Recent financial crunch has brought increasingly severe business environment, forcing a traditional market economy system a paradigm shift in terms of people’s thoughts and frameworks.

With growing awareness of corporate social responsibility, many companies are now striving to develop CSR efforts. Meanwhile, the situation might well be called a sort of ‘CSR Bubble.’ When the business is suffering as it stands now, it is not surprising that “cosmetic” or “window-dressing” CSRs are subject to major review. In years to come, one key phrase that surely represents a future corporate strategy will be “core competence-based” CSR activities, which will also provide an opportunity for sustainable development.

While many social problems such as poverty, welfare, ageing society with falling birthrate, employment insecurity and so on have come to surface, social business is on a budding phase to tackle with these issues.

Given the circumstances, we established an above-captioned research committee. The committee put its focus on: CSR activities based on core competence; evolving eco-business; and social business development, and deepened the discussion through the process of reporting innovative cases, with an aim to help foster a new business culture toward a sustainable, natural and social environment.