Abstract
Activities of shopping district cooperatives are often supported by administrative measures and to make future measures more effective, it is important to analyze the process of those activities. Nara Mochiidono shopping district is well known for its success in the construction and the management of the challenge shop “Yume CUBE”. Some people argue that “Yume CUBE” played a significant role in solving regional problems such as an increase in the number of shop vacancies, lack of successors and a decrease in the number of pedestrians. In Organizational Theory, formal aspects (official position etc.) co-exist with informal aspects (interpersonal chemistry etc.) and interact with each other when completing the “cooperation” of an organization. In this article, we demonstrate the roles of Informal Organizations using the “Yume CUBE” project as an example. Tacit rules, manners, understandings and values are formed among individuals in an organization according to Informal Organizations they share. We coined these collectively as “shared deliverables”. For an organization to work well, it must have attractive “incentives” for members to participate. And those incentives are usually provided through Informal Organizations. We found that this also applies to Nara Mochiidono. Consequently, it seems likely that offering incentives through Informal Organizations resulted in the creation of shared values among members of shopping district cooperative.
