Businessization and collaboration of the citizennon-profit sector in Japan

Abstract

In Japan, the activities of the citizen/non-profit sector have become active since around 1990. In some citizen/non-profit sectors, “businessization†is progressing, and social businesses are also emerging one after another. The citizen/non-profit sector has come to be positioned as a new public interest entity and new economic entity under the government policy. Local governments across the country are actively implementing support policies and collaboration policies for the citizen/non-profit sector. On the other hand, the citizen/non-profit sector tends to lose its original characteristics, and social business tends to be less differentiated from ordinary business. There are also cases in which the collaboration policies by local governments are not sufficiently successful. In this paper, I investigated the history, current situation, and problems of the businessization and collaboration of the citizen/nonprofit sector in Japan. In addition, I discussed future perspectives such as demonstrating the social existence significance of the citizen/non-profit sector, increasing the number of “citizen public benefit business†, and using “collaboration contract†.