The name Magosaburo Ohara (1880-1943) conjures up in the mind of many people the image of a great cultural figure of rare farseeing intelligence. This is due to his position as the founder of Ohara Art. Museum and many other large cultural facilities. People will also remember Ohara as a philanthropist-a generous benefactor who devoted his life to pursuing more desirable conditions for humanity and an ideal form of society.
These images alone, however, would not do justice to the totality of Ohara the man. For they fail to capture his greatness as a prominent entrepreneur and a theorist of unique labor management policies.
Ohara served his presidency at Kurashiki Cotton Spinning, now known as Kurabo Industries, in the years between 1906 and 1939. At the firm, he committed himself to the expansion of spinning projects. Under the leadership of Ohara, KCS had continuously made remarkable progress through the years, eventually establishing itself as one of Japan's six big spinning enterprises in 1920. KCS originally commenced its operations in 1888 as a small factory in the rural village of Kurashiki.
Ohara founded eight research institutes in his lifetime. Of these, Ohara Institute of Social Problems and Kurashiki Institute of Labor Science were of particular importance to the founder. For it was at these two institutions that Ohara developed his own theories of labor management policies through studies on the relationships between industry and laboratories.
This paper, from the perspective of business history, will shed fresh light upon Magosaburo Ohara, focusing on his activities as a great entrepreneur. It will also examine many of his unique concepts on labor management policies. These policies, widely practiced at KCS during his presidency, seem to reflect Ohara's entrepreneurial spirit. The paper will be concluded with the author's rationales for considering Ohara's management ideas to be theoretically sound. Chief among those is his business ideology of collaborative workshop, which is neither a form of paternalism nor of collusive harmony between labor and capital.

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