation system"from one Japanese city's case which weight difficulty and the level of achievement of tasks,leading to correct evaluation.Second,to make policy of talent acquisition and fix the error in the equivalent system of civil servant's salary.The important point is to continually doing this correctly as saw in the Singaporean case.Finally,from the analyzed result of the survey,Japanese national civil servants prefer performance based personnel management system applied,and especially for decisions on promotion.Therefore,Japanese government can start from applying the performance based personnel management system on promotions and motivate the Japanese national civil servants for better work.