Project members

Project leader

Tatsuya SatoProfessor at the College of Comprehensive Psychology, Ritsumeikan University

Project member

Michiko SawanoAssociate Professor at the College of Comprehensive Psychology, Ritsumeikan University

Research project summary (Objectives/goals (results))

This project seeks to clarify the cultural framework of each individual company using fieldwork methods (including interviews, etc.) focused on a cultural anthropology standpoint in order to accurately ascertain the company as it stands now, in addition to tracking the company’s history, in order to develop a full picture of the history of companies that apply the Inamori management philosophy in management.

In other words, this project seeks to not only develop the history of a company; it also hopes to identify the ethnography of the company, namely, a document that details everything that goes on in the workplace. By using the history of the company, developed based on the accumulation of historical data, as the foundation, and adding the ethnography of the company—which provides a detailed description of the workplace as it was through to as it is now—to this, we can clearly ascertain the process used to ingrain the Inamori management philosophy within the company. Further, as this project develops the history of companies that actually exist, it can provide the reference materials needed to understand what kind of function the Inamori management philosophy plays within the management of each company.

This project has resulted in the serial publication of company histories and ethnographies, with more scheduled for the future. Further, through this project we are able to add emergent knowledge (new findings) on the importance of fostering the treatment of an organization as a family, which could potentially be of great benefit to exploring a deeper understanding on how a so-called Japanese approach to management relates to the Inamori management philosophy. Finally, we are also exploring the potential to have humanities and social sciences (in particular cultural anthropology and cultural psychology) meet social needs by leveraging our capacity to edit and reframe matters.

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