A Characteristic of Private Sector in Japan about Climate Change Mitigation Measure – Corporate Culture That Puts Strong Emphasis on Harmony and Among the Sector-

Climate change has received growing attention in both political and public areas, and now it has become one of the most pressing environmental issues. This presentation will focus on private sector in Japan, and analyze their perceptions of global warming and measures to reduce greenhouse gas emission. How Japanese companies act against global warming issue? and what kind of characteristic can be found among the private sector?

The analyses are based on data from an international research project, Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks: COMPN. This project explores characteristics of decision-making process around climate change policies and the Japan team conducted face-to-face questionnaire survey to 125 organizations during February 2012 to June 2013. In this presentation, special attentions are paid to comparative analyses between companies and industrial associations.
Careful examination will show a roll of industrial associations that adjust a diversity of opinion among the surveyed companies. On the one hand, each company has its opinion and measures toward global warming issues. On the other hand, industrial associations have functions to equalize these various opinions. In the process of summarizing claims within the industrial associations, various opinions tend to become conservative to keep strong solidarity as one industrial sector. As a result, it can be observed strong emphasis on harmony among private sector. This tendency can be explained by Japanese word “Wa”, which means “harmony”, is a key concept to understand Japanese culture and in general imply negative aspect.

Although the surveyed companies and industrial associations agree the fact of global warming on the whole, they disagree to implement some regulations to mitigate greenhouse gas emission. However, the important point is that this corporate culture has a function to prevent a company from emerging negative actor about global warming issues. This can be a characteristic under the times of neo-liberalism.