The good society—or a better society—is meaningful only if it includes those who help create it. This paper focuses not only on organizations that seek to generate social value but also on the prosocial motivation of the employees who work within them. After reviewing domestic and international research trends, the paper identifies two remaining issues: the limited understanding of the antecedents of prosocial motivation at work and the insufficient attention paid to differences in the quality of prosocial motivation, particularly with regard to its level of autonomy. Finally, drawing on insights from research on organizational purpose, this paper explores future directions for research on prosocial motivation.

This paper focuses on B Corp certification, which has been expanding internationally under the vision of “Business as a Force for Good.” It examines the underlying philosophy and social significance of B Corp certification while critically discussing the challenges inherent in the certification system itself. Furthermore, the paper discusses the potential of the diffusion of B Corp certification in Japan’s market society to foster healthy stakeholder relationships and to play a significant role in reshaping the relationship between business and society.

This paper reconsiders “management studies for a good society” not only in terms of desirable organizational practices but also through the conditions of the knowledge infrastructure that make such inquiry possible. It first examines how the intellectual freedom of management scholars is shaped by institutionalized systems of research evaluation. It then repositions firms as social, rather than merely economic, actors and considers how management studies can engage with questions of meaning, inclusion, and social responsibility. Finally, the paper examines institutional issues surrounding scholarly communication, journal subscriptions, open access, and the sharing of research outputs. It argues that management studies for a good society must ask not only what is good, but also who can participate in producing, accessing, and disseminating the knowledge through which such questions are debated.

This paper examines the significance of management scholars writing general books. While the primary scholarly activity is the writing and publication of academic research, particularly peer-reviewed journal articles, a significant number of management scholars also write books for a general audience. This paper examines such general books, which are often regarded as peripheral or even illegitimate scholarly activities, from the perspectives of readership, editorial quality assurance, and entertainment value. It then considers the role that general books can play in contributing to a good society.

Management scholarship faces a distinctive relevance dilemma. Unlike many other social sciences, it is routinely expected to generate knowledge that both meets rigorous scholarly standards and informs practice. This expectation makes management scholars especially vulnerable to criticism for practical relevance. This paper reframes that dilemma by challenging the assumption that “practice” resides only in formal managerial roles or organizational settings. Drawing on action research, insider inquiry, autoethnography, and ethnomethodology, it develops lived-experience research as a mode of inquiry through which researchers and practitioners transform situated experience into public, transferable knowledge. The paper further argues that everyday life can be “fieldized” —recast as a legitimate site for problem formulation, intervention, reflection, and theorizing. To operationalize this perspective, it introduces three value-creation tools that help transform private aspirations, present conflicts, and past failures into small-scale action research. By repositioning everyday life as a field of management inquiry, this paper advances a more participatory, reflexive, and socially purposeful vision of management scholarship.

Awareness of social issues such as climate change and loneliness has become widespread, yet such awareness does not readily translate into individual action. Taking this gap between awareness and action as its starting point, this paper conceptualizes organizations as mediating sites where human capital is expressed through action and its outcomes generate broader societal impact. It then positions entrepreneurship education research as a field that examines how individuals’ orientations and capabilities, shaped through education and experience, are translated into action across diverse contexts. On this basis, the paper proposes three perspectives: outcomes at the individual, organizational, and societal levels; actors across diverse contexts; and processes of inner transformation, together with the research infrastructure needed to support them. In doing so, it articulates a vision for advancing organization science as “management studies for a good society.”

This paper offers three recommendations for the development of leaders needed to build a better society. First, it calls for greater attention to empirical research on leadership that transcends organizational boundaries to promote not only“ organizational effectiveness” but also “societal well-being.” Second, it highlights the importance of advancing research on the ultra-long-term development of leader identity, encompassing the period from before employment through the early stages of a career. Third, it argues that researchers should engage not only in leadership development within organizations and communities but also in leadership education at universities, while disseminating the knowledge generated through these activities.