- 著者
-
大森 信
- 出版者
- 日本経営学会
- 雑誌
- 日本経営学会誌 (ISSN:18820271)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.42, pp.27-39, 2019 (Released:2020-03-26)
- 参考文献数
- 29
This paper attempts to historically reveal why Japanese companies have long emphasized cleaning, sorting, and organizing activities. Simultaneously, we explained theoretical significances in Japanese companies' valuing these activities from a management perspective. We have studied the relevance of cleaning, sorting, and organizing in Japanese companies by retrospect, through older documents, articles, or companies' in-house publications. We have also described how Japanese companies have historically solved their problems through cleaning, sorting, and organizing in their growth processes or continuing their business when facing various business issues, as they rename such activities as either 3S or 5S. Specifically, we studied the history of Japanese companies as private companies were initiated, and had to compel large numbers of employees who lacked discipline to work diligently. These companies had to decrease expenses after a major economic depression, improve worksite safety after work accidents and deaths often occurred, and improve productivity under harsh international competition with European and American companies. This paper has demonstrated that Japanese companies' managerial perspectives have incorporated a means-based management, which values cleaning, sorting, and organizing as a social practice. This management perspective has focused on specific measures toward cleaning, sorting, and organizing; for example, companies may discover new goals to foster the means, or solve their problems by utilizing such means according to their economic situation or current trends. We illustrated a meansbased management perspective contrary to the dominant perspective, which involves deciding the goal first and subsequently choosing from various means to achieve it. These two concepts contrast one another, yet are neither mutually exclusive nor opposing; rather, we would point out they are mutually complementary. Under stable circumstances, in which purposes can be easily decided in advance, purpose-based management ―which is dominant today― would be more effective and efficient. However, means-based management, based on social practice beyond time or location, would be highly effective in critical situations, or under highly uncertain circumstances. We would like to highlight, in other words, the danger of over-emphasizing either purpose-based or meansbased management.