Toyota’s global vision outlined

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Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) unveiled its “Toyota Global Vision” in Toyota City, Japan.
The new vision incorporates feedback and lessons from Toyota’s various regional divisions,
from recent events in the company’s history and from an engaged discussion between team
members about the future of the company and its products.
Summarising the vision, TMC President Dr. Akio Toyoda indicated that Toyota will strive to
earn the smiles of its customers by exceeding their highest expectations.

The Toyota Global Vision reads:

“Toyota will lead the way to the future of mobility, enriching lives around the world with the
safest and most responsible ways of moving people. Through our commitment to quality,
constant innovation and respect for the planet, we aim to exceed expectations and be rewarded
with a smile. We will meet challenging goals by engaging the talent and passion of people, who
believe there is always a better way.”

Commenting on the Toyota Global Vision, Dr. Johan van Zyl, President and CEO of Toyota
South Africa Motors and a Managing Officer of TMC states:

“The new global vision is a clear and unwavering sign of our commitment to be a leading
vehicle manufacturer. In the Toyota Global Vision this will be measured by profitability,
quality and safety benchmarks, but more importantly by the smiles of customers who have been
rewarded beyond expectation when buying a Toyota or a Lexus vehicle.”

According to Dr. Van Zyl the new Toyota Global Vision places increased emphasis on the role
of emerging markets, setting the aim of growing the sales contribution in these regions to 50%
of the global total by 2015.

“As Toyota South Africa Motors we are well positioned to support TMC in achieving this goal.
As a fully integrated manufacturing member of the TMC group we serve the growing African
market and the European market with several locally manufactured vehicles. The new Vision
allows for greater regional decision making and we believe that this will translate to even
greater customer satisfaction in South Africa and the Southern African region.”

Some of the highlights of the new Toyota Global Vision are grouped under the “2015 Global
Initiatives”, which includes a renewed focus on creating appealing products that will greatly
improve the design and feel of Toyota vehicles. Toyota has also reasserted its commitment to
safety as the highest priority and to increasing the range of environmentally friendly vehicles
significantly by 2015.

The Vision’s full text reads as follows”

Toyota will lead the way to the future of mobility, enriching lives around the world with the
safest and most responsible ways of moving people. Through our commitment to quality,
constant innovation and respect for the planet, we aim to exceed expectations and be rewarded
with a smile. We will meet challenging goals by engaging the talent and passion of people, who
believe there is always a better way.

"The safest and most responsible ways of moving people"

• Safety is Toyota's highest priority, and Toyota will continue to furnish world-class safety.

• Toyota will also continue to contribute to environmental quality and to human happiness by
leading advances in technologies for minimizing environmental impact and by deploying those
technologies in a growing line of vehicle models. At the same time, the company will work
through its products, sales and services to ensure a rewarding experience for
customers.

"Enriching lives around the world"

• Toyota has been consistently true to its founding spirit of serving society through
conscientious manufacturing, and it will continue working in that spirit to enhance the quality
of life wherever it has operations.

• Toyota will continue contributing to economic vitality wherever it has operations by

generating stable employment and by participating in mutually beneficial business relationships
with dealers and suppliers. It will also continue to engage actively in initiatives for nurturing
human resources and for enhancing the cultural life of its host communities.

"Lead the way to the future of mobility"

• Toyota will lead industry in tackling technological advances that will spawn next-generation
mobility. It will explore possibilities in personal mobility, for example, and in the convergence
of information technology for automobiles and "smart grids" for optimizing energy generation
and consumption. Toyota will undertake such leading-edge R&D with an eye to adapting
products and services to the needs and circumstances in each market.

• Toyota will develop low-carbon technologies and technologies for maximizing safety through
interaction with the transport infrastructure to lay a foundation for sustainable and amenable
future mobility. The company will work in this and other ways to support new kinds of
lifestyles, while propagating technologies for preserving environmental quality.

"Our commitment to quality, constant innovation"

• Toyota is committed to providing highly reliable quality that will enable people to feel good
about driving and riding in its vehicles.

• Toyota will continue to reinvent itself and to develop technologies to address the needs of
today and of tomorrow. That includes working to provide vehicles that meet people's needs and
that are affordable everywhere.

"Respect for the planet"

• Toyota will continue working to minimize environmental impact in its manufacturing and
other operations, as well as in its products.

• Toyota's activities will include conserving energy and reducing output of carbon dioxide, as
well as conserving material resources through recycling; it will also include establishing
mindsets and production methods appropriate for coexistence with nature.

"Exceed expectations and be rewarded with a smile"

Everyone at Toyota will continuously maintain a sense of gratitude to customers and will strive
to earn smiles with products and services that are stimulating and even inspiring.

"There is always a better way">/b>

All Toyota employees will share the recognition that there is always a better way and
share a commitment to continuous improvement, which are fundamental to The Toyota
Way.

"Meet challenging goals by engaging the talent and passion of people"

• Toyota will nurture a corporate culture where teamwork and individual creativity
thrive and where people will approach their work with pride and with passion.

• The company will honour the spirit of diversity in recruiting, training and promoting
capable individuals around the world. Human resources development at Toyota will
continue to promote the transmission of the company's monozukuri spirit of conscientious
manufacturing and related skills and know-how from one generation to the next.

Toyota Visionary Management: The Tree Metaphor

Toyota has employed a tree metaphor—focusing on "roots", "trunk" and "fruit"—in

expressing the Toyota Global Vision.

