ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the organizational level and the links between individual connections and corporate alliances of one sort or another. It looks at the moral and ethical issues underpinning people’s reliance on and use of networks and connections. Connections work along two sets of double axes in the world of business. At the individual level, they operate within and between aiganizations. At the organizational level, formal relations between firms are established as a result of informal individual contacts. One obvious link between individuals and organizations is that of inter-locking directorships. In particular, businessmen and women worry about the self-interest of their connections being transformed into ‘opportunism’, on the one hand, and about how themselves to avoid being so accused as they create, recognize and sustain ‘trust’, on the other. In Japan personal relationships among individuals are what count in everyday interaction, and those between key participants play a crucial role in generating trust between organizations as a whole.
