Strategic alliances among private corporations have accelerated in various sectors in global markets since the 1980s. While importance of public-private-and academic partnerships have also increasingly been recognized, the partnerships between private and non-profit sectors have not seen significant growth. This paper aims to review and analyze the current situations and issues of cross-sector partnerships between private corporations and non-pofit organizations. By looking into the emerging markets of developing countries where corporations sees opportunities, the paper demonstrates examples of partnerships made with NGOs and UN agencies. The paper further looked into potentials and challenges of the partnerships entering into new markets. Japanese corporations have faced difficulties in expanding business in developing countries, while seeking opportunities for entering these markets. By complementing the expertise owned by the non-profit sector, effective approaches for the developing countries markets can be expected. As the national policy for the revitalization of Japan seeks new approaches and new players creating new values, it is believed that cross-sector collaboration will create new possibilities. Partnerships with UN agencies started at the time of the MDGs in 2000 when the framework of the Global Compact was established, and UN agencies are working on projects in partnerships with the private sector. UNDP aims to achieve sustainable businesses by involving various stakeholders. UN-Habitat conducts expert-group meetings to match Japanese environmental technologies and know-how practiced by the private sector and local governments, and transfers them to developing countries in Asia and the Pacific region. The successful practices of partnerships are still limited; and the pace appears to be very slow. On the other hand, four important factors can be excerpted. First, as a preparation stage, awareness raising and mutual understanding is required. Second, create a platform for collaboration. Third, selection of the most effective way of entering into the new market. Fourth, a key individual with commitment, leadership and coordination skills is essential. If the technology or product that is in demand is not necessary the latest high technology but widely accepted and a more flexible technology developed by SMEs may be more adaptable. SMEs with solid technologies who had no opportunities to expand to overseas markets will be able to obtain the experience and opportunity by partnering with the non-profit sector. Cross-Sector Collaboration Partnerships are expected to discover new markets and create new added value.

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Aggravated poverty problems in developing countries, caused by globalization, became such serious threats to sustainable development that efforts to solve these problems generated diverse changes in institutions and organizations. Such changes amalgamated the fields of development and business activities, involving partly companies' business interests and partly civil society pressures, and created an unprecedented business field, called the base of the pyramid (BOP). Under globalization, market-principle-based value creation rather than income redistribution, such as foreign aids, became a solution to the problems. To be more specific, companies following market principles concretize and mobilize dispersed knowledge possessed by the poor, develop BOP business, and institutionally include the poor as viable business partners and targets. Consequences are the provision of sustainable livelihood to them and their increased living standards. But such consequences cannot be well achieved without cross-boundary collaborations with newly devised development-oriented institutions such as microfinances, NGOs, development agencies, international organizations, etc. The cross-boundary collaboration with them, according to case studies, cuts transaction costs and reduces risks in a business field previously perceived too costly and risky. These institutions also provide indispensable assistance in identifying the needs and capability of the poor, enabling companies to create adaptation to locally specific conditions. Thus, BOP business requires understanding about institutional changes, development-related issues, and needless to say, new approaches in business models and practices.

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The purpose of the paper is to clarify the problems in which a Japanese company with less experience in the power and energy industry builds and manages its strategic partnerships with foreign local partners. To attain this purpose, we carry out a case study of their alliance project in the industry. Recently, Japanese companies actively launch foreign projects in the power and energy industry. In China, the deregulation in this industry has not proceeded yet. Chinese government imposes terms that foreign firms have to tie up with Chinese companies when those firms enter the market. It is important for those foreign firms to build cooperative partnerships with those Chinese firms. In general, it is recognized that frictions caused by cultural differences inevitable in the context of international business management. In this paper, through the alliance projects, we point out that cultural boundaries can be overcome when foreign firms engage in international business management. We observed that apparently trivial conflicts among Chinese and Japanese workers often happened on the shop-floor, for instance, how to teach and/or communicate. Those trivial conflicts negatively influence the performance of their international alliances even though the Japanese company overcame the well-recognized problems concerning cross-cultural communication. According to our case study analysis, we conclude that Japanese headquarter offices should change the recognition concerning their joint projects with Chinese firms and how to operate those projects. It should also be necessary for Japanese headquarter offices to delegate their decision-making authorities to their local managers in order to avoid social-cultural conflicts and improve the reaction speed to requests by Chinese partner companies.

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This study aims to investigate MNC relationship with the local suppliers under different local environment on product development activity. As previous researches indicate that while the firms in US tended to have arm's length relationship with their suppliers, the Japanese firms tended to build closer one. However, Japanese MNC supplier system in overseas seems to be slightly different from what existing literatures mentioned. That is in order to cope with the local environment in one country, even the companies with the same business practice or culture background, they may have different supplier management overseas. The author uses a case study of two Japanese electronic manufacturing companies to reveal how MNCs involve the local suppliers on product development under different local environment within the country. In short, the study found that one company had a highly interdependent partner relationship, the other had an arm's length one. This indicates, "one best way" to build the supplier relationship does not always work, and MNCs need to design the task partition with the local suppliers to match the different locational advantages.

