This paper focuses on the merchant ethics of the Pobusang, who were peddlers in the Chosun dynasty. In addition, we research some of the similarities and differences in the merchant ethics between Japan and Korea, through a comparison with the merchant ethics of the Omi-shonin, who were peddlers during the Edo period. This paper proceeds as follows. For similarities, there are （1） the strengths of group ties and their complementary spirit, （2） the mutual network powers as a point of contact in case of an emergency, （3） severe rules and penalty regulations for offenders, （4） a contribution to national development through commercial activity, （5） the carrying on of a commercial activity respecting trust and sincerity. In terms of differences, （1） the Omi-shonin merely recognized “the public,” while the Pobusang distinguished the “state” from “society.” （2） The Omi-shonin were strongly aware that as Omi people, they came from the same town, while the Pobusang had a strong awareness of their roles as peddlers. （3） The merchant ethics of the Omi-shonin were “harmony” based on Buddhism （Jodo-shinshu）, while those of the Pobusang were “justice” based on Confucianism.

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This paper mainly focuses on the analysis of both positive and negative impacts of the advent of AI on business management and particularly ethical influence from stakeholder’s relationship management, for the sake of employees, consumers, business partners, shareholders (investors) and local communities. We found that compared with the work content and future of AI, people tend to focus more on the negative effects it could bring, which would shake their trust in the AI system itself, and choose to transfer responsibility from themselves to the developers or manufacturers. Therefore, the author believes that it is of great significance to make the black box transparent and give legitimacy to an “Explainable AI” system that can fulfill accountability to stakeholders.

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The so-called Japanese-style business management supported the rapid economic growth of this country and drastically transformed business, especially the employment system, through the slow-growth period called the “two lost decades.” As companies face a new business environment resulting from new industrial and digital revolutions, companies in Japan have repeatedly been involved in major scandals since 2017, such as the product quality(inspection)falsifications by Mitsubishi Materials, Nissan Motor, and Kobe Steel and other scandals by Yamato Holdings and Suruga Bank. This paper focuses on these five companies, which represent involvement in recent corporate scandals, and examines the main problems, factors, and backgrounds to the scandals. The author then suggests(1)promotion of empathy-based business management,(2)innovation leveraged by diversity, and(3)corporate governance based on the principle of human nature.

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In order to prevent corporate accidents, organizations need to facilitate reporting behavior. The purpose of this paper is to examine the response behavior of employees when they make mistakes. Firstly, we reviewed previous research of reporting behavior. Secondly, we conducted a case analysis of the JR Fukuchiyama Line derailment that occurred in 2005. As a result of the case analysis, we identified an employee action which we labeled “reporting avoidance behavior”. Reporting avoidance behavior is not a violation of the rules. However, the reporting avoidance behavior is an unexpected behavior(unsafe behavior)for the rule maker and may contribute to a major accident.

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In this study, I argue that ethics management contribute to making employees’ work more meaningful. First, I constructed a framework of ethics management based on Integrity Strategy. Reviewing previous studies, I focus on four factors: top management’s ethical leadership, organizational ethical climate, employees’ ethical orientation, and meaningful work. I then conducted an empirical research questionnaire survey by mail. I obtained 132 valid responses from Japanese companies listed in the first sectors of the Tokyo stock market and analyzed the data using structural equation modeling. The results show :(1)top management’s ethical leadership affects several types of organizational ethical climate,(2)the “contribution/benevolence toward others” type climate has the strongest influence on the employees’ ethical orientation, and(3)the “principle and decision” type climate has a stronger influence on meaningful work than the “rules of companies” type climate.

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This paper examines which type of private universities accept international students by a multi-regression analysis using data of 150 private universities located in the greater Tokyo area. The results show that universities which are transformed from junior college, or located in a local district, with a shortage of enrollment tend to accept more international students to fill the enrollment capacity. On the other hand, factors related to globalization such as the number of an agreement with overseas universities or number of international teachers do not affect international student ratio at all. The Plan for 300,000 international students by the government might be abused for universities with an under-enrollment just to fill their enrollment capacity. Based on this finding, some measures to ensure the quality of higher education was suggested from the viewpoint of USR.

