Why Japan Needs More Nonprofits

In his most recent column for Bloomberg Businessweek, Rick Wartzman, Drucker Institute executive director, proposes a more robust nonprofit sector for Japan as a way to help boost the country’s ability to address social issues.

In Japan, “there is no longer the commitment that ‘I make a difference,'” Peter Drucker told an audience in Tokyo in 1994. It is this spirit, Drucker explained, that led him to predict Japan would turn into a global economic power right after his first visit to the country in the 1950s. But without this mindset, he asserted, “a nation very soon begins to fall apart. It loses its heart, its soul. We need a sector in which an individual can make a difference, can make a commitment. We need the nonprofit sector.”