Online Tutoring on CSR Activities by Toyota

Introduction

Corporate social responsibility goes by many names such as corporate citizenship, corporate conscience, social performance and the likes. However, the basic crux of these words lies in the idea that when a particular organization reaches a point where it has achieved its said goals; it’s time to give something back to the community. As per Lindgreen, A. and Swaen, V. (2010), an organization that practices corporate social responsibility needs to ensure that it measures up to ethics, norms and spirit of law. At times, organizations go beyond their basic responsibility and interest and work for a greater social good. The example of such organization is Toyota Motor Corporation.

Toyota, since its inception, has always tried to contribute to the sustainability and prosperity of the society. They manage to do so by producing and providing high-end products and services which truly reflects company’s creativity and dedication as well as their efforts to contribute towards ecological sustainability. They have also expanded their business and innovation in areas like afforestation, biotechnology and energy. Other than that, they also carry out initiatives to make social contributions that basically focus on “traffic safety”, “education” and “the environment”. Toyota aspires to focus on such activities in order to help people and bring them happiness.

Toyota’s CSR Initiatives

Toyota Motor Corporation along with its subsidiaries, ensures that their corporate activities are linked with CSR activities so that overall ecological sustainability and harmony can be brought about, not just in Japan, but everywhere that Toyota is present. In the opinion of Dangelico, R.M., Pujari, D. (2010), a company should take into account CSR initiatives in not just its country of inception, but also subsidiaries operating in different parts of the world, and global initiatives are always welcomed by the society. They stand by all local, national and international laws and make sure to create a workforce that believes in integrity, honesty, and economic sustainability and portrays the same as well. They value their stakeholders and maintain a strong bond with them by steady interaction since they are well aware that these stakeholders play a big role in maintaining the success of the company and the community.

Toyota’s CSR initiative are mainly divided in three areas. The first area works around innovating the design of their car and its structure in order to make sure that a high end quality product is delivered to their consumers. The second area revolves around enriching the lives of communities which aids Toyota in putting forth their social contributions. The third area focuses on stable base of business for betterment of the organization as well as the environment.

Discretionary Factor – Always Better Cars

In this area, Toyota’s basic aim is to provide cars that are technology driven, environmentally stable and always provide customers a safe driving experience. According to Chung, Y., and Tsai, C. (2007) it is crucial for high-tech companies to manufacture high-end product which are conforming to the policies of ecological sustainability. This is why Toyota is constantly making R&D efforts and coming up with technology which helps it achieves the said objectives. By better cars they mean cars that are high in quality, safe and secure along with being fun and exciting and environmentally stable.. Toyota has also initiated a framework called Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA) in order to keep developing better cars.

One of such corporate initiative which proved that Toyota is keeping in mind CSR factors is the production of first mass-produced fuel cell vehicle (FCV) called MIRAI launched in 2014. The development of this vehicle took a period of twenty two years after which lead to the inception of hydrogen-based society.

A team of researchers and engineers have been working since 1992 towards the development of the “ultimate Eco-Car”. This FCV car contains a number of world’s first features such as “maximum output boosted to 114kW, world’s highest power density of 3.1 kW/L, the world’s first humidifier-free operation, and other cutting-edge technologies.” According to Sarkis, J. (2001) manufacturing of environmentally stable product also makes a difference and should cover less pollution emission. The MIRAI has been designed to open a whole new world of mobility with its exciting driving pleasure and unbeatable environmental performance.

Toyota’s CSR initiatives proves to be discretionary with their conscious choice of producing cars which are not only environmentally stable but also provides customer with better safety options. In the area Always Better Cars, Toyota aims at works on producing cars keeping in mind factors like design, comfort and most of all environment. However, Toyota’s overall mission is to produce cars which are safer and can be driven with confidence and for this purpose their ultimate goal is to eliminate traffic casualties. Working towards this purpose, the stats show that deaths due to traffic accidents have decreased to 4100 per year but nevertheless the worldwide ratio still remains at 1.24 fatalities. Toyota believes in order to reduce the number of traffic casualties, the root causes and conditions of traffic accidents but be researched and then used to develop safety technologies which are effective.

