An Analysis of the Contribution of Japanese Business Terms to Corporate Sustainability: Learnings from the “Looking-Glass” of the East

Rodrigo Lozano,Angela Carpenter,Masachika Suzuki,Olga Tyunina

doi:10.3390/su9020188

Abstract

During the last decade, there has been increasing research on Corporate Sustainability, whereby most of such research was undertaken in the Western world. This paper is aimed at analysing the contribution of Japanese Business terms to Corporate Sustainability. The paper analyses, using Grounded Theory, 28 Japanese business terms through a Corporate Sustainability framework based on the four dimensions of sustainability (economic, environmental, social, and time), the company system (operations and processes, strategy and management, organisational systems, procurement and marketing, and assessment and communication), and stakeholders (internal, interconnecting, and external). The underpinning principles of the Japanese business terms provide complementary approaches to Western views on corporate sustainability by offering a more holistic perspective by linking the company system and its stakeholders to the four dimensions of sustainability. The paper proposes that Corporate Sustainability can learn from Japanese business approaches through: (1) the interaction and alignment of the factory, the firm, and inter-firm network; (2) the relationships between management and employees; (3) the inter-linkages between the company system elements; and (4) how Japanese companies remained competitive, even under the stress of a long-term major economic crisis. However, the analysis indicates that the relationship with external stakeholders and communicating with them through assessment and reporting is lacking in Japanese business management practice. Japanese businesses and their management can also learn from the Corporate Sustainability of the West by: (1) considering the four dimensions of sustainability and how they interact; (2) taking a holistic and systemic approach to Corporate Sustainability; (3) engaging in more Corporate Sustainability research; and (4) making Corporate Sustainability part of a company’s culture and activities. Businesses in the East and the West need to recognise that they can both contribute to making the world more sustainable by learning from each other’s approaches on Corporate Sustainability and adapting them to their own contexts.

Highlights

Corporate Sustainability (CS) has become common in theory [1,2,3] and in practice [4] for such companies as AT&T, DuPont, and Tata Power
The analysis shows that many of the Japanese Business Terms (JBTs) make a direct contribution to the elements in the company system
The analyses show that the Corporate Sustainability framework can serve as a basis to map company efforts, highlight where the main efforts are being done and gaps appear, detect their level of holism in the approaches, and potentially implement changes in the company

Summary

Introduction

Corporate Sustainability (CS) has become common in theory [1,2,3] and in practice [4] for such companies as AT&T, DuPont, and Tata Power. During the last three decades, a number of corporations have been engaging in becoming more sustainability oriented [1,5,6]. An example of this is the more than 7700 companies in 130 countries that have signed the UN Global Compact [7]. Embedding sustainability principles such as the Global Compact into companies’ systems is complex and highly challenging [8]. CS has to encompass a holistic perspective [3,10] that, according to Lozano [11], is based on two dynamic and simultaneous equilibria (the Two-Tiered Sustainability Equilibria (TTSE)): The First-Tier Sustainability Equilibrium (FTSE) depicts the interactions of three dimensions—the economic, environmental, and social—in the present; when a fourth dimension, time, is added, the FTSE interacts dynamically with the dimensions in the past and in the future

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Conclusion