On January 13, 2020, BNUBS 2020 Tokyo New Year forum, under the joint efforts of our institute and Graduate School of Business Administration of J.F.Oberlin University, was successfully held in J.F.Oberlin University, Tokyo, Japan. The theme of the forum is "The Reform of Sino-Japanese Economy and Enterprise Management in the New Era".Representatives from Chinese and Japanese academic circles and enterprises as well as teachers and students from our college and J.F.Oberlin University attended the forum. Professor Cui Xuegang, professor Hu Haifeng, associate professor Zhang Yue, associate professor Fang Fang and associate professor Tong Luqiong spoke at the forum and participated in the discussion. During the meeting, our college also held a special interview for talent recruitment.

 

 

At the beginning of the meeting, professor Hori, head of the Learners’ Group, and professor Cui Xuegang, associate dean of the School of Economics and Management of Beijing Normal University, delivered speeches respectively. In his speech, professor Hori extended his warm welcome to the faculty and students of the School of Economics and Management of Beijing Normal University and offered his sincere gratitude for their efforts in cooperation and support to J.F.Oberlin University. He also suggested that in the new era, the two institutes should further strengthen cooperation, conduct in-depth academic and practical research based on the practical problems of Sino-Japanese economy and enterprise management, and transform the research results into teaching content, so as to make greater contribution to the training of senior talents in line with the needs of Sino-Japanese economy and enterprise management. Professor Cui Xuegang expressed his appreciation to J.F.Oberlin University’s for their outstanding contribution to the New Year forum, reviewed the process of our cooperation since 1990s, pointed out that the establishment of the Tokyo J.F.Oberlin Center of School of Economics and Management of Beijing normal university last year marked a solid step in the exploration towards internationalization, which received worm welcome of teachers and students and high recognition from the school. This is also the first time for the School of Economics and Management of Beijing Normal University to hold a New Year's forum overseas. As the development of Sino-Japanese relations has entered a new stage, the forum has more special significance in the present age.

 

Firstly, Hideki Yen, director of the semiconductor division of SONY corporation and visiting professor of business studies at J.F.Oberlin University, gave a keynote report on "The Transformation of Japan's Electrical Appliance Industry: Beyond The Dilemma of Innovation". He reviewed the background of Japan's economic development in the past three decades and pointed out that while the global market capacity continued to grow in recent years, Japan's electrical industry was gradually losing its global competitiveness, mainly due to the innovation dilemma: enterprises that gained competitive advantages through innovation then formed a rigid business ecosystem (system and specific assets), which restricted the next innovation; the difficulty of transforming the horizontal integrated business model in the era of mass production into the vertical personalized (special supply chain) business model in the digital era; the winning the technology but the lose of the cost advantage, which caused difficulty for the enterprises to survive; the Galapagosization of many domestic enterprises; the prominent contradiction between the decision-making lag caused by the bottom-up report system and the increasingly shortened business cycle; the mismatch between penalty from the capital market and the business performance. In order to promote the revival of Japan's electrical industry, he suggested that Japanese enterprises should focus on core businesses that are competitive and profitable, reduce low-profitability businesses, strengthen corporate governance, enhance financial performance evaluation, improve the capital market, and pay attention to major issues such as sustainable development, innovation and global competitiveness.

 

Professor Cui Xuegang gave a keynote report on "Management Control of Chinese and Japanese Enterprises: Comparison, Trends and Integration Strategies", in which he pointed out that management control is the comprehensive embodiment of enterprise (group) management mode and governance mode, and its goal is to solve the common problems of cooperation, encroachment and collaboration in enterprises. Since the 1980s, Japanese enterprises have evolved a management control mode that emphasized long-term interests, the system of report and consultation, the relationship between enterprises, and the emphasis on lean production and quality control,which has been praised all over the world. But in recent years, the management control mode has received great challenges. Since the reform and opening up, Chinese enterprises, through learning from the experiences of the United Kingdom and the United States, have been constantly innovating the management and control model, which has well adapted to China's rapid development and drastic changes in the business environment. But at the same time, it also had some defects, such as paying too much attention to short-term goals, emphasizing too much on the control structure and ignoring the decision-making effect, being slow to respond to the market demand, and neglecting the value chain and supply chain management. With the rapid development of science and technology in the new era, the risks faced by enterprises became increasingly large and complex, and the research perspectives of management control were constantly diversified, some enterprises, such as Haier Group, began to explore customized services and modular production and organization, including zero inventory, delayed production, suppliers' sharing of company profits and holding of company stock and other management control measures. The management control mode also developed from the technical control to the combination of social control and the technical control. Therefore, Chinese and Japanese enterprises needed to carefully analyze the excellent genes of enterprise management and control, learn from each other, and innovate management and control methods. This was not only the innovative path of academic research on enterprise management and control, but also the best exploration path of enterprise management and control.

