The paper explores conceptual approaches to business ethics from the Japanese tradition and their potential to enhance our global approach to social and environmental sustainability, including discussion of a framework for understanding the embeddedness of the business in society. As globalization and economic and sociopolitical challenges proliferate, the nature of the connections between the USA and Asia is more important than ever. Following an expressed “pivot” or “rebalance” to Asia and the current nebulous alliances, we hope to raise the profile of Japan’s potential to shape the conception and practice of business in society. We explore attempts to offer a universal business ethic, intended as guidance for businesses globally, and examine contributions of Japanese thought to these frameworks. Considering the traditional approaches of sanpoyoshi, or tri-directional (buyer, seller, and societal) welfare in business transactions, kyosei, which can mean “living and working together for the common good”, and mottainai, or “grateful and sustainable consumption,” the research explores the relationships between the private sector, government, and civil society. Further, we examine the related notion of moralogy, which has been described as a virtue-based stakeholder approach to business. We suggest that these concepts merit promoting the conception of the “homo socio-economicus” model to replace the prevailing “homo economicus” model that threatens what sound business should be. Through interviews with Japanese scholars and practitioners and exploration of Japanese cultural traditions, we present an overview of these approaches. With this perspective, we cite the case of the Tōhoku earthquake and Fukushima nuclear disaster as one illustrative example. We hope that this understanding of the embeddedness of business in society based on Japanese traditions and experience can contribute to a global conception of the role of business in society, relevant to the USA as well. Our goals are to contribute to existing discussions of Japanese business ethics and relevance to a global perspective, and to inspire ongoing exploration of applications of these ideas in teaching and scholarship.

中文翻译：

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日本传统中的商业道德观：对全球对商业在社会中的作用的理解的启示

本文探讨了日本传统的商业道德概念方法及其在增强我们的全球社会和环境可持续性方法方面的潜力，包括讨论了理解商业在社会中的内在性的框架。随着全球化以及经济和社会政治挑战的激增，美国与亚洲之间联系的性质比以往任何时候都更加重要。继明确表示对亚洲的“枢纽”或“再平衡”以及当前模糊的联盟之后，我们希望提高日本在塑造社会上的商业构想和实践方面的潜力。我们探索提供通用商业道德的尝试，旨在为全球企业提供指导，并研究日本思想对这些框架的贡献。考虑到传统的Sanpoyoshi或商业交易中的双向（买方，卖方和社会）福利，即kyosei，这可能意味着“为共同利益而生活和共同工作”和mottainai，即“感恩和可持续的消费”，该研究探讨了私营部门，政府和公民社会之间的关系。此外，我们研究了有关道德的概念，道德被描述为一种基于美德的利益相关者的业务方法。我们建议这些概念值得推广“ homo social-economicus”模型的概念，以取代威胁到合理业务的流行的“ homoeconomicus”模型。通过与日本学者和实践者的访谈以及对日本文化传统的探索，我们对这些方法进行了概述。从这个角度来看，我们举出东北地震和福岛核灾难为例。我们希望，基于日本的传统和经验对商业在社会中的嵌入性的理解能够有助于对商业在社会中的角色（与美国也是如此）的全球观念有所贡献。我们的目标是促进对日本商业道德以及与全球视角的相关性的现有讨论，并激发对这些思想在教学和学术研究中的应用的不断探索。我们希望，基于日本的传统和经验对商业在社会中的嵌入性的理解能够有助于对商业在社会中的角色（与美国也是如此）的全球观念有所贡献。我们的目标是促进对日本商业道德以及与全球视角的相关性的现有讨论，并激发对这些思想在教学和学术研究中的应用的不断探索。我们希望，基于日本的传统和经验对商业在社会中的嵌入性的理解能够有助于对商业在社会中的角色（与美国也是如此）的全球观念有所贡献。我们的目标是促进对日本商业道德以及与全球视角的相关性的现有讨论，并激发对这些思想在教学和学术研究中的应用的不断探索。