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This paper identifies the effects of stakeholder engagement on human rights and environment-related issues. First, previous research is systematized, following which empirical analysis is conducted. The sample is based on cross sectional data of 1,096 Japanese corporations from 2017. A probit regression model is employed, wherein the dependent variable is whether the firm eagerly tackles human rights or environment issues. The results show that there are significant and positive correlations between stakeholder engagement and whether a firm eagerly tackles human rights or environment issues. Firm size is also shown to affect both types of issues.

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In 2011, the concept of CSV(Creating Shared Value)was proposed by Michael E. Porter. Some reseaches mentioned that it’s increasing a company which is doing CSR/ CSV activities by collaborating with other company, NPO and government etc to resolve social problems. On the other hand, many of previous researches mentioned that success rate of alliance is low. Is that the same situation happened under the CSV alliance circumstance? This article has the goal to consider about importance of alliance for satisfying both of creating economic value and solving social problem, and propose how to realize sustainable alliance. This article explores a hypothesis using alliance case study by CSV companies with the Resaerch Question as “What factor brings substantivelity to CSV alliance?”

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This study positions the characteristics of information as semi-public goods, and argues on the concealment of negative information. For that purpose, the paper points out the factors that often leads to concealment behaviors of negative information, including the dual inferiority and strong irreversibility to information sharing, as well as the characteristics of information as semi-public goods. The reason why there are many concealment behaviors of negative information in society is because the diffusion speed becomes very large to satisfy non-rivalry and negative information generally does not satisfy non-excludability. It is a result to be caused by the characteristics of information as semi-public goods, i.e. Taking accounts of the above viewpoints, we suggest the issues of how to instill not to exclude non-excludability consciousness for companies and public institutions.

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This study reveals the direction of responsibility and the role that corporations should play from the viewpoint of Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR), which has not been clarified. With respect to human rights in Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights(UNGPs), corporate responsibility remains avoiding the abuse of human rights, not including its positive realization. However, Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs)and social rights agreements overlap in content, and ISO26000 adopted UNGPs encourage organizations to go beyond legal compliance. Corporations are already playing key roles in realizing social rights and people cannot meet their basic needs without it. Therefore, from a CSR standpoint, corporations are strictly required to(1)develop the contents of social rights as their core business strategy and(2) integrate human rights into all their business activities. Furthermore, a new institutional framework for the protection of human rights that includes both state and corporations as the subject is required.

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The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for formulating the stakeholder management model (SMM) in socially responsible businesses (SRB). The main focus will be on the problem derivation for formulating SMM as a framework for promoting the SRB and facilitating pro-social oriented organizational learning. Taking dynamic capabilities (DC) as a guide and referring its ability to sense, the paper will reconsider “the stakeholder view of the corporation”. The purpose of DC is to clarify the ability to construct and reorganize the resource base, which is composed of the relationship with various stakeholders, and to formulate its method of the development. This contributes to the identification of the ability to form and reorganize relationships between companies and a great variety of stakeholders. It takes the concept of enactment as the basis for the ability to recognize special relationships with its stakeholders.

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In this study, we propose a new analytical model to estimate the elements of the “environment-responsive matrix” proposed in the past study(Kwon, Yamashita, 2018). The proposed model in this study is an analytical model that estimates the environment-responsive matrix required to realize the numerical values given an environmental target vector. The matrix quantitatively shows how much environmental correspondence(3R activity and artificial purification)is required. Furthermore, the elements of the environment-responsive matrix(anthropogenic purification ratio, reduce ratio, recycling ratio, and reuse ratio)are estimated by the proposed model, based on the simple numerical examples of the environmental target vector and the domain transition probability matrix. Then the validity and effectiveness of the proposed model are examined from the results of the above analysis.

