Centennial Companies in Japan: Ethical Strategies for Sustainability and Well-Being

Japanese business sectors have been known for their manufacturing efficiency, such as the kanban style invented and adopted by Toyota. What needs to be discovered is that there are around 43,000 companies that have operated and existed in Japan for over a 100 years. This chapter focuses on the business styles of the centennial enterprises in Japan, known as shinise, and investigates, based on literature reviews, why they were able to sustain their business for such a long time and what role their underlying management philosophies play in this context. Academics have long neglected their importance, since those philosophies are mainly regarded as a mixture of ideas borrowed from Shintoism, Buddhism, and Confucian teachings. However, this paper argues that such ideas have not only led to the inherent neutrality, diversity, and flexibility that have helped centennial enterprises to sustain themselves for over a 100 years but at the same time have nurtured inter-relationality and mutuality among the stakeholders which provide a solid basis for more collective wellness and individual well-being. By highlighting such management philosophies, this chapter intends to provide impulses for the business sector to be more sustainable and abide by ethics and morality that might lead to a healthier planet and a flourishing society.