8. Autonomous Responsible Management

In the Panasonic Group, management is not solely a responsibility of senior executives. All employees must see themselves as their own manager and be independently responsible for their work, while following the company's policies. This is the fundamental concept of autonomous responsible management.

In all our organizations, based on the corporate management philosophy and policies, each of us should take responsibility for our own work and make untiring improvements. Autonomous responsible management is one of the fundamentals of the Panasonic Group's management, and it is also the culture that has nurtured our human resources.

As the key to ensuring autonomous responsible management in business, the founder taught, "First of all, the managers themselves should have a strong sense of their mission and management philosophy, and always appeal to and instill these in their employees," and "The managers should not fear to delegate extensively to their employees. Allow them to work based on their own responsibility and authority."​

As human beings, when we can see for ourselves our own work and its importance, this energizes us powerfully. Thus motivated, we can proactively exert our strengths by gathering wisdom and making improvements. As such, superiors should make efforts to generate such motivation when delegating work to their subordinates. This will enable each individual to feel a sense of fulfillment in their work that will lead to joy and happiness. This is the underlying concept of autonomous responsible management.

The founder used the term "employee entrepreneurship" to describe how employees should approach their work. He called on them to adopt the mindset of being the president or proprietor of their own independent enterprise, and to approach their work, their way of seeing things, and their decision making with this in mind.

When applying the employee entrepreneurship principle, it is essential that each of us, in executing our duties, have this sense of responsibility to devote all our abilities to creating better ways and means, boldly implementing them, and making it our mission to achieve greater results.

Morimasa Ogawa, former President of Matsushita Housing Products, joined the microwave oven business at its initial stage, and he made it grow as a global business. He said individual employees must have a sense of autonomous responsibility. By consistently applying this mindset, let us all dedicate ourselves to our own jobs.

The founder, when explaining the concept of employee entrepreneurship to young staff members, likened an independent business entity to a noodle shop. He urged employees to have the mindset of a noodle shop owner who works hard to sell noodles, asks customers each day for feedback about the taste, and makes improvements based on their feedback. He mentioned that such efforts and enthusiasm would also be indispensable to our individual work.

Even if you are a member of a large organization, it is not enough to just do the work you are assigned and follow the established systems and procedures. It is essential that each and every one of us continues to think and make improvements in order to make them better.

In a society that is constantly changing and developing, our customers will not continue to choose us if we work solely according to our own ways of thinking and perspectives. We should consider that today's best will no longer be tomorrow's best, and tomorrow must create tomorrow's best. Based on this mindset, we must always aim higher.

The business division system introduced in 1933 represented the concept of autonomous responsible management in a concrete manner. The system is an independent profit-making organizational structure in which the entire company is divided into business divisions by product, with each division responsible for everything from development, manufacturing, and sales to managing profits and losses. The business divisions were required to assume responsibility for their own management, which led to the development of business division directors and employees. Thus did the Panasonic Group of today come into being.