Aspire Ethical Management
＊This article was originally written in Japanese by our CEO, Yoshihide Arai in April 2021.
It’s been a really long time since I posted a blog.
I’ve been writing a lot about Atrae and my thoughts, and with the increasing amount of information being sent out by our employees, I felt like I was no longer needed. From now on, I’ll be posting my thoughts and ideas from time to time like this.
I’ve been saying this ever since the company was founded. A company is a system created by “people” to make the people involved happy.
To make the people involved happy. This is what I have always believed.
It may be roughly the same to say that a company is a system created by “people” to make the people involved happy, including the workers, users, customers, shareholders, and the society (local community) involved. I believe that our vision of creating a company that attracts people from all over the world will be realized when we expand the harmony of the people involved. Based on this premise, I have been thinking about this for the past few years.
A technology company like ours can achieve the same level of value with an overwhelmingly small number of people by using technology to do what other companies have been doing in a labor-intensive manner. As a result, they can achieve extremely high profitability.
Of course, highly profitable companies are extremely good for shareholders and employees, but they also reduce employment.
If they are at least earning foreign currencies, then it can be said that there is no problem in terms of the domestic economy even if they are taking away jobs on a global scale, but in our case, they are actually taking away today’s jobs because they are completely domestically focused.
However, the replacement of the analog domain by technology is irreversible, and it is impossible to stop it. The question is how to use the high profits generated by the technology.
From a general capitalistic point of view, the profits will be returned to a limited number of people such as shareholders and employees. Of course, it would be beneficial for the company if the shareholders became fans and encouraged further investment.
But is that really all that is needed? Isn’t that enough to promote inequality?
Isn’t that the limit of capitalism in a sense?
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, if a company exists to make all the people involved happy, it is important to be more aware of the stakeholder “society” and focus on giving back to them.
In the past few years, I’ve concluded that it’s the right thing for a company, as a public institution of society, to make an effort to reduce the disparity and give back to as many people as possible by giving back to society, not just investors and employees, in some way, while reducing domestic employment.
I believe that there are many ways to give back.
Sports, arts, education, medical care, and welfare are typical examples.
We at Atrae are focusing on the area of sports in particular. (We’ll be posting more details on this blog soon) but if we can revitalize local communities and have a positive impact on youth education through sports, this will be a great return for society.
Of course, as a listed company, shareholders are also extremely important stakeholders, and it is not just a matter of consuming profits to give back to society, but also of increasing the value of the company’s stock and achieving sustainable growth while improving society through sports and education that make a high degree of social contribution. I recognize that this is the fate of a listed company and a natural thing to do.
It’s a difficult task, but a company that only pursues high stock prices and profits will never be able to attract many people no matter how much it grows. What kind of company can attract many people? As a team, we would like to continue our trial and error to become an indispensable part of human society.
