Based on the recognition that the sustainability of society as a whole will have a significant impact on the future of our corporate activities, we identify as material issues those of high priority among the important social issues that we aim to resolve through our corporate activities. Once we have identified these material issues, we incorporate them into our business activities, and disclose details and the results of our initiatives in our Sustainability Report.
Initially, in the fiscal year ended March 2008, we identified nine material issues of the Group by conducting a material issue assessment based on the framework of the GRI Guidelines, a set of international guidelines that address sustainability reporting. In the fiscal year ended March 2016, we reorganized the items into seven. Later, in response to changes in the external environment and other factors, we updated them to ten items in the Medium-term Management Strategy announced in March 2020.
In addition, in the Medium-term Management Strategy FY2031 that was announced in February 2023, we employed the following selection process to identify key factors from various perspectives and arranged these elements along two axes, in terms of their importance for each stakeholder, and their degree of importance in relation to Our Commitment. Following extensive discussion on the importance of each key factor undertaken by the Strategic Management Committee and the Board of Directors, an order of priority was established, and we re-established the key themes for each material issue and the nature and objectives of initiatives for each key theme.
We review material issues and other matters every year to ensure that we can appropriately identify and respond to changes in the business environment and other factors in a timely and appropriate manner. In light of the latest social, environmental and economic trends, we have revised some of our key themes as follows.
