Contemporary society requires individuals who can identify problems in civil society, as well as pursue concrete methodologies to both resolve these problems and implement their solutions. The Rikkyo University Graduate School established the MBA and DBA Course in Network and Social Organization in April 2002 as a new experiment to assemble civil knowledge. The course was the first of its kind in Japan. This graduate program centered on the three pillars of non-profit organizations, crisis management, and networks. Under the keyword of networks, students acquire specialized management skills related to comprehensive crisis management for various types of social institutions at the family, regional, national, and global scale. Students also acquire management capabilities for nonprofit organizations, which bear a new public spiritedness for the twenty-first century. They also can study corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities.
The School offers a program for fostering highly specialized professionals with a curriculum that emphasizes practical, hands-on research activities, while remaining grounded in theoretical and systematic research (MBA and DBA in Social Design Studies). Students gain from the knowledge of over a dozen full-time faculty members who possess a diverse array of research and occupational experience. They also benefit from highly knowledgeable experts active in areas such as NPOs and NGOs studies, government administration, the financial world, and the media who are invited to serve as lecturers. Through these and other measures, the school promotes exchanges with those inside the civic community while expanding opportunities for joint research and collaborative activity with the outside community.
A fresh academic approach is needed to initiate new social conditions. The research structure of the Graduate School of Social Design Studies was configured in such a way as to cut across the traditional boundaries that separate academic disciplines. Students in this program conduct comprehensive and multifaceted inquiries through flexible thinking that is not bound by established doctrine, and acquire concrete problem-solving capabilities across academic fields. The graduate school earnestly accommodates working students by providing day and nighttime courses as well as Saturday classes. It has been designated as an educational training course by the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare. In April 2007, the School added a doctoral program in Social Design Studies (DBA).
In 2005, the Graduate School of Social Design Studies' CSR Internship Program was recognized by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology as a "cooperative dispatching plan" and for its "developing high-level talent" (five-year consigned project).
Daytime and evening course structure
Designated as an educational training course by the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare (doctoral program)
CSR Internship Program (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology consigned project)
