E-Square Inc.
President and Chief Executive Officer
MOTOKI Hiroo
From 1992, he worked on information systemconstruction, strategic planning and environmental management at the Deloitte Tohmatsu Group. From April 2001, as the person responsible for the consulting business at E-Square, he provided support in areas such as Sustainability/CSR, environmental and CSV strategies, communications and in-house dissemination mainly for major companies in a wide range of industries. In October 2011, he became the president and representative director of E-Square. He has given many lectures related to sustainability & CSR and ESG investment.
The DOWA Group’s initiatives, which can be read from the CSR Report, are making steady progress every year. For this fiscal year, there were pages allocated to the company history, disclosure of financial and non-financial indicators and an explanation of the five business areas. There were also explanations about such things as the identification of materiality in the chronology under “Materiality and Medium-Term CSR Goals”, the selection of priority measures and details about conducting risk assessment in the areas of ESG. As priority measures, responsible mineral procurement initiatives were explained in detail, and link to their website, they disclosed such things as the revised Responsible Mineral Procurement Policy and the results of audits by third parties. In addition, improvements were seen throughout the report, including enhancements to the explanation of corporate governance, explanations of risk management including business risks and CSR risks, and analysis of the causes of accidents at work.
Towards Further Improvement
In the list of CSR plans and goals, there were explanations of indicators to understand the progress for each priority measure, with the text showing the progress of activities in each of the four priority areas, so you can know the state of progress for the whole company. On the other hand, what I am concerned about is that there are issues that seem directly related to the business that are not included in the elements of the materiality matrix, or the four priority areas. For example, it does not include the issue of responsible mineral procurement. In the reviews scheduled for FY 2020 and beyond, if they can further integrate their business and CSR, and evaluate and analyze it, I think there will be consistency as a company.
In the explanation of business areas, it would also be good to mention such things as related social and environmental issues and the dilemma for business. For example, conflict minerals and the risk of human rights violations are described as priority measures, but since these are not mentioned in the pages that report on each of the five business areas, I get the impression that the thinking of the company is not unified.
Expectations for Future Initiatives
Currently, in the medium to long-term value creation of companies, the importance of purpose (the reason for existing) has been globally recognized anew. In this regard, the DOWA Group’s corporate philosophy clearly states that “DOWA helps to create an affluent, recycling-oriented society through its business activities worldwide”. I think our company will be a stronger organization when all the employees re-recognize the relation between thier own business and the company’s purpose. I have great expectations for the DOWA Group’s ability to solve problems as a leader in the supply of valuable resources needed for human development.
