ABSTRACT
The West was spellbound by the revolution of total quality management (TQM), which the American statistician Edward Deming had introduced in Japan. Japan has also led in the field of sustainability reporting in general, and environmental auditing and accounting in particular. As far back as 1993, the Japanese Institute of Certified Public Accountants (JICPA) set up an Environmental Auditing Subcommittee. The Japanese government has been a major factor in promoting environmental auditing, accounting and reporting. Of course, sustainability reporting has now become commonplace, following the introduction of the Global Reporting Initiative's (GRI's) Sustainability Reporting Guidelines in 1999 and their revision in 2002 and 2006. Canon's first president, Takeshi Mitarai, introduced three guiding principles during the 1940s, which are not a million miles away from today's concept of sustainable business. More succinctly, at Canon they define kyosei as 'living and working together for the common good', which is as good a definition of sustainable business as one will ever find.
