Emergency Management is referred to as a field of Applied Management Science in the United States. There is no single integrated framework in Japan, like Emergency Management. This paper examines the Japanese disaster management regime from a perspective of organizational structure and design, using the U. S. Emergency Management framework. As a result, the paper reveals that it is required to create a line organization at any government level as well as to design machine organization at the field level. It is necessary to combine both organizations to strengthen the response capacity.

This article aims to analyze emergency medicine as a particular type of medicine specialized for crisis management. Its historical development can be interpreted as a response to critical needs for treating heavily injured patients beyond the capacity of the conventional division of labor in medical practice.
Emergency medicine has a couple of distinguishing features, including wide range of patients, treatment limited to the critical stage, its open character to interdepartmental collaboration, and the doctorsʼ role as a liaison officer.
The success of emergency medicine, however, has its drawbacks. Among them, one of the challenging issues is the problem of its identity as a specialized medicine. In addition, the changing trends of the typology of patients―from multiple injuries to internal diseases―urge emergency medicine to reflect upon its conventional program.
The lessons drawn from this case study for crisis management are as follows: 1) How such a program should be related to the rest of the organization; 2) how it can be kept alive during the normal situation; and 3) how it should respond to the changing features of a crisis. In this sense, emergency medicine provides important lessons to consider possibilities and issues of crisis management in action.

This paper argues that, even after the unprecedented earthquake in Eastern Japan on March 11, 2011, the basic principle of designing industrial supply chains should achieve its competitiveness and robustness simultaneously, as opposed to psychological overreaction that emphasizes the latter alone. After critically evaluating proposed changes on damaged supply chains, such as adding inventories, adopting standardized parts, duplicating equipment and tools, and evacuating facilities, the paper claims that, in the era of intensified global competition, those proposals are appropriate only when it sustains supply chain competitiveness. As an alternative measure to make the chain more robust without significantly adding product cost, the paper proposes the “virtual-dual” supply chain by enhancing portability of design information.

As a disaster diminishes existing social norms, even temporarily, there emerges a disaster utopia or paradise where people improvise their supporting behaviors toward others. However, it only lasts for a short time period. This study, firstly, introduces and analyzes several concepts of improvisation produced by disaster volunteers and disaster non-profit organizations. Secondly, based on the case of the Great East Japan Earthquake, the study presents a possible strategy to produce further improvisation.

The objective of this paper is to clarify the conceptual characteristics surrounding Safety Culture in the case of corporate accidents. Based on a framework defined in existing corporate accident literature, high-reliability organizations and human error studies, we examined key preconditions discussed in the corporate accidents field.
Our findings reveal that Safety Culture possesses theoretical characters that it is based on the premise of an ideological organization without accidents, and that it is conceptualized the organizational culture that follows normative patterns.

Many of crises are considered to be predictable. It may be because human beings have a tendency to underestimate the magnitudes of risks. This article investigates the phenomenon of underestimation by dividing risks into two types: Risk 1 and Risk 2. A typical Risk 1 is a predator. Risk 2 contains both natural disasters and most risks in the modern society. System 1 of human cognition is adjusted to Risk 1, and System 2 is not able to make an accurate assessment of Risk 2 yet. Therefore, both systems are inclined to underestimate the magnitude of Risk 2.

This paper examines how firms balance exploration and exploitation by analyzing data on the performance of developing mobile phone terminals. The paper reveals that some firms outperform their competitors both in platform models development and derivative models development by effectively managing risks associated with platform models development. An implication on platform strategy is also discussed from the perspective of balancing exploration and exploitation.

On the basis of the concept of “relational capabilities,” this study analyzes the construction process of a competitive advantage that leads the diversification strategy to success. The study discusses the case of NHK Spring that has successfully diversified from the production of automobile springs to that of HDD suspensions. This diversification process is analyzed over a reasonably long period. The result reveals that multi-level interactions with a specified company in the diversification field have a significant impact on the gradual development of relational capabilities required for the core field.