Research Paper on The Japanese Approach to Corporate Governance : A Foreign Researcher's View

This paper seeks to evaluate the current state of corporate governance in Japan, in the light of increasing pressures from international investors for corporations to be more accountable to shareholders for their actions. Japanese companies may be deemed to have been relatively slow to react to such pressures. This is largely because Japanese company executives have continued to view themselves as accountable to a wider group of stakeholders, reflecting the group orientation of Japanese society. The corporate governance climate in Japan began to change, however, following the bursting of the "bubble" economy in the early 1990s. Particularly in the period from around 2000, overseas investors have been successful in convincing the Japanese authorities that reforms were required in the corporate governance system, to make companies more accountable to their shareholders. While this campaign has been successful in introducing a greater degree of transparency to corporate governance in Japan, the paper observes that there remains substantial resistance to any wholesale embracing of the Western concept of shareholder supremacy. Indeed, there is evidence of significant rearguard action, both from academics and company executives, aimed at preserving the Japanese stakeholder perspective on corporate governance.

Research papers E

AN10073427

45

1

15

2008-03

英語

紀要論文

紀要論文

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