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In this study, we propose a catastrophe model of consumers’ Environment-oriented behavior. This model focuses on the consumers’ environmental-oriented behavior, and based on the athlete’s skill improvement 4-step model(Teramoto, 2018)and the skill proficiency catastrophe model in employee education(Yamashita, 2019). In addition, the four stages in the model are described as a combination of “conscious- unconscious” and “can-do”. Then we suggests that there is a large amount of skill proficiency between “can” and “cannot” in the “unconscious” state, but there is “asymmetric” that the difference is small in the “conscious” state.

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CAQDAS(Computer Assisted Qualitative Data AnalysiS)was conducted using testimony of the assumed tsunami heights prior to the Fukushima nuclear accident in terms of groupthink and inter-organizational relations. This study used Code Map within MAXQDA to analyze the correlations between groupthink and inter-organizational issues. As a result of this analysis, the symptoms and the defective decisions of groupthink were largely significant. However, most of the antecedent conditions and the mechanisms were insignificant. On the other hand, there were also two inter- organizational issues, “confusion in roles and responsibilities” and “a breakdown in communication and information flow,” that strongly correlated with the symptoms and the defective decisions. It can be surmised that these two factors caused groupthink in people in nuclear safety who had been involved in the assumptions about tsunami heights.

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This paper explores the effects of organizational ethical climate on unethical conduct in Japanese firms. A factor analysis using survey data describes five ethical climates: (1)Caring,(2)Rules and Laws,(3)Self Interest,(4)Company Profit/Efficiency, and(5)Personal Morality. We performed a regression analysis that revealed the following:(1)If the objective is reduction of unethical conduct, the extent to which ethics programs function is more important than whether such programs exist or not.(2)Unethical conduct is more strongly influenced by ethical climate than the functioning of ethics programs.(3)A climate of Self Interest encourages all unethical conduct.(4)A climate of Personal Morality encourages six types of unethical conduct. (5)Climates of Caring and Company Profit/Efficiency reduce four types of unethical conduct.(6)A climate of Rules and Laws reduces three types of unethical conduct. Finally, we describe the study’s limitations and make proposals for future research.

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The purpose of this research is to examine the usefulness of integrated reports from the perspectives of employees and individual shareholders. A questionnaire was administered to employees and individual shareholders of companies issuing integrated reports and the following factors were found. First, employees evaluated integrated reports as an important communication tool with shareholders. The reason is that integrated reports are useful for establishing a relationship of trust with shareholders and for shareholders to understand the company’s management and make decisions about stock holdings. Second, individual shareholders evaluated integrated reports as an important communication tool for building investor relations. The reason is that integrated reports contain necessary information and it is easy to understand its relationship with management. Therefore, individual shareholders read the integrated reports and wanted to encourage communication from companies. These results indicate that companies should understand and improve the factors that enhance the usefulness of integrated reports as a communication tool with shareholders.

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Japanese companies are putting a great deal of energy into efforts to improve their ethicality and have established systems to promote corporate compliance program — installing codes of ethics, corporate ethics and legal compliance program, ethics helpline, and ethics training. Despite all this effort, observed illegal/unethical behavior in the workplace is on the rise. This paper focuses on “compliance training program for employees” conducted in the workplace and consists of the following three elements: (1)a comprehensive review of the literature on ethical decision-making models(2) behavioral business ethics approach to ethics training and(3)how to build an effective training program.

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This paper provides a game-theoretical analysis of institutional investors’ collective engagements from the viewpoint of collective action theory, which allows us to examine the free-rider problem and social dilemmas. The author developed two different types of theoretical models with taking into account the difference in its nature of benefit from collective goods: collective engagements aiming to achieve excess market returns by influencing investee companies – collective engagements for excess market return –, where collective goods are rivalrous, and collective engagement aiming to affect corporate environmental and social policy and practices – collective engagement for environmental and social issues –, where collective goods are non- rivalrous. The key findings of this paper are as follows. Firstly, both types of collective engagements require a relatively higher amount of benefits than their costs to generate collective action, especially for the collective engagement for excess market return. Secondly, while the free-rider problem can be accompanied in both types of collective engagements, discouraging effect on cooperative behavior are larger in the case of the collective engagement for excess market return. Instead, the collective engagements for environmental and social issues would not be diminished even if the number of free- rider increases. Lastly, since there are many institutional investors in the markets, social dilemmas can emerge in the real-world situations. From the policymakers’ point of view, policy measures to promote cooperative behaviors among institutional investors can be justified to maximize social welfare.