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In recent years, major retailers have been actively expanding overseas. For the Japanese retailer how to be competitive in this severe environment has increasingly become an important research task. For retailers, international business activities are not built by just one or a portion of retail technology, thus it is necessary to analyze from the viewpoint of the whole retail system. However, the research of the international transfer of Japanese management system has been done mainly in the manufacturing sector. In the research of retail internationalization, only Chen(2013a,b) can be mentioned. In Chen(2013a,b), the concept of the "Japanese retail system" and the "International transfer model of Japanese retail system" were raised, but it is not done in the consideration of the case. In order to give suggestions for Japanese retailers, how to successfully transfer the Japanese retail system overseas, this study uses the "International transfer model of Japanese retail system", and investigates the international transfer situation of the retail system by Chengdu Ito-Yokado. Through the investigation of Chengdu Ito-Yokado, the results can be summarized as follows.The Japanese retail systems is applied to Chengdu Ito-Yokado. In the "hybrid", 7 items can be divided into "active adaptation ", and 5 items can be divided into "passive adaptation". It means, when the Japanese retailers expanding overseas, it performs a thorough each item belonging to the "Japanese". At the same time, it is necessary to also notice each item belonging to the "hybrid" acting as an obstacle about of the Japanese retail system. The feature of the "International transfer model of Japanese retail system" will show clearly how much the elements of the retail system are transferred into the local subsidiary. There is substantial value to investigate the retail internationalization from the viewpoint of the Japanese retail system. But challenges such as the accumulation of cases and modifying the valuation basis are recognizably present.

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This study is especially to analyze and review the business strategy of Hitachi leveraging its leadership in package-based infrastructure export business in the global railway market and to identify the best way for other Japanese electric companies seeking success in the field. Though once Japan was referred to as the "Factory of the world", the country's domination in manufacturing started to decline after the collapse of a bubble economy in the 1990's. Suffering from the business slump, the Japanese electric companies have struggled to find a way out, and the export of social infrastructure systems ("SIS") including railway, water treatment and nuclear power systems to emerging countries with strong demand is expected to have a high potential for breakthrough because the Japanese SIS is considered as highly competitive in the global market. Another advantage for the Japanese electric companies in the SIS business is that as it requires total package solutions and thus a comprehensive range of expertise including heavy electrical machinery to parts, hardware and software, only qualified companies can enter the market, as illustrated by the fact that even rapidly growing East Asian companies such as Samsung and LG have not been able to enter the market. In the SIS market, the railway infrastructure business is likely to have the highest potential for the Japanese electric companies in the light of their high technological standards, limited number of the market participants and the Fukushima accident's negative impact on nuclear power plant business. The Japanese electric companies already have technological capabilities but still lacks sufficient end to end experience and field records required in the business in emerging countries, including planning, financing, EPC (Engineering, Procurement, Construction) and O&M (Operation and Maintenance). For the Japanese electric oompanies to be successful in the business to enjoy a global share, they should therefore learn from European companies and cooperate with other domestic and overseas companies to form a team to achieve positive results.

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This paper seeks to investigate how a company could include BOP-level fringe stakeholders into their enterprise value chain with emphasis on the necessity to build relationship with nontraditional partners, including NGO, MFI, and international organizations. Based on several previous researches, the capabilities of all participating entities and the reasons for their collaborations will be analyzed and explained. Concerning company's value chains, BOP could be involved in four levels: marketing, distribution, production and R&D. This paper proposes two types of collaborations to develop BOP into consumer, seller, producer, and ultimately co-creator. One is reciprocal collaboration with nontraditional partners and the other is integrated collaboration with native sectors. The relationship between the first-order collaboration and the second-order collaboration will be discussed. Finally, after examining three cases of Japanese companies, it is evident that these two types of collaboration have become the key factors for success at the BOP layer.

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The dire need for cross cultural management has been keenly recognized ever in the international business world. However, any practical schema or framework has not been fully discussed in cross cultural management studies. This paper discusses how cross cultural management studies have evolved and then tries to propose a possible conceptual framework, as "CDE Schema", which enables cross cultural management more useful and feasible for academics as well as practitioners. Cross cultural management studies were initiated in 1950s primarily in the United States, and have developed in accordance with globalization of businesses. Hofstede's work, known for its innovative research into dimensions of national culture, is the pioneer and milestone to conceptualize cultural differences among nations in the context of international business studies. Although this has been the most well recognized work in the field, some have questioned certain aspects of his work. Following Hofstede, several studies have been conducted by Schwartz, Inglehart and the GLOBE Project in order to improve Hofstede's work. This paper also reviews those studies to discuss further development beyond Hofstede's works. Lastly, the possible practical concepts for cross cultural management are discussed to propose the CDE Schema, a new approach to cross-cultural management. 3 central issues, Context(C), Distance(D), and Embeddedness(E), which are essential components for the CDE Schema, will be discussed. Given the growing impact of "culture" on the global business community, more effort should be made to address implications of cross cultural management studies for the real business world. The CDE Schema proposed here can be one of the most effective approaches to cross-cultural management in this complex globalization era.

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This article analyses the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) behavior on parent firm performance from the view of the firm longevity. Although a large number of studies have been conducted on the impact of FDI behavior on parent firms' financial performances, the impact of FDI behavior on parent firm longevity, one of the indicators of long-term firm performance, has not been sufficiently clarified. Therefore, there is a need to clearly clarify the impact of FDI behavior on parent firm longevity, which currently still has room for improvement in the existing research. This article will discuss the above issues and use the case of Taiwanese FDI to China to reexamine the impact of FDI behavior on parent firm longevity. In the last past two decades, Taiwanese FDI to China has increased dramatically; however, the impact of FDI into China on parent firm longevity has not been completely identified. This article takes Taiwanese listed companies as its research objects and the results of this study clearly indicate that Taiwanese FDI into China indeed has a positive influence on parent firm longevity.

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