Internationalization and Informationalization

Naohiko Kumagai Vice Chairman, Keidanren Chairman, Mitsuii & Co., Ltd.

The business environment has been becoming increasingly severe in recent years, and change has become a permanent state. At the root of such change, we can point to internationalization and informationalization as two main currents. Intermingled, they have a great impact on corporate management.

The internationalization now going on is different from that in previous times, which affected business activities and personnel matters. Now, it is invading such domains as the manner of corporate governance, such as shareholders' meetings and boards of directors, and pressing for a review of the Japanese-style management system, as seen in lifetime employment and a wages system based on seniority. We are in a situation where, with global standards as the keyword, internationalization from within is required. After the termination of the Cold War, while the market economy is being propagated throughout the world and economic activities are becoming literally borderless, it is a natural turn of events that the management system should be renovated with the world market in mind.

Through recent progress in information technologies, restrictions of time and distance have been vastly reduced, making the international activities of enterprises easier, with the result that the speed of information transfer has grown by leaps and bounds, advancing the sharing of information and urging the management system, including reports, orders, and decision-making, to be still more efficient. Furthermore, through the integration of information networks, seen in EDI and electronic commerce, the market structure is going to experience cataclysmic change on an international scale.

In counteracting such metamorphosis in the surroundings, it is central to penetrate the essence of the change and remake the management system into the most efficient one possible. With regard to informationalization, one has the impression that discussions center on perfection of informational infrastructure. Its reinforcement, as seen in the general use of personal computers, certainly is a prerequisite, but while the volume of information is increasing rapidly, inundating the planet, how to select valuable information precisely and make the most of it becomes more important than ever. Informational infrastructure is, after all, a means to an end, and to use it to the best advantage of management and business activities depends finally on how the sensitivity of each person to information and his or her ability to turn it to account is elevated.