TY - JOUR
T1 - Agency theory and Japanese corporate governance
AU - Phan, Phillip H.
AU - Yoshikawa, Toru
N1 - Funding Information:
With thanks to Dr. Soo H. Lee, participants at the Schulich School Research Seminar series, the University of California Irvine Research Seminar series, and the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Hawaii Manoa for comments on earlier versions of the draft. This research is supported by a strategic grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Opinions are solely of the authors and not of any sponsoring organization.
PY - 2000
Y1 - 2000
N2 - Agency theory has been used to predict managerial strategic behavior in the past. However, critics have commented that this theory, in its applications, has been too Anglo-American specific. Research in non-Anglo-American settings has been scarce. Recent changes in the Japan Commercial Code and moves by Japanese corporations to access global equity markets allow us to test the veracity of this criticism by examining how Japanese firms respond strategically to the increased requirement for disclosure and transparency; whether they behave in ways congruent with agency theory predictions. Agency theory states that managers who are held accountable for their use of corporate resources will deploy them in ways to enhance stockholder value rather than increase their shares of the economic residual. Thus, we would expect to observe a difference in