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The paper aims to examine the reason why companies participate in the SDGs from the perspective of virtue ethics. The method of it is theoretical research, with reference to the Aristotle’ discussion on the intellectual virtues in the 6th vol. of Ethica Nicomachea, and the knowledge-creating theory based on phronesis by Prof. I. Nonaka and others. First chapter shows that the interest of it is in the management norms that private companies should contribute to the achievement of the SDGs. Second chapter confirms that previous studies have argued that the interests participating in the SDGs are the expectations of civil society and new business opportunities for private companies. Third Chapter analyzes the characteristics of phronesis through literature research and forth chapter pursues it’s application to the business context. The conclusion of this paper is that private companies can think about their actions and outcomes from the perspective of phronesis as the normative source of management that contributes to the achievement of the SDGs.

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This paper examines the grounds of executive compensation regulation. The growing gap in pay between CEOs and ordinary workers has been the subject of much debate and has led policymakers to review and strengthen regulations such as pay ratio disclosure and surcharge. However, concerns about regulations have attracted attention partly because of a lack of specific objective and little in the way of the legislative history of the regulations. This paper describes and discusses some potential grounds that can explain why these regulations be suitable. Specifically, the harm principle, the offence principle and legal moralism are examined. While the harm principle still works, the offence principle and legal moralism are not flawless.

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Companies with a history of accident or scandal completely lose public trust when another incident occurs. Such companies must work to prevent any recurrences, and to prevent the occurrence of new incidents. Companies that have experienced accidents and scandals preserve things related to those incidents in order to pass on the facts and any lessons learned. Nora (1984) advocates the use of lieux de mémoire or “sites of memory” in his historical research. Perhaps companies with histories of negative incidents have unexpectedly created their own lieux de mémoire. In this study, things related to accidents and scandals are defined as “accident and scandal heritage.” I examine whether corporate accident and scandal heritage can be called lieux de mémoire, and look at the impact of accident and scandal heritage on companies, executives, and employees.

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The purpose of this research is to clarify the occurrence mechanism of social problems in medicine through a unique analysis of process of formalization created by the author. Despite recent multi-layered drug safety measures, a social problem in medicine, sometimes referred to as “Drug Disaster” still occur. In this report, three major social problems in medicine were analyzed, such as thalidomide birth defect crisis, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)-tainted blood scandal (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) scandal), and the cervical cancer vaccine case, focusing on each patient’s claiming activities. Through the analysis I found the essence of problem could be categorized into two types: one was called “traditional drug disaster: drug-induced case” and the other was “modern drug disaster: the drug causality is unknown, but attributed to the drug”. It was suggested that different action would be required to prevent the social problem in medicine for each category.

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In this paper, we consider SDGs(Sustainable Development Goals)practices and issues of Japanese companies aiming to create corporate value. As a concept related to the SDGs, clarify the background and basic concept of CSR with the key concept of sustainable development of companies and society. Examine CSR information disclosure for corporate value creation, and consider the relationship between SDGs and ESG. Introduce SDGs efforts of Japanese companies and organizations, clarify common points, and present knowledge and issues.

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Companies are required to respond appropriately to social and environmental issues. Under such circumstances, the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs), adopted at the 2015 United Nations General Assembly, places importance on the role of companies. In Japan, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry encourages the practice of “SDG management”. However, the introduction of SDGs to companies is not progressing smoothly due to a lack of systematic understanding of CSR and SDGs among Japanese companies. For this reason, the author analyzes prior studies for systematic understanding of CSR and SDGs, and a report by ISO(International Organization for Standardization). Based on this, the author will analyze the relationship between the SDGs and the Guidance on Social Responsibility(ISO 26000)issued in 2010, which has an international agreement in the field of social responsibility and has presented comprehensively the implementation of social responsibility. As a result, the author will present a new sustainability management system through the effective combination of ISO26000 and SDGs.

