Common Reasons and Considerations for Inability to Implement Initiatives for Sexual Minorities: Targeting Japanese Companies

This study focuses on Japanese companies that have not been able to implement initiatives for sexual minorities, and aims to identify common reasons of ineffective implementation and characteristics of difficulties faced by each company. The qualitative research was divided into three research questions: “What are the common reasons of implementation difficulties among companies that have not implemented initiatives for sexual minorities?”, “What are the characteristics of the situations faced by companies that have not yet implemented initiatives for sexual minorities?”, “How can initiatives be implemented in companies that have not successfully implemented initiatives for sexual minorities?”. As a result, three common reasons were found: “Lack of elements that are valued by society”, “Obstruction to initiatives due to equality for all” and “Non-visualization of the target of initiatives”. The characteristics of each company were also found: Company A “Conflict in maintaining the balance of initiatives for different minorities”, Company B “Wil-lingness to work but difficulty in identifying appropriate methods” and Company C “Pursuit of performance and absolute equality among all em-ployees”. In addition, “Selection of employees in charge of initiatives”, “Sepa-rating initiatives into business and organizational aspects” and “Building trust beyond the workplace” were found as relatively easy approaches to start initiatives. Based on the results of the analysis, the following considerations were obtained for sexual minority initiatives undertaken by companies: “Limita-tions of company initiatives”, “Different priorities for initiatives” and “At-tempt collaboration with stakeholders”.


Introduction
In recent years, an increasing number of Japanese companies have implemented initiatives for sexual minorities, including LGBT.In 2015, with the implementation of the same-sex partnership ordinance in Shibuya ward, Tokyo, for the first time in Japan, many Japanese companies are also taking initiatives for sexual minorities.In addition, Work With Pride, a voluntary organization that supports the promotion and establishment of diversity management regarding sexual minorities, established the PRIDE Index in 2016 to evaluate initiatives to address sexual minorities in the Japanese workplace.Every year since then, it has evaluated Japanese workplace initiatives on three levels, from Bronze to Gold awards.According to the PRIDE Index 2016 Report and the PRIDE Index 2022 Report, the number of companies and organizations that applied increased from 82 in 2016 to 842 in 2022.Furthermore, Gold Awards companies increased from 53 in 2016 to 318 in 2022.Across all Japanese companies, there has been dramatic progress in the interest in and specific initiatives for sexual minorities.Yan (2021b) analyzed the initiatives of companies that have received consecutive Gold Awards and found characteristics of common initiatives such as "educate about LGBT voluntarily", while at the same time noting that identifying the real problems faced by sexual minorities and reviewing the content of initiatives are problems that exist.According to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (2022), there are approximately 3,674,000 companies in Japan, but the number of companies that have initiatives for sexual minorities is extremely small, suggesting that overall corporate awareness has not yet reached full maturity.While most of the companies have not implemented or are not progressing with numerical initiatives, there are no studies that focus on companies that have not been able to implement initiatives and identify the common reasons why initiatives are not being implemented.Therefore, clarifying the common reasons for the inability to implement initiatives for sexual minorities and the workplace problems of those companies will help to create more sexual minority-friendly workplaces in the future and promote diversity management in companies.

What Are the Common Reasons of Implementation
Difficulties?
According to Ninomiya (2017), social understanding of sexual minority has increased, educational institutions have provided education to eliminate discrimination, there has been a lot of media coverage, and there has been movement to guarantee the rights of sexual minority in the judiciary.In many aspects of society, there is a growing interest in sexual minority.Japanese companies, a component of society, have also begun to implement many gender-related initiatives (Sugiura, 2010;Yan, 2021c;Mitsunari, 2019).Initiatives related to sexual minorities have also become more active than before.

How Initiatives Can Be Implemented
Since there are still many discriminatory words and actions against sexual minorities in current Japanese companies (Niki, 2015), and Yan (2022)  Research Question 3: How can initiatives be implemented in companies that have not successfully implemented initiatives for sexual minorities?
Based on the above, this study will target companies that have not been successful in implementing sexual minority initiatives, identify common reasons of implementation difficulties and characteristics of each company, and then propose methods in which companies can implement initiatives for sexual minorities.