Toyota calls this joint effort as “pursuing real-world safety” which is considered as a policy in their technology development area. Toyota has not just talking about safety but it has been working in this area as well. For instance, Toyota Safety Sense with its active safety package was recently commercialized and developed with the aim of contributing towards real-world safety and covering the number of accidents happening around the world and not just Japan. In this safety package there are two types of sensors which includes various safety function as well as incredible detention technique which contributes towards reliability and performance of the car. The automatic break technique is implemented to work around a variety of speeds. Toyota realized that all this technology can go to waste if customers do not adapt towards this car all over the world. Therefore, they aim towards making Toyota Safety Sense available all over the world at an affordable price so that it can contribute towards customers adopting safer cars.

Economic Factor – Stable Base of Business

This is the segment where all three segments are linked as always making better cars and enriching lives of the communities eventually results in a stable business. This is the point where Toyota achieves continuous growth through a righteous cycle. People are what bring stability to Toyota’s business. More than 300,000 Toyota employees are present all over the world, sharing and portraying Toyota’s values since its inception. Toyota makes sure to keep strengthening these values which are namely Toyota Guiding Principles, Toyota Percepts and Toyota Way, meanwhile carrying out their various business activities. These values are global and apply to every region where Toyota is present and sharing these values globally helps Toyota in building better cars and helping community. According to Lee, K.H., and Shin, D. (2010), consumer’s responses to CSR initiatives is what bring stable business to the organization. Similarly, Toyota makes better cars, contribute to society through these cars and as a result earn sales and profits in increasing order which leads to reinvesting in improvising the making of cars. As per Greenbiz: (2009), Green Product Trends have helped in creating awareness of economically adaptable products and hence consumers are more conscious of the harmful effects of vehicles which makes them more concerned while making vehicle choices.

Toyota’s philosophy is “developing people” which basically means handing down Toyota’s values and communicating the Toyota way of thinking. In order to achieve this goal, Toyota has been building a framework which continuously and reliably develop and improvise human resource that is capable of continuing the business activities at a global level. The frame also includes two main elements i.e. Quality Control which is designed to raise the strength and vivacity of workplaces and people, and a Driving project in Australia.

QC Circles

QC circles are mainly created by employees in the shop floor jobs so that they can actively solve on-the-job problems and engage in various activities. In 2014, Toyota celebrated its 50^th anniversary of QC circles. QC circles contribute in the making of fulfilling and cheerful workplace by building the sense of mutual trust and teamwork. “As of March 2015, approximately 4,100 circles involving approximately 36,000 members were active in Japan, and approximately 13,000 circles involving approximately 99,000 members were active overseas.”

Driving Project in Australia – Roads train the people who make Toyota cars

Toyota has always aimed to become the company which grows sustainably keeping environmental and wellbeing of customers in mind, “just as a tree steadily gains one growth ring per year”. One of Toyota’s initiatives is to produce always better cars and to do that it needs to have people who can make those better cars. Driving Project in Australia was initiated in 2014 as an advanced initiative to train people for achieving such sustainable growth. The aim of the project is to hone the features of not just the cars but the skills of people as well who drive them. For this purpose, 41 Toyota employees who are responsible for vehicle development and testing in the engineering division are made to experience the extremely harsh and punitive driving in Australia with all types of road conditions and this way roads train the people who drive Toyota cars.

Toyota has made learning from roads a basic requirement for building a car. They make sure that employees have learnt from that experience and apply it while developing and testing vehicles. Through this way the employees get to understand their cars and improve their intuitions for car making which they obtain from stoic and tough driving experience. This experience is then shared with Toyota employees all over the world so their passion and interest in making always better cars is strengthened.

Ethical Factor – Enriching Live of Communities

In this segment, Toyota realizes the underlying problems of the world and help in solving them in a responsible and ethical way. As per Dyllick, T., and Hockerts, K. (2002) companies should always identified various issues that could pose a threat to the environment and ecology of the planet, such as Global emerging issues such as energy crisis, global warming, and lack of resources, food and water shortage, loss of biodiversity, discrimination, poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and aging population that pose a threat to the society and wellbeing of people are considered by Toyota as a leading firm. It is the responsibility of the organizations as established as Toyota to work towards eradication of these issues and restore a balance in the world as these organizations hold power and resources to make a difference. Particularly in this segment and its Global Vision, Toyota signifies its intent to contribute towards “enriching lives of the communities” and aims to work along with individuals in local communities to help achieve this objective. Some of the basic efforts that they plan to carry out for this venture include improvising product design and performance, manufacturing cars that stay environment friendly throughout their lifecycle, building a next-generation society by utilizing the organization’s resources and help of stakeholders and last but not the least, carrying out social contribution activities to enrich lives of the communities.

In this segment, Toyota strives to create: