Ethical Challenges Facing Japanese Businesses: Historical and Contemporary Observations

Since the end of the cold war, globalization based on the IT revolution and the increasing amount of cross-border trade has fundamentally changed the operating conditions for world businesses. In Japan, such change has promoted innovation, but it has also stretched to the limit questions of proper ethical conduct in the pursuit of profit. This article will offer several examples of the ethical challenges facing Japanese business, and recommend a new ethical framework in light of the reforms proposed by and ethical values of Shibusawa Ei'ichi in establishing modern Japanese capitalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.