Targets of Research
Based on the research questions, the research targets were selected using the index of Work With Pride, an award that has been given to companies in Japan since 2016 to recognize their initiatives toward sexual minorities.This award has three evaluation levels: Bronze, Silver, and Gold.Yan (2021b) interviewed companies that have been consecutively selected for the Gold Award as the most advanced initiatives from 2016 to 2018, and found common characteristics of advanced initiatives.Since that study was based on interviews with companies that had made advanced initiatives with the specified items, it was decided to use the same items for companies whose initiatives had not been successfully implemented.
This study is positioned as a continuation of the above-mentioned research.
Some companies were requested to be the targets for this study, they are from the information and telecommunications, electrical equipment, and academic research/specialized/technical services industries, and selected them for inclusion in the study.Including the companies that refused to participate in the study, a total of 6 Japanese companies were approached, and 3 of them agreed to participate in the study.A research consent form was given in person to the person in charge of initiatives of sexual minorities in each company, and a semi-structured interview was conducted based on the evaluation items of the Work With Pride Index with the consent of the person in charge in each company.The research targets were analyzed and described in an anonymous form, and only the basic data of the research targets are presented in Table 1 to protect the privacy of the people in charge at the companies and to prevent the leakage

Analysis Method
This study used the SCAT analysis, a qualitative research method.There are many types of qualitative research methods, including KJ method, GTA, and life stories, etc. SCAT analysis is an analytical method proposed by Professor H.
Otani and is a combination of the acronyms Steps for Coding and Theorization (Otani, 2011).Following the procedure, it is possible to create a story line about the research target and extract theories and concepts from it.SCAT is also a method of analysis that describes the search for questions and issues.
Compared to GTA, the SCAT analysis method has the advantage of being able to be conducted on smaller research targets.It is an appropriate analysis method for a small number of research targets because it deeply analyzes words and phrases that are spoken as data.In addition, since very few companies in this study were able to respond to a negative interview about their inability to implement sexual minority initiatives, the SCAT analysis was also considered the best method for this study.
By those reasons, this study decided to conduct a SCAT analysis, and a total of 3 semi-structured interviews were conducted from mid-December 2022 to the end of January 2023.An interview consent form was sent via email in advance of the interviews, and a representative from each company was asked to confirm the content of the interviews.All interviews were conducted in person, and after obtaining their signatures on the interview consent form, the interviews were recorded, and all data were transcribed.Based on the transcribed data, a SCAT analysis was conducted.Based on the analysis obtained, the following analysis results were obtained.

Results
Based on the interview data, three common causes were found for research question 1: "Lack of elements that are valued by society", "Obstruction to initiatives due to equality for all" and "Non-visualization of the target of initiatives".
For research question 2, characteristics of the situations such as "Conflict in maintaining the balance of initiatives for different minorities" in company A, "Willingness to work but difficulty in identifying appropriate methods" in company B, and "Pursuit of performance and absolute equality among all employees" in company C.For research question 3, three methods were found to help Japanese companies that are not successfully implementing initiatives: "Selection of employees in charge of initiatives", "Separating initiatives into business and organizational aspects", and "Building trust beyond the workplace".

Lack of Elements That Are Valued by Society
Awards are an element of recognition by society.However, it was found that none of the 3 companies had ever applied for Work With Pride, which recognizes sexual minority initiatives.In addition, neither the community of sexual minorities nor the ally community of supporters existed in any of the 3 companies.Although the evaluation index included a community of sexual minority, it was discovered that none of the 3 companies had a place for sexual minority-workers to gather or an environment in which they could express their concerns to others.In addition, there is no community to support sexual minorities, and the company's internal environment does not seem to have an attitude of being there for them.Although it is possible that sexual minorities could be considered important by companies and society if supportive activities by supporters are increased (Yan, 2023), 3 companies lack elements that would be valued by society.

