Dutch sociologist Felix Geyer, who has been interested in the applicability of Systems Theory since the 1970s to the present, created the alienation model as a result of an information-processing disturbance between individuals and their environment. However, Geyer's alienation theory is impractical because its conclusions are trivial. Namely, there are two types of people, those who can cope with environmental complexity and who are rarely alienated, and those who are easily alienated. In this article, we will demonstrate how such shortcomings are derived from the following two facts: The first is that Geyer attributed the causes of alienation to the information processing ability of the individuals. The second is that despite using the second-order cybernetics concept, Geyer did not take into consideration the fact that the difference between system (self) and environment (other) is constructed by the system itself. To overcome these difficulties, the closure type model and the second-order approach should be used to study alienation rather than the input-output model and the first-order approach. We will then be able to understand the causes of alienation while at least not using the determinist's point of view.

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This study focuses on the introduction of a virtual system into computer literacy education: its significance and possibility, a review of practice, and proposals for further refinements. The authors develop a new method of computer literacy education, based on a virtual learning environment utilizing Internet applications, mainly e-mail and the World Wide Web. The authors also examine online community dynamics in terms of the online production of knowledge and the linkage of e-mail messages exchanged among instructors and students.

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Recently, evaluations for the organization system are not high. But, this paper re-evaluates organization system from the viewpoint of selection ascription, and regards it as one of the social institutions for innovation. Organizations are socially regarded as corporate actors, therefore specific selections of organization members can be understood as organizations' selections. And observed risks of selections are ascribed to organizations, too. This ascription may make organization members encouraged to concern themselves with uncertain selections. Selections are ascribed to organizations by referring to authority or organizational purpose, which are fictions. These fictions, which distinguish organizational selections from personal and environmental selections, can be regarded as 'structures' of organization system. But, a dilemma between 'structures' and innovation is often found. Strict definition of these 'structures' seems to reduce communication cost for selection ascription. But it also often leads organization members to evade from innovative decisions. On the other hand, in a network organization, which has very loose 'structures', selection ascription to the organization may be unstable for organization members. We will consider 'positive politics' as a path to realize organization system's potential. The management should weigh risks from 'positive politics' and indicate allowable arena of politics.

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The cooperative sector has acquired increasing attention from such points of view as the reconstructing of the concept of economic systems, especially the discussion on "social economy" based on "the principle of cooperation". The purpose of this paper is a consideration of the viability of cooperatives in market economies using the analysis on cooperatives' behavior in human capital investment. This study is one of the attempts to relate the economic analysis on cooperatives with the pluralistic theories of economic systems or with the principle of cooperation. The problems associated with investment in human capital are pointed out as what is difficult to be solved in the conventional forms of firm organization. We find out the effectiveness of cooperative forms of organization and of the principle of cooperation on these problems, and give some conditions for the effectiveness. Through our consideration we show an approach to the study of the relation of cooperatives' viability to the principle of cooperation.

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When we discuss our global ecology and global warming, in addition to incremental thinking, idealization of our future can provide with us insights into what we can do about them. Transportation needs have both functional and hedonic aspects. Transportation literature review finds that the needs for transportation include not only functional physical transportation needs of people, goods and information, but also our hedonic desire to explore new territory and to enjoy traveling itself. The author argues that even apparently functional trips such as daily commuting and business trips have hedonic aspects in them. Also, tourism needs include functional transportation aspects, in addition to hedonic aspects. The author proposes Virtual Transportation, which is highly developed virtual reality in transportation, for partially replacing the transportation needs as well as tourism needs. If Virtual Transportation becomes a highly developed business, it could replace actual trips to a certain degree, with Virtual Transportation's less accident and crime risks, convenience, flexibility and other advantages. If we could substitute actual trips with Virtual Transportation, we could reduce global warming caused by transportation to a certain degree. Also, Virtual Transportation can become an alternative goal to automobile ownership and use, which are significant aspects of contemporary consumer life in both developed and developing nations. Further research is needed in measuring the hedonic and functional aspects of transportation needs and tourism needs.

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In Japan there is a heavy swell to transform social systems involving mass production, mass consumption and mass disposal into resources recycling ones. We discuss here the relationship between environment protection regulations and environmental businesses including R&D efforts. More specifically, we focus our attention to the movement caused by "the law concerning specific home electrical appliances and their recycling." The movement involves not only the electric industry but also municipal corporations, the transport industry, the material industry and so forth. In this paper we analyze this movement from an environmental business point of view. We propose a model consists of linear process, reuse-recycling loop and accompanied business processes. In this model the origin of profit is linear process. The linear process has to be accelerated by reuse-recycling loop, although the loop is the origin of cost. Even in the case of home electrical appliances recycling, any kind of linear process will be necessary. Maintenance, upgrading and repair service is a strong candidate for linear process. We also discuss a possibility to introduce rental service of home electrical appliances designed suitable for reuse-recycling processes.

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Since the so-called NPO law enforced in 1998, over 4000 NPOs have been certified. Because most of NPOs are immature and most of people have little understanding of NPO, the overevaluation and the underevaluation for NPO are intermingled in our society now. However, collaboration between NPOs and corporations has been growing especially these 5 years. We divide the collaboration relationships into 3 categories. (1) In philanthropic activities; 1) Donation (a case of Levi Strauss Japan and JCIE), 2) Volunteer (a case of Osaka Gas and plural corporations and NPOs), 3) Technical support through principal profession and technorogy (a cace of JAHDS). (2) In development of social services and goods (a case of Matsushita Electric and E&C, a case of IBM, a case of cause-related marketing). (3) In business tie-up (a case of NEC and kankyobunmei21, a case of Taiyonoie and Omron, Honda, Denso). We research some new collaboration and/or alliance cases, and find out new ways to collaborate to achieve their goals and contribute to society. Finally we point out some problems to be solved for making the collaboration work. For Businesses, they must understand the new concept of corporate citizenship and strategically operate the collaborative activities. For NPOs, they must have the attractive specific knowledge and network, and develop their management skill and social entrepreneurship for making the social innovation. For both of them, firstly, they should disclose information about their missions and activities for each other, and secondly we make effort to construct the intermediate NPO center in the community to match their operations.

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