Abstract
When social demand emerged for corporations to adopt principles of environmental protection and preservation, building constructors, with their high volume of construction waste, faced a dilemma in devising countermeasures. Sekisui House Corporation's response was to tackle its social responsibility obligations over waste by establishing practical cooperation throughout its whole corporate group. This article investigates the process of corporate social responsibility (CSR) management in the Sekisui House Corporate group, and makes clear the best practice of middle managers’ leadership in the field. In this case, middle managers created an inter-organisational network in the corporate group as follows: First, they socialised and externalised workers’ sense of value on CSR and concrete ideas for it by making the inter-organisational network denser and network ties stronger. Second, they combined workers’ sense of value and concrete ideas by serving as mediators between corporate headquarters and branch offices, and created an appropriate route for CSR. Third, they internalised this approach by making the inter-organisational network denser and ties stronger.
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Notes
According to an FY1999 survey conducted by the Ministry of the Environment, construction waste constituted 19.1 per cent of total industrial waste.
Nonaka (1991) and Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) state that alliances, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and entering keiretsu are methods for knowledge creation in inter-organisational relations. However, creation of tacit knowledge in inter-organisational relations has not been concretely theorised.
Allen and Cohen (1969) and Allen (1977) stated that a ‘gatekeeper’ as a boundary-spanner performs efficient gatekeeping functions in inter-organisational relations and communication functions in relations within an organisation by means of oral communication. However, in this article, we do not restrict communication to oral communication, but include shared experiences and continuous interactions. Knowledge creation is an activity with high uncertainty, so we cannot conclusively say that oral communication is efficient. In fact, the theory of knowledge creation points out that sources of knowledge creation are more likely to be found in ‘tacit knowledge’ in verbally indescribable areas. Also, Harada (1999) stated that a person performing an information collection function (or gatekeeper) in inter-organisational relations is different from one performing information transmission function (or transformer) in relations within an organisation. This argument refers to the different handlers of knowledge creation between inter-organisational and internal levels. In other words, a gatekeeper as a boundary-spanning person takes charge of knowledge creation at inter-organisational level, and a transformer, as information translator, takes charge of knowledge creation at internal level. This view matches the point in this article that in inter-organisational knowledge creation, the existence of a boundary-spanner must be acknowledged.
The argument for ‘the strength of weak ties’ wrongly claims that weak ties are bridges in many cases. In other words, it confuses two concepts, the strength of ties and the mediation of ties. In effect, the positions of ‘the strength of weak ties’ and ‘structural holes’ are very similar (Yasuda, 2001).
Dyer and Nobeoka (2000) state the source of strength of Toyota Motor Group lies in efficient knowledge acquisition and its spread through a high-density network with strong ties around Toyota Motor at the core. This remark matches the argument in this article. Nobeoka also discusses the dynamism of network development. But as for the knowledge created there, his study only looked at the static aspect, categorised by character (tacit or explicit) and inter-organisational relationship (dyadic or multilateral), and lacking a view on the dynamism of knowledge conversion. In contrast, by adopting knowledge creation theory, the argument in this article has something to contribute to this respect.
At the end of FY2004, the averaged quantity of by-product generation in the whole company was 1913 kg per constructed residence of 145 sq.m. floor space.
‘Socialisation’ of his/her sense of value about Zero-emission means to share the sense that Zero-emission is valuable. Also, ‘externalisation’ of his/her sense of value about Zero-emission means to be able to explain its value in words.
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Akiyama, T. CSR and inter-organisational network management of corporate groups: Case study on environmental management of Sekisui House Corporation Group. Asian Bus Manage 9, 223–243 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/abm.2010.4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/abm.2010.4