Obstruction to Initiatives Due to Equality for All
When implementing diversity management, the 3 companies do not focus on sexual minorities, but rather use the basis of "Equality for all" in their initiatives.
The concept of "Equality for all" makes it difficult to implement initiatives specific to sexual minorities, because if such initiatives were to be focused on a particular minority group, other minority groups would be misled into believing that they were treated differently.Japanese companies tend to pursue relative equality, and organizations with many minority people require equality among minorities when there are multiple minorities.While it is conceivable to implement initiatives for each minority in stages, there is a possibility that some minority people will be focused on depending on the difficulty of implementing initiatives and the status of implementation.Currently, Japanese companies do not focus their initiatives on sexual minorities, and it is thought that this will be prevented due to conflicts with initiatives by other minority people.

Non-Visualization of the Target of Initiatives
In Japanese society, it is even more difficult to disclose one's sexual orientation and gender identity in a company because the environment is not conducive to freely saying "I am a sexual minority".On the part of those in charge of considering the details of the initiative, they want to discover more needs, so they seek coming-out by sexual minorities.However, in a survey conducted at Company A, only 1% of employees chose the "other" gender.In addition, it is very difficult for people who are not sexual minority to understand the needs of sexual minority because the hurdles for coming-out are high and unwillingness to let the people come out may lead to harassment in the workplace.In this environment, Japanese companies do not create initiatives that cater to sexual minority.The "psychological safety" of the sexual minority was mentioned by the people in charge of the 3 companies.Although not superficially disadvantaged, coming-out in Japanese companies is seen at this stage as a hurdle because of the possibility of workplace problems that may occur because of coming-out.The

Company A: Conflict in Maintaining the Balance of Initiatives for Different Minorities
There are initiatives already in place by company A for sexual minorities.However, such initiatives are not intended to solve the problems of sexual minorities only, but rather, they are considered to be initiatives created in accordance with the human rights policy set forth by company A. For example, same-sex partners' marriages are recognized as well as common-law marriage.In line with its policy of respecting the human rights of all employees, company A has tried several initiatives, and the one related to sexual minorities can be seen as a part of this policy.The sexual minority initiatives include implementation factors such as whether they can influence and inspire other minority groups.It can be inferred that Company A, which has many types of minorities, has a method of maintaining a balance among minorities under the concept of "Equality for all".Furthermore, company A has a priority on which diversity to start with among the many different types of diversity, and it is characteristic of company A to prioritize and implement initiatives for multiple minority people in stages, rather than simultaneously.

Company B: Willingness to Work but Difficulty in Identifying
Appropriate Methods Company B was seen to have a current situation with only five staffs in the department that considers diversity initiatives.All members are women, and although there is great potential to produce initiatives related to women, it is difficult to grasp the needs of other minority groups, including sexual minorities, who are the initiatives' target of this study.Company B, riding on the tide of diversity initiatives, also took a proactive stance to solve the problem, but found itself in a predicament where it was impossible to understand the true needs and concerns of the sexual minorities in this case.It is suggested that the objective of improving the problem took precedence and the company neglected to understand the situation of the target, which is the key to success, and this was the reason of the lack of smooth progress in the initiative.Company B's staffs understand that diversity is divided into two categories: those that can be seen (superficial) and those that cannot be seen (deeper), but they are unable to grasp the details of the actions that need to be taken.The fact that the appropriate methods are unknown and difficult to identify is the most distinguishing feature of the implementation of the company B's initiatives.

Company C: Pursuit of Performance and Absolute Equality among
All Employees Company C is the type of company that seeks profit and values employee performance.Therefore, the current situation is that there are quite a few employees who have knowledge and expertise regarding sexual minorities.In addition, be-Y.G. Yan DOI: 10.4236/jss.2023.119039637 Open Journal of Social Sciences cause they consider the company's reputation and profits to be the highest priority, they tend to consider not only the sexual minorities of their employees, but also events related to their private lives, to be largely irrelevant to their work.
Even if an employee does coming-out, there is a strong possibility that his or her relationship with co-workers and progress in company C will not change at all, so the employee may not even dare to do so.On the other hand, if the event could have a negative impact for the company, company C considers it very important.Unless there is a scandal involving sexual minorities, it is unlikely that any sexual minority-related initiatives will be made; a representative from company C stated that there are no current LGBT-related initiatives at company C, nor are there any benefits or institutional ones.This is not to say that the company does not only work on sexual minorities, but it was confirmed that the company has few special things for minorities that are generally recognized by the public.As already mentioned in common reasons, treating all employees equally, without any special treatment of anyone, is one of the most important characteristics of company C.

