A case study of internationalization in a Japanese university: Organizational change and communication

This research is to investigate what is internationalization for a Japanese university, how a Japanese university deals with internationalization as an environment change, and why it is difficult for a Japanese university to internationalize its organization. In 1970s international organization, UNESCO, began to investigate Japanese higher education, and recommended the Government to improve its closed system of higher education. Since then Japanese universities made a effort to internationalize their organizations but it cannot be said as being successful. Specifically, it was hard for Japanese universities to promote academic interchange with foreign institutions. It is much more difficult for Japanese institutions to employ foreign faculty and to use English as an official language. This research takes a case study with naturalistic view, and Waseda university was chosen as a field-site. Waseda University attempted to internationalize its organization, and for that reason President and his Executive Board planned to establish a new graduate school which name was Graduate School of Asian Pacific Studies (GSAPS) with International Relations Specialty and International Management Specialty. This case study focuses on communication in the process of establishing GSAPS. There were many conflicts between President and other political powers such as undergraduate departments called "gakubu" which has strong power based on undergraduate department autonomy authorized by the School Education Law. Even a graduate school is controlled by an undergraduate department in Japanese universities. In Waseda University each undergraduate department controlled vertically each graduate school such as Law, Commerce, Political Science and Economy, Literature, Education, Social Sciences, Human Sciences, and Science and Engineering. Each department faculty autonomy protect its status quo interest from changing its organization. President does not have authoritative decision-making power and thus has to request agreement to each undergraduate department. The characteristics of such departments was closed circle which consists of Waseda alumni faculty, besides almost male one. This structure can be said as one of main factor that a Japanese university cannot easily change its organization and system according to change of outer environment. In other words, internationalization is a process of changing closed system to open system for a Japanese university.