University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

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national policy proposed separation of an electric sector from the target of this law
and introduce the more stringent standard on the environmental impact assessment of
the electric sector under the name of the MITI. The electric sector strongly opposed
against the MITI. In this case, the narrow relationship between companies and the
government was worsened. In addition, the global environmental charter issued by
Keidanren in 1991, which was a voluntary declaration for corporate environmental
behaviour, caused the confrontation between the MITI and Keidanren, because the
MITI thought this might cause independence of Keidanren from the MITI. Since the
strong relationship was slowly broken, NGOs have got a chance to implement the
private politics in a better relationship with companies. At that time, NGOs were
firstly observed by companies as a stakeholder, and companies started to disclose
information. Another good example of the slowly changing dynamics between
companies and NGOs was a meeting sponsored by Greenpeace in November 1996.
Greenpeace, long viewed in Japan as an extremely radical environmental group, held
a seminar attended by representatives of sixty Japanese companies (Schreurs 2003).
Conclusion
This paper described some transitions in both Japan and Germany. The foreign
pressure of the internationalisation of environmental policy made companies
recognise the importance of the environmental CSR and standards on environmental
management system made information costs for NGOs lower along with the
development of the IT technology.
As the governments became able to use a VA as a policy alternative to public
regulation, the regulatory threat started to function. It is still unclear how strong this
affected Japanese environmental CSR, but this explains well about the development
of CSR in Germany. Although VAs introduced in Germany have problems to be
solved, for instance the credibility of information transparency or the clearance of the
set-up process of a target must be improved the role of VAs to broadly distribute
information with little costs became recognised.
The transition from the public politics to the private politics drastically reduces the
information costs of NGOs. This change potentially brings more benefit to the
participating companies and reduces marketing costs through use of the credibility of
NGOs and their marketing campaigns. This can be more observed in Germany,
However Japanese NGOs can also use the private politics from the beginning. WWF
or Greenpeace Japan are likely to use this strategies in Japan.
The change of the relationship between companies and the government is the most
gradual way in the transitions described in this paper. However the impact of this
change in Japan might be going very huge, because this is the most fundamental
change. The neutralisation of the relationship makes the regulatory threat influential
in Japan. The long rule of the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan at last ended in 2009.
The new Government party, Japanese Democratic Party, emphasises its will of
change the relationship between the government and bureaucracy. I am interested in
what will happen in the relationship between companies and the government because