Selection of Employees in Charge of Initiatives
According to the person in charge of company B, a department dedicated to diversity work has been formed, and the entire company has been notified of the need for members to perform diversity work.The operation has been conducted in such a way that employees interested in diversity work apply for the position and serve concurrently in that department.However, it was found that the employees applying for the diversity department were only interested in applying for the position, had no expertise or experience, and had considerable difficulty in actually considering the details of the initiative.In addition, since there are numerous minority groups of diversity, including women, the elderly, people with disabilities, and sexual minorities, initiatives conceived in a department without such people may not be in line with what sexual minorities want.
While it is important to reform the content of initiatives for minority groups, it is also necessary to examine whether the employees who will implement the initiatives are capable of performing their duties and whether they are aware of the actual situation through their involvement with minority groups.Therefore, one possible approach is to select members who are suited to perform diversity work.

Separating Initiatives into Business and Organizational Aspects
The second method is that think about the initiative content was to separate it into business and organizational aspects.Until now, the aspect of how to deal with sexual minorities in an organization has tended to be more important, but it can also be considered as a business object of the company, said the person in charge of company A. Initiatives for sexual minorities within an organization may have the disadvantage of being applicable only for the period they belong to Y. G. Yan DOI: 10.4236/jss.2023.119039638 Open Journal of Social Sciences the organization.On the other hand, the business aspect of the initiative will have the advantage of being available even if sexual minorities leave the organization or do not belong to the organization, as they can relate to the content of such initiatives.In fact, according to Yotsumoto & Senba (2017), Hotel Granvia Kyoto sold same-sex marriage packages and wedding plans for same-sex couples.LifeNet Life Insurance added same-sex partners to the scope of beneficiary designation for death benefits in 2015.Trying to match company characteristics and business aspects when organizational initiatives are happening can be a way to implement initiatives for sexual minorities.

Building Trust beyond the Workplace
To deepen relationships with sexual minorities, it is necessary to socialize with them outside of the workplace.One possible method is the use of informal organizations.Informal organization is a concept created by Barnard (1938), and its positive effects are that it creates a basis for collaboration and allows for the coordination of connections and feelings between individuals.The travels and dinners mentioned by the person in charge at company C are examples of this.
Because of the difficulty of using large informal organizations, small informal organizations are considered more effective.Smaller gatherings than large informal organizations can be expected to help sexual minorities feel psychological safety and change their relationships beyond "colleagues" to those of trusted friends.As relationships with sexual minority participants deepen, they will be able to be more approachable and caring, etc.Thus, building trust beyond the workplace is a possible method to implement the initiative.

Discussion
Based on the results of this study, some discussions were given on sexual minority initiatives implemented in companies.The discussion details will be provided in three categories: "Limitations of company initiatives", "Different priorities for initiatives" and "Attempt collaboration with stakeholders".

Limitations of Company Initiatives
As the person in charge of company A said, they run into a major barrier "the law", when taking initiatives for sexual minority.In addition, according to the narratives of the managers of company B and company C, sexual minorities face life situations such as school and family, in addition to the life situation of the workplace.Most college students do not have access to education about sexual minorities during or after high school (Obata et al., 2022), so they are at risk for discriminatory behavior.In fact, it is not as easy as non-LGBT people think to coming-out to their families (Yan, 2021a), so it is considered that there will be conflicts between sexual minorities and their families.Japanese companies cannot provide full coverage, they can be expected to play a role as a pioneer in whole-of-society by using their attitudes to implement initiatives.

Different Priorities for Initiatives
According to the "LGBTQ+ Survey 2020" conducted by Dentsu Inc. ( 2021), the percentage of sexual minorities in Japan is approximately 8.9%, and that there are many diverse besides LGBT minorities.However, while the percentages represent an average, it is considered that the percentage of sexual minority varies depending on the industry sector of the company; as the person in charge of company C stated, industries with large numbers of sexual minorities, the needs and priority of initiatives are high.In industries with relatively few sexual minorities, the priority of initiatives for sexual minorities is relatively low.Therefore, it is suggested that the priority for implementing sexual minority initiatives in companies varies by industry.However, the question arises as to how the percentage of sexual minority is calculated.Indeed, in Japanese firms with a certain number of sexual minorities, they may be hidden due to the internal environment in which sexuality cannot be expressed.Japanese companies tend not to have or assume sexual minorities within the company (Yanagi, 2021), and this is why management should keep in mind the existence of sexual minorities and set priorities accordingly.

