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In organizational or political settings, nemawashi means informal groundwork with the people concerned before formal negotiations or meetings. It can help develop a workable proposal, while also raising questions about transparency and whose views are heard.
In horticulture, nemawashi prepares a tree for transplanting by treating roots around it to encourage fine roots nearer the trunk. The social term borrows that image for preparing conditions and consulting people before formal negotiations or meetings.
Someone proposing a project may explain it to affected departments, ask about difficulties and conditions, then revise it. Participants can include supervisors, peers and those who would carry it out. The sequence depends on the issue, authority and working relationships rather than a fixed ritual.
Nemawashi concerns informal contact; a formal approval workflow specifies submission, consultation and decision authority. Support gathered beforehand need not amount to authorization. In the 2020 study, participants described informal coordination alongside compliance with established organizational procedures.
In interviews published in 2020, managers described checking conditions with other departments and seeking compromises before submitting proposals. Some also approached decision-makers through other people. Such groundwork could alter the proposal rather than merely circulate an already settled conclusion.
Participant G in the 2020 study organized internal staff training. Before submitting proposals, she sounded out people in the departments concerned, heard their views and checked current conditions. The relevant contacts included departments whose employees would attend, alongside the eventual decision-makers.
Participant F described another setting: training required employees to be assembled from workplaces, with deadlines for notices and approval. For urgent matters she contacted fellow section heads to help move things forward. These separate interview accounts make the departmental links concrete. They do not establish a universal sequence or demonstrate that every such consultation saves time.
One manager explained that an executive’s approval was insufficient without cooperation from production, quality assurance and other departments. Prior adjustment could prepare for implementation as well as secure a decision.
The authors organized positive functions into aligning views, avoiding decision-making stagnation and coordinating interdepartmental relationships. These findings interpret a particular set of interviews. They do not establish that every instance is effective or satisfies everyone.
Informal discussions can leave excluded participants unable to follow a decision’s development and reduce a formal meeting to confirmation. Encyclopedic discussion identifies both efficiency and opacity. The important questions include participation, room for dissent and responsibility for the final decision.
One interviewee felt that clearer decision authority and consultation procedures reduced the need for informal political manoeuvring. Others treated coordination as an ordinary necessity. Views differed even within this small study of Japanese companies.
The term moved from preparing trees for transplanting to preparing social negotiations. By 1992, an Information Processing Society of Japan paper treated nemawashi and ringi as part of group decision-making, proposing computer support for selecting alternatives, identifying objections and finding grounds for persuasion. Such work examined how informal coordination might interact with formal decision support.
Ōshima Remi and Hirokawa Keiko’s 2020 paper analysed interviews conducted in May–June 2017 with seven managers in Japanese companies employing 1,000 people or more. It studied organizational politics in new proposals, with nemawashi as one category, rather than a national personality trait.
The authors note that one-off interviews may underrepresent sensitive or negative experiences and that the study concerns new proposals only. They discuss how remote work, digital workflows and data analysis might change coordination. Those are future questions, not tested outcomes of digital nemawashi.
Preparing tree roots before transplanting.
No. Support and formal authorization are different.
Their cooperation is needed after approval.
Excluded people may lack information or room for dissent.
No. It analyses interviews with seven managers in particular large companies.