Responsible Management For Sustainable Development: A Japanese Approach

There is a growing recognition of the positive effects the activities carried on by conscious and responsible companies have on various stakeholders such as employees, customers, business partners, investors, shareholders, governments, communities, and the environment. This is why corporate management has understood that long-term business success is based on the establishment and development of good relationships with a wide range of stakeholders. In recent decades, the debate about the need for responsible management has risen above average and an impressive amount of literature on this topic has emerged. Business managers increasingly understand that engaging in the sustainability issue brings benefits to companies, the environment and to society as a whole. The purposes of the paper are to present -based on an extended literature review- the concepts of responsible management and sustainable development and to exemplify their relationship in the case of a Japanese company. In order to achieve such ends, the authors have used a quantitative research method. The paper demonstrates that there is a relationship between these two concepts. First, responsible management and sustainable management represent multidimensional concepts that encompass not only an economic dimension, but also a social dimension and an environmental dimension. Second, both concepts involve a wide range of duties and obligations assigned to various actors such as governments, multinational corporations or small companies. Also, it shows that responsible management contributes to sustainable development in a multitude of ways.