Message from the Executive Officer Responsible for Sustainability
Toward Realizing Sustainability
Yoji Saito
Executive Officer and CCO
The Mitsubishi Electric Group has stipulated the following within its management policy in May 2022: "We will return to our fundamental principle of ’addressing social challenges through our businesses’ and position the realization of sustainability as the cornerstone of our management. From this approach, we will pursue a sustained enhancement of our corporate value and fulfill our responsibility to society, to our customers, shareholders and employees, and to all other stakeholders."
Realizing sustainability means contributing toward solving various social challenges, and thereby pursuing sustainability in the environment and society. It also means the Company becoming a corporate group that is needed by society for many years to come. While fulfilling our responsibilities as a member of society, we will commit to solving social challenges in all kinds of activities, particularly our main businesses, and thereby enhance both social and economic value. It is crucial to engage in human resource development for this purpose and to invest in management resources for technology development. Mitsubishi Electric’s mission has been to offer products and solutions to society for solving social challenges. We will further enhance our mission and work to thoroughly explain social and economic value.
To Create a Sustainable Society Full of Prosperity
Mitsubishi Electric’s purpose is as follows: "We will contribute to the realization of a vibrant and sustainable society through continuous technological innovation and ceaseless creativity." This purpose represents the reason for the Company’s existence, and it expresses the goal that we never stop pursuing. To realize a vibrant and sustainable society within this modern age, we believe we need to focus more on the people who use goods, rather than on goods themselves, and to offer products and solutions that help each and every one of our customers and the people standing beyond our customers to feel happiness and satisfaction in their daily lives. These customers include our valued colleagues and employees. As such, at Mitsubishi Electric, we have used the phrase "Sustainable Society Full of Prosperity" to define the kind of society that we aim to create by 2050. We envision a company in which all employees respect each other, that considers people’s dreams and future while solving social challenges ranging from the global environment to daily life, and that makes all people happy, including shareholders and people in society in addition to employees. With these thoughts in mind, we have decided to commit to the sustainability vision of "Creating Harmony with People and the Planet."
Materiality Initiatives to Solve Social Challenges
What should we work on to create the Sustainable Society Full of Prosperity as expressed in our sustainability vision? To find the answer to this question, we engaged in backcasting based on our ideal society in 2050 to identify the five challenge areas that the Mitsubishi Electric Group will solve through its main businesses: Carbon neutrality, Circular economy, Safety/Security, Inclusion, and Well-being.
Carbon neutrality : A decarbonized society with fewer CO2 emissions from our company and society itself, and with mitigations against climate change. Circular economy : A society that effectively uses and sustainably circulates resources. Safety/Security : A resilient society that can respond to various environmental changes and risks. Inclusion : A society in which all kinds of people are respected and anyone can live freely, fairly, and in a lively manner. Well-being : Comfortable lives and physical and mental well-being for each and every individual.
To create a Sustainable Society Full of Prosperity, first we need to aim to achieve these challenges within society and life. Going forward, we plan to analyze risks and opportunities for Mitsubishi Electric businesses in each challenge area and establish medium-term goals together with the business group headquarters. The Mitsubishi Electric Group will work on these challenge areas through five materiality themes: Realize a sustainable global environment; Realize a safe, secure, and comfortable society; Respect for all people; Strengthen corporate governance and compliance on a sustainable basis; and Create a sustainability-oriented corporate culture.
We are very much aware that three of these five materiality themes―Respect for all people, Strengthen corporate governance and compliance on a sustainable basis, and Create a sustainability-oriented corporate culture―are certainly the top priority issues for Mitsubishi Electric, which is working on its three reforms. We regard our quality assurance culture reforms, governance reforms, and organizational culture reforms as the three materiality initiatives for strengthening our management foundation that supports sustainable growth, and we will build these initiatives to become substantial and effective. Mitsubishi Electric aims to further enhance the corporate value by working to solve social challenges from a medium-to-long term perspective, by having sensitivity and adaptability to changes in society, and by actively disclosing information to its stakeholders.