Roots: Shared values

The roots of the tree are shared values. Those are the same basic values that people at
Toyota have expressed over the years as the Toyoda Precepts, as the Toyota Guiding
Principles, and as The Toyota Way. They are the spirit of conscientious manufacturing.
Fruit: Making great cars and contributing to host communities

The fruit yielded by the tree symbolize Toyota's progress in creating ever-better vehicles
and contributing to economic and social vitality in Toyota's host communities. That
progress will earn a welcome place for Toyota in communities around the world.

Trunk: Solid business

Business vitality is the trunk that supports Toyota's activities toward creating products
that will win customer smiles. In Toyota's tree metaphor, solid business is the trunk of the
tree. Through that trunk flows the nutrition for supple limbs, branches and leaves and for
bounteous fruit.

Toyota's vision thus evokes a virtuous circle. The company will contribute to its host
communities by making excellent automobiles. Earning a welcome place for Toyota in its
host communities will support sound returns. And Toyota will reinvest those returns in
creating ever-better vehicles for customers and will achieve sustainable growth.

http://www.toyotazone.co.za/content/news/onthemove/singlepage.asp?id=82

Dirt Diggers Digest

It would not surprise me if the people who do public relations for Toyota are flipping
through their old scrapbooks to cheer themselves up amid the worst crisis in the
company’s history.

They might be looking longingly at the 2003Business Week cover storyheadlined: “Can

Anything Stop Toyota: An Inside Look at How It’s Reinventing the Auto Industry.” Or
the 2006 New York Timespaean entitled “Toyota Shows Big Three How It’s Done.”
Perhaps they are going back even further to the 1997 love letter fromFortune: “How
Toyota Defies Gravity.”

These days Toyota is instead experiencing the unbearable heaviness of being exposed
as just another unscrupulous automaker that, whether through incompetence or greed,
puts many of its customers behind the wheel of a deathtrap.

New revelations that the company knew about the defective gas pedals for years before
taking action are all the more scandalous because Toyota had a longstanding reputation
not only for business prowess but also for social responsibility.

The company, of course, fostered this image. Its websiteproclaims: “Toyota has sought
harmony between people, society, and the global environment, as well as the
sustainable development of society, through manufacturing. Since its foundation,
Toyota has continuously worked to contribute to the sustainable development of society
through provision of innovative and high-quality products and services that lead the
times.”
All big corporations make similar declarations, but Toyota managed to convince outside
observers of its pure heart. Last year the Ethisphere Institute included the automaker
on its list of “the World’s Most Ethical Companies.” Toyota is ranked 14th on the “Global
100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World.” And it received the highest score
among automakers in a 2006 CERESassessment of corporate governance changes
adopted by large corporations to deal with climate change.

Toyota’s environmental reputation is not completely unblemished. In 2007 the company

incurred the wrath of green groups for its opposition to an effort to toughen fuel
economy standards in the United States (a stance it modified in response to the
pressure). In 2003 Toyota agreed to pay $34 million to settle U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency charges that it violated the Clean Air Act by selling 2.2 million
vehicles with defective smog-control computers.

Overall, however, Toyota was regarded as a much more environmentally enlightened

company than Detroit’s Big Three. In fact, its successful efforts to bring hybrids into the
auto industry mainstream made it something of a corporate hero in green circles.
Michael Brune, who was recently named the new executive director of the Sierra
Club, brags that he and his wife have been driving a Prius since 2004.

Toyota’s more laudable stances on sustainability issues did not prevent it from being
completely retrograde when it came to respecting the collective bargaining rights of its
U.S. employees. It has successfully kept unions out of its heavily-subsidized American
plants and has taken advantage of contingent workers to keep down costs in those
operations.

Just as good environmental policies do not automatically lead to good labor practices,
the current safety scandal shows that a company can be green and totally irresponsible
at the same time.  Despite Toyota’s claim about promoting “harmony between people,
society, and the global environment,” it appears the company put its business interests
ahead of the safety of its customers and others with whom they share the road.

The automaker’s safety scandal is another indication that voluntary corporate social
responsibility policies go only so far. It is only through rigorous government regulation,
backed by aggressive environmental and other public interest activism, that major
corporations can be kept honest.

http://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/1100

Improving the promotion of CSR initiatives: a

framework for understanding stakeholder
communications from a dynamic learning perspective
Investment decisions related to environmentally friendly car technologies exemplify the varying influence
of the financial markets on CSR initiatives. Although all of the major automobile manufacturers have
conducted R&D on low-emission automobile technology, many cut their investments because of financial
market pressures. General Motors, for example, was once a market leader and even began selling an
electric car but later cut the program because it was not profitable in the short-run. Within the same
environment, Toyota and Honda continued to invest in hybrid technologies and even sell the resulting
products at a loss despite financial market perceptions of the marketability of hybrid cars. Now that the
price of gasoline has risen, Toyota has such a competitive advantage that automobile giant Ford decided
to license the technology Toyota uses to produce the Prius instead of developing its own technology
(Toyota, 2004).

In our framework, Toyota was able to preserve its commitment to hybrid technology for two key reasons:
(1) it had consistently demonstrated a propensity to make good decisions that led to superior financial
performance and market value and (2) it had a relatively low dependence on the financial markets. That
is, even before the near collapse of U.S. car manufacturers in 2008-2009, GM's market value was
approximately one seventh of Toyota's ($20 billion vs. $140 billion in 2005-2006) despite the fact that
GM held a larger share of the automobile market (Forbes, 2005a,b). Further, Toyota has been consistently
much more profitable and uses fewer stock options for compensation. Consequently, Toyota could afford
to ignore short-term financial market pressures to change unprofitable investments in CSR while GM
could not.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6167/is_2_14/ai_n56556637/pg_6/