Hagiwara, Y. and Trudell, C. 2015a, ‘Toyota warns of tougher China market, raises Japan target’, Bloomberg, 4 August, viewed 21 Aug 2015,
Summary
Hagiwara and Trudell (2015a) elucidate Toyota’s challenges in responding to the declining growth of the Chinese economy. The article also discusses Toyota’s plans to expand their Japanese operations in order to compensate for their recent performance in the Chinese market. Whilst being affected by China’s economic crisis, Toyota continued to outpace the industry and proposed future plans to develop another assembly line in Tianjin, China by mid-2018.
Application of concepts
This article demonstrates the economic impacts of China’s deteriorating growth on Toyota’s performance during the …show more content…
Whether Toyota continues to operate in the global economy is inextricably linked to its ability to overcome and adapt to the numerous economic obstacles it faces. Its decision to focus on developing Japanese markets will allow the company to compensate for ‘weak demand in emerging markets’ (Hagiwara and Trudell 2015a, p.2) such as China’s current economy. Toyota exponentially increased its sales forecasts in Japan from 35,000 to 2.14 million vehicles and expects production to proliferate by 4 million vehicles, indicating that the firm intends to greatly augment its current resources and capabilities before expanding into the Chinese …show more content…
As the firm was able to directly capture the benefits from its CSR actions to differentiate its product and increase sales, it can be said that Toyota’s CSR initiatives are highly specific and visible to stakeholders.
However, Toyota does not always demonstrate proactivity in its CSR initiatives and is often slow to react to unforeseen circumstances. Such an example is Toyota’s lack of response to the damage it faced from the recent Tianjin explosions even though 50 of its employees were severely injured (Hagiwara and Trudell 2015b).
Regardless of this, Toyota has utilised an instrumental approach to CSR by promoting their high levels of safety and concern for consumer wellbeing as ‘a strategic tool to achieve economic objectives and, ultimately, wealth creation’ (Garriga and Mele 2004, p.53). In addition, Toyota also possesses an integrative approach to CSR as it engages with the wider community by providing income and employment, which satisfies the needs and wants of the Chinese people (Konakci 2015). While it could benefit from becoming more proactive, Toyota has undoubtedly adopted a strategic CSR approach to maximise stakeholder