There are two dominant perspectives (namely, the cultural and economic perspectives) that are used to explain aspects of the Japanese employment system such as lifetime employment and the seniority principle. Cultural explanations (e.g., Abegglen; Nakane) tend to rely on Confucianism and familism to explain the Japanese employment system. On the other hand, the theory of the internal labor market is one of the popular theories used to explain the system, shedding light on firm-specific skills (e.g., Aoki; Koike). By using both cultural and economic perspectives, I examine workers' careers in Japanese corporations and then compare the effects of each perspective on the careers. In addition, I perform multi-level analysis (at the national, organizational field, and individual organizational characteristic levels) because individual workers tend to be exposed to multiple institutions although culturalists simply assume that individuals belong to national institutions (e.g., Confucianism) of which the unique employment system is a natural outgrowth. By using the Working Person Survey (2008), I perform logistic, ordinal logistic and OLS regressions. Some of my results show that having general skills has significant effects on the workers' careers and that having firm-specific skills is found to have negative effects on income and on being a regular worker. These results are inconsistent with the past literature and show that the Japanese corporation attaches importance to general skills. Although general skills have positive effects on careers, the workers' age still has a relatively large effect on them.

This dissertation examines the effect of non-affiliation with religion on religiosity and pro-social ties. Using panel data from the General Social Survey from 2006 to 2010, longitudinal analyses confirm the negative effect of non-affiliation with religion on religiosity.

A major development in the sociology of religion has found that an increasing proportion of the American population identifies as religious non-affiliates (i.e., they claim no affiliation with a religion, but are still religious) or affiliation with no denomination (i.e., they are affiliated with a religion but claim no specific denomination within that religion). Research indicates that non-affiliation and affiliation with no denomination are associated with lower levels of religious beliefs and participation. This study systematically differentiates religious non-affiliation from affiliation with no denomination, with the latter being similar to their denominational counterparts. Implicit in these findings regarding the variation across a spectrum of religious affiliation is the importance of affiliation for beliefs and participation. The importance of collective representation or social group regarding religious phenomena is grounded in a Durkheimian theory of religion. Individuals are religious, yet their lack of affiliation or strong adherence to a particular socio-religious group appears to be a significant indicator of individual religiosity.

The larger picture that emerges is that methodological consideration and treatment of religious affiliation and non-affiliation require systematic attention and detail. The current religious landscape reflects a pluralistic dynamic in regards to affiliation and religiosity. Furthermore, the absence of a socio-religious group, affiliation, or "moral community", is critical in the outcomes of religious phenomena.