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Change And Continuity In Japanese Corporate Governance, Toru Yoshikawa, Jean Mcguire Mar 2008

Change And Continuity In Japanese Corporate Governance, Toru Yoshikawa, Jean Mcguire

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Previous studies on Japanese corporate governance were largely based on the agency theory framework, and can be seen as attempts to understand the unique monitoring mechanisms in the Japanese context. This paper briefly reviews prior research and then discusses the recent changes in the environment that have been affecting Japanese corporate governance. Our central argument is that there is both change and continuity in Japanese Corporate Governance. We also present emerging research from an institutional theory perspective. In this line of research, corporate governance is treated as part of a nation’s institutional framework and hence, researchers need to understand unique …


The Implications Of Debt Heterogeneity For R&D Investment And Firm Performance, Parthiban David, Jonathan P. O'Brien, Toru Yoshikawa Feb 2008

The Implications Of Debt Heterogeneity For R&D Investment And Firm Performance, Parthiban David, Jonathan P. O'Brien, Toru Yoshikawa

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

An assumption in prior research is that debt is homogeneous and provides inappropriate governance for R&D investments. We argue that debt is heterogeneous: although transactional debt does indeed impose strict contractual constraints that provide inappropriate governance for R&D investments, relational debt has very different characteristics that provide more appropriate governance. Using a sample of Japanese firms, we find that firms that align their debt structures with their R&D investments perform better than those that are misaligned. Furthermore, firms tend to align their debt structure with R&D investments, but only after deregulation permits relatively free access to various types of debt.


Some Are More Equal: The Politics Of Shareholder Activism, Donald Nordberg Jan 2008

Some Are More Equal: The Politics Of Shareholder Activism, Donald Nordberg

Donald Nordberg

This paper is an early draft of a chapter in the book Corporate Governance: A Synthesis of Theory, Research, and Practice (H. Kent Baker and Ronald Anderson, eds.) published by Wiley in 2010. Shareholder activism is an exercise of power, sometime benign, sometimes threatening to the interests of corporate management, boards and other shareholders. The complexity of these combinations helps to understand how difficult it is for directors to operate in shareholders' interest. What we see, particularly in relation to the growth of hedge-fund activism, is greater dispersion of shareholder interests and growing questions about the legitimacy of how those …