Empirical Research on the Impact of Civil Society

2005 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 16530160
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Applied economics
• Research Institution: Kyorin University
• Principal Investigator: SUGAWARA Hideyuki Kyorin University, Faculty of General Policy Studies, Associate Professor, 総合政策学部, 助教授 (30255418)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): KATO Tomohisa Kyorin University, School of Health Sciences, Associate Professor, 保健学部, 助教授 (80152726)
• Project Period (FY): 2004 – 2005
• Keywords: Civil Society Organization / Civil Society Sector / Civil Society / environmental issues / quantitative analysis / three-sector model

Research Abstract

The fact that civil society is becoming increasingly prominent is evoking rising interest in its influence. Although many theoretical analyses, conceptual analyses, and case studies have been conducted concerning its roles and the extent to which they are being fulfilled, none of these researches employ numerical (quantitative) analyses.
Our research employs quantitative analyses of civil society organizations, thus breaking new ground in research on civil society. This research aimed to evaluate the impact of civil society sector on company sector by developing a quantitative analysis method.
This research was conducted by four research members who have different specialties (international business, international economics, international business history and mathematics) and nationalities (Japanese, American and German). With this scholastic and international research team, research was conducted targeting four areas for survey administration : Japan, East Asia, Europe and North America.
We found three major findings in terms of quantitative aspect.
First, companies certainly recognize the existence of civil society as a whole.
But secondly the relationships between companies and civil society has based on company-side factors, not civil-society-side factors. This means the civil society doesn't have any impacts on the company's decision-making and behavior at least in the area of environmental issues.
Thirdly we succeeded in making two types of index to measure the company's attitude toward civil society quantitatively. We named them, one is "company positiveness index toward civil society" another is "company cooperativeness index with civil society." A significant difference was found between Japanese companies and European companies in terms of company's attitude toward civil society.