Japanese Social Enterprises: The Double Face of Policies

In Japan, as in many developed countries, social enterprises are increasingly regarded as essential organizations for the making of a health society. Some Japanese social enterprises provide specific services for vulnerable... [ view full abstract ]

In Japan, as in many developed countries, social enterprises are increasingly regarded as essential organizations for the making of a health society. Some Japanese social enterprises provide specific services for vulnerable people, whereas others are prevalently engaged in the local revival. However, in Japan those organizations are not yet valued as they should be by the general public and by the policy-makers. One of the reasons for this can be found in the fact that in Japan there is not a specific legal form for social enterprises. Another not less important reason is that Japanese schools of thought propose different interpretations and this unclear definition of social enterprise contributes to make this organization subject to a lot of misunderstandings that oftentimes jeopardize social enterprises’ real contributions in social, economic and political spheres.

The scope of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, we introduce three pathways to understand the concept and context of social enterprise in Japan. On the other hand, by focusing specifically on WISEs (work integration social enterprises) for the disabled - these include persons with physical, intellectual, and mentally disabilities - we attempt to explain what policies and institutions have been affecting their profiles.

For this study a questionnaire survey was implemented among 350 WISEs in the country. This survey was funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science during a three-year project (2011-2014) on “Disability and Employment”. The overall number of contacted Japanese WISEs was 1100 – the largest national survey ever conducted - but only 350 finally accepted to take part in our survey. Laratta was the principle investigator and Nakagawa was the main co-researcher for this study. There were at least two reasons why we focused our research exclusively on Japanese WISEs: a) disabled people in Japan represent the most excluded groups of people and many WISEs act to promote their social inclusion. In fact, only 5.4% of the 7.4million disabled are employed in the mainstream labor market (Cabinet Office, 2010; Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2009) and until May 2012 there were about 2000 WISEs in Japan who were working in tackling this issue (Welfare and Medical Service Agency, 2012); b) as mentioned above, Japan does not have special laws for social enterprises yet. However, in the specific case of WISEs, we can identify at least three typologies of policies that classify those organizations and affect their social goals, strategies, and means in terms of their social inclusion, management, and governance styles. We named those policies:
Typology A – those are policies directed to service providers of the disabled in general
Typology B – those are policies targeting the categories of labor for the disabled and related forms of integration
Typology C – those are policies oriented specifically for those people categorized as mentally disabled persons.
Therefore, those policies could be used as a starting point to begin to discuss/debate on how to create a favorable institutional framework for WISEs in this country.

One of the key findings of this study is that policies included in typology A above implemented under the Act on Services and Support for the Disabled has contributed substantially to the financial sustainability of WISEs in the country. At the same time, this same Act is having a negative impact on those organizations by promoting among them competition and consequently a commercialization of their practices against their natural mission of spreading democracy and solidarity. From here come our recommendation, namely that in order to solve such a dilemma, special policies for social enterprises encompassing from legal forms (at least clear definition about “what is social enterprises” at a national level) and special funds for financial support of those organizations are strongly required.