 

 

"Small and Middle-Sized Enterprises and Entrepreneurs in a Society with a Shrinking Population" was the subject of a report by Yoshiyuki Hori, head of the Learners’ Group at J.F.Oberlin University. He first talked about the changes of population in Japan and pointed out the social problems caused by the decrease in population,such as reduced consumption, drop in production and less social organizations as well as problems faced by companies including a shrinking domestic market, a shortage of workers and difficulties in finding successors. Therefore, influenced by the population decline, small and medium-sized enterprises in Japan sought for new markets by looking for overseas markets, expanding the boundaries of demand, pursuing diversification,and at the same time improved production efficiency by employing women and the elderly, information technology, new equipment investment.Then, by analyzing the cases of enterprises such as Nanbu Bijin and YUKI Precision,professor Hori introduced the coping strategies of Japanese enterprises in the new economic situation.

 

Professor Zhang Yue made the report "China's Economic Development Bottleneck and its Learning from Japan's Experience".He first analyzed the fiscal revenue and expenditure of local governments in China in 2019, and housing, cars, smartphones, lottery sales and the keqiang index, then concluded that China’s economic development has indeed reached a bottleneck.Professor Zhang elaborated on how to learn from Japan's experience in two aspects, the macro one and micro one. In the macro aspect, through the review of Japan's reform in the Ming dynasty, he pointed out that the policy of large-scale national retreat and civil advancement contributed largely to Japan's victory in the Sino-Japanese war a decade later.In the micro aspect, through a series of examples,he pointed out that Chinese entrepreneurs should learn from Japan the professional consciousness (craftsman spirit) but do not pursue diversification. 

 

 

 

Fang fang, an associate professor, reported on a study of the "Differences in Executive Compensation in Chinese Enterprises”. Taking the widening income gap between business operators and the Chinese government's regulation on business operators' remuneration as the starting point, Ms. Fang explored the reasons for the differences in business operators' remuneration between enterprises through the data of Chinese listed enterprises from 2015 to 2012.The research showed that the growth rate of operator's remuneration increased year by year in listed enterprises, and the difference of operator's remuneration decreased gradually after 2007, which existed in both state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises. The main reason for the narrowing of the gap in executive compensation was the government's policy of limiting the salary of executives in state-owned enterprises, which helped to curb the excessive growth of executive compensation in all enterprises in the society. In the same fluctuation, there were obvious differences between state-owned listed companies and non-state-owned companies. The executive decision mechanism and corporate governance structure of state-owned enterprises have not played their due role in studying the excessive growth of executive compensation and narrowing the pay gap.

 

 

Associate professor Tong Luqiong reported "Living in Big Cities: the Influence of Social Crowding on Consumers Donation to Distant Places”. She pointed out that the distance between donors and donation activities had a greater impact on charitable behavior, and consumers tended to offer help to recipients who were closer to the them. She used an experimental approach to study the impact of social crowding on donation and the experimental results showed that the crowding degree significantly reduced the probability of the near donation and increased the probability of the long-distance donation. The study had important implications for understanding consumer’s prosocial behavior in the increasingly crowded environment of large cities. Future studies can further explore the mechanism of social crowding through field experiments.

 

 

Professor Hu Haifeng brought his research on "Corporate Social Responsibility and Productivity”. He pointed out that by shouldering social responsibility, enterprises can improve the quality and efficiency of labor input, reduce financing constraints, and stimulate the ability to innovate, so as to improve their production efficiency. The analysis of the data of listed companies showed that taking social responsibility had a significant positive effect on the company's production efficiency, which was even larger in the industry with low competition, non-high-tech enterprises, non-state-owned enterprises and small-scale companies. Taking a further step to shoulder social responsibility is conducive to improving the efficiency of internal distribution, raising the salary of employees, reducing the income gap within the company, restricting the environmental financing, improving the innovation ability and thus improving the production efficiency.

 

 

Then, the discussion section began. Under the chairmanship of professor Hirofumi Sakamoto, director of the institute of public welfare consortium legal person, the participants held a heated discussion on "corporate management in Japan and China during the transitional period”. The discussion covered the collapse of shareholder value management, the limits of growth, poverty and inequality, the information revolution, the succession of Japanese private enterprises, the complementary advantages of Chinese and Japanese enterprises, the research objectives of the management of Chinese and Japanese enterprises, and the direction of cooperation between the School of Economics and Management of Beijing Normal University and J.F.Oberlin University.

 

 

In the end, professor Jing Mu, head of the business research department of J.F.Oberlin University, made a concluding speech, and the New Year forum came to a successful conclusion in a warm and friendly atmosphere.

 

During the conference, the college also held a special talent recruitment interview.