"Increasing Accidents"

There have been a lot of scandals of companies. In the latest example, by having concealed the infection doubt of bird influenza and having shipped the infected hen, chairman husband and wife of the poultry farming company of Hyogo Prefecture who were brought a charge against social responsibility were driven into suicide and the president, who is a son of them was arrested. In the case of the bland new shopping complex Roppongi Hills, a child was crushed to death by the revolving door. But it was proved after the accident that there had been 32 accidents since it opened last April but building management company did not take necessary measure after those accidents. In addition to those cases, the recall hiding incidents of automobile companies, the camouflage beef incident of Snow Brand Food, the factory fire of Bridgestone, the tank fire of Idemitsu Kosan, are fresh in memory. Common factor to all those cases is that they made mistake at the time of initial operation and it was resulted in developing the small accident into the big problem, which may also shake continuation of the company itself.

Several reasons could be considered as the background of increasing incidents. To begin with, an external factor is that they lost the margin to make sufficient quality control as a result of too much rationalization because of the pressure from the cheap Chinese products that are flooded in the market under the deflation over a long period of time and the fall of the morals of the managers because of the performance aggravation, etc.
Inner factor is based on the company climate peculiar to Japan, which an external check function cannot commit easily. The low consciousness of the information disclosure together with the present law system which does not allow to make lawsuit easily, has produced the trend insensible in a gap of common sense with general society and the insensibility of the size of the social influence, which will do the incident. These factors take hold on the family principle-company organization peculiar to Japan fundamentally. But I do not deny all of this system. Because this exclusive and a family principle based system has created the driving force to create high educational level of Japanese employee and the loyalty to a company and maintained the high quality of Japanese products. However, it is also a fact that it exposes the above weakness during depression. Moreover, the rapid increase trend of the latest part-time jobber may breaks down the system from an inside. How Japanese companies really make compromise with opened corporate systems of the western countries? (end)

Key Word

English	Japanese	English	Japanese
concealed		aggravation
poultry		consciousness
suicide		disclosure
complex		lawsuit
prove		insensible
camouflage		take hold
continuation		fundamentally
to begin with		expose
rationalization		compromise