Attempt Collaboration with Stakeholders
All the companies that cooperated in this study have either headquarters or affiliates and group companies.Company B and C stated that they had little involvement with affiliates and found it difficult to obtain support when undertaking initiatives regarding sexual minorities; Company A plays the role of the head office, creating a foundation for each office to undertake initiatives regarding sexual minorities and leaving the details to the individual offices.Company A's approach to sexual minorities is unified within the group, and the company has a system in place to provide immediate support when each office faces difficulties, making it relatively easy to implement initiatives in the future.Company B has no coordination among group companies and no communication with the head office, so when support is needed, it is not available in a timely manner and initiatives are stalled; Company C does not even interact with group companies or affiliates, so it is expected that the company C does not have a "sense of unity" toward sexual minorities.Cooperation not only with affiliates but also with stakeholder companies is important."Cooperation with other stakeholders" can make companies aware of sexual minorities and at the same time make sexual minorities feel needed by more than one company (Yan, 2021b).Thus, when one company is not able to successfully implement an initiative, the collaboration with other companies or stakeholders can make the company become enable the implementation of the initiative.

Limitation
This study has identified the reasons for the inability to successfully implement the initiative, but there are still two research limitations: beautified responses that avoid disadvantage and single-target selection criteria.

Beautified Responses That Avoid Disadvantage
Since the content of the study was to conduct an interview on the reasons and current status of the companies' inability to implement initiatives for sexual minorities, it can be assumed that the people in charge of three companies were concerned that the companies would be disadvantaged in some way.During the interview, semi-structured interviews were conducted so that people could tell the current situation and the truth about the company, and many questions were asked with actual answers, but the possibility existed that the company representatives who responded would beautify their answers to protect the reputation of the company to which they belonged.In the case of a response such as "We will be proactive in our initiatives to sexual minorities in the future", it is impossible to ascertain the truth of that response in this study.

Single-Target Selection Criteria
All the companies selected in this study are "companies that are not effectively making initiatives" based on their evaluation of organizational aspects.The Work With Pride award itself, which is considered to have been the main selection criterion based on organizational aspects, since there are many evaluative details of initiatives for sexual minorities within the company's organization.
However, as already mentioned method to start initiatives, initiatives can be separated into business and organizational aspects.Since the Japanese companies interviewed are likely to be advanced in their initiatives on the business side, it is necessary to view sexual minority initiatives in a broad sense.
non-visualization of the target of initiatives due to coming-out difficulties has Y. G. Yan DOI: 10.4236/jss.2023.119039636 Open Journal of Social Sciences further increased the difficulty of the initiatives.

What Are the Characteristics of the Situation?
discrimination within the company, LGBT lectures for employees, and implementation of measures that consider the difficulties LGBT people face in their workplaces.With the enrichment of the types of initiatives that can be implemented by companies and the increase in the number of companies applying for Yanagisawa et al. (2015)stated that many companies have made explicit provisions and policies prohibiting Y. G. Yan DOI: 10.4236/jss.2023.119039632 Open Journal of Social Sciences Yan (2021b) interviewed companies that have implemented advanced initiatives and found original initiatives such as "Initiatives that focus on the performance of sexual minorities" and "Initiatives that follow up on the daily lives of sexual minorities".When implementing initiatives for sexual minorities, which are considered diversity management targets, the objectives can be broadly classified into "Theoretical research" and "Practical research" (Henmi, 2017), so it seems like that each company will have different difficulties implementing different objectives.For companies that have not implemented initiatives related to sexual minorities and companies that have not been able to apply for "Work With Pride", it is considered necessary to clarify what kind of difficulties they are fac-

Table 1 .
Basic data of 3 companies.
It is difficult to resolve such concerns in the company where they work, suggesting that the company's policies cannot cover other life situations of sexual minority.Such limitations make it necessary for society to take action, and although