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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the profits of Japanese firms have been contributing to the enhancement of national economy by analyzing the transition of the performance of domestic corporate enterprises based on the Financial Statements Statistics of Corporations by Industry(Ministry of Finance). It is clarified that the increase in profits after 2013 is mainly due to the decreases in depreciation costs, interest expenses, and the payment of corporate taxes. In addition, this paper shows that the improvement in profits has disproportionately resulted in a sharp increase in dividends to shareholders. It is also argued that the increase in dividends largely comes from corporate governance reforms promoted by the government and that the decreases in capital expenditures and employee salaries have caused the stagnation of the Japanese economy. Finally, the issues of corporate governance and business ethics are explained from these analyses of corporate performance.

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Employment mobility is an important theme related to the resolution of three issues of concern for Japan’s future :the rise of non-regular employment and the resulting increase in single households, low labor productivity, and the decrease in the working population because of the declining birthrate and aging. It has been pointed out that many aspects of Japanese labor practices that have previously supported Japan’s growth are causing system fatigue and becoming obstacles to labor mobility. Moreover, the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution has shaken today’s labor market and employment mobility has become an issue that can no longer be postponed. Japanese firms should therefore proactively pave the way for employment fluidization. This paper provides some proposals for how to realize employment fluidization, namely, hiring mid-career or granting re-education opportunities to their employees, while maintaining Japanese labor practices, as these employees are still required to financially support their families.

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Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs)were agreed at the UN Summit in 2015. The SDGs list specific 17 goals and 169 targets related mainly to social and environmental issues. From these, it is up to each company to decide what to choose and how to execute them. The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology for companies to select specific individual activities from various social and environmental problems and to appropriately manage the individual activities. This paper classifies the corporate activities that achieve the corporate purpose into five categories and explains that appropriate management is applied by dividing the individual activities into any of five categories. Separated individual activities shift to other classifications according to the change of the times and social environment. Thus, this paper presents a dynamic management model that can respond to those shifts.

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To further the ethics in the action of Artificial Intelligence(AI), what should we install in AI? This study aimed to determine certain ethical elements that business executives who consider ethics important, emphasize when imputing ethical information to AI. In our statistical survey, the element that was most emphasized was “to entertain the customer with jokes”. The second most emphasized was “to praise the customer”; the third, “to please the local residence”; the forth, “to please the customer”, and the fifth most was “to praise the workers”. The aforementioned proposals have three grounds as follows: 1)The result reflects the entrepreneurs’ priority order of ethical elements; 2)Ethical management will possibly improve financial performance of the enterprises in question; 3)To input ethical elements to A.I. is expected to make the future robotic society ideal to human welfare. The result of this study is significant for stimulating discussions about “Ethical guidelines regarding AI” for future advanced technological levels, in spite of the current technical difficulty of programming such ethical elements.

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In this paper, one of the causes of corporate scandals is the alienation of working individuals. This is caused by becoming mere shells of ethical initiatives such as compliance and CSR, which greatly undermines the autonomy of working individuals. In order to solve the ethical issues of a company, there is a need for “business ethics” that cannot be returned to corporate ethics, and that includes working individuals. Goodpaster, one of the few researchers with such a point of view, pointed out that scandals arise in the unbalanced pursuit of purpose imposed on individuals by companies, and called them “teleopathy.” Conscience is required to avoid this, and therefore companies seek conscience from working individuals, especially middle managers. However, such a request of conscience is transformed into “pursuit of a purpose without balance”, and it becomes a second teleopathy and it is recurrence. In addition, the middle manager, who fears “not being conscientious,” behaves repressively towards his subordinates and recurses the third telepathy. The main purpose of this paper is to focus on such recurrence and to think about the ethics of working individuals.

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