Abstract
The legal framework and enforcement apparatus used in the fight against bribery are being steadily improved in many countries. The public and private sectors in Japan have participated in this trend. This chapter provides an overview of changes in the anti-corruption legal framework and a snapshot of corporate initiatives to fight against corruption in Japan.
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Annex: Notes on methodology
The data used in this article is a result of the 10th annual survey on corporate responsibility conducted by the Asahi Newspaper Foundation in 2000. For the year 2000 survey, a questionnaire was sent to 187 companies that are well known or have great exposure to consumers in Japan. It should be noted that the purpose of the survey is to draw public attention to corporate social responsibility by providing ranking of these companies and hence the sampling methodology is less vigorous. The sample also includes subsidiaries of non-Japanese multinational enterprises operating in Japan. The secretariat of the foundation sends out a questionnaire and follows up with telephone calls. The purpose of the survey and the bias towards large companies might have resulted in providing much higher frequency. It is evident when compared to the recent survey on corporate governance, which covers 543 listed companies.11 The survey demonstrated that only 54.5 percent of companies have codes of conduct and/or compliance manuals. However, the sample might be an adequate comparison to the OECD study mentioned in the text, which also focused on multinational enterprises that tend to be large and relatively well-known. While the survey addresses a wide range of issues on corporate responsibility, the article concentrated on the data related to corruption extracted under the subject heading business ethics (kigyo rinri). A word of caution is required for non-respondents bias of this survey. Although the total sample size is 187, for some questions, sample size is much smaller. That is to say, there were firms that chose to respond only to selected questions. Among the 187 companies, 2 companies did not respond at all, and further 125 responded to selected questions. The study adopts a conservative assumption — it assumes that all non-respondents do not engage in the activity mentioned.
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© 2003 Maiko Miyake, Kathryn Gordon and Iwao Taka
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Miyake, M., Gordon, K., Taka, L. (2003). Fighting against Corruption: The Japanese Approach to Reform Corporate Governance. In: Kidd, J.B., Richter, FJ. (eds) Corruption and Governance in Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230503540_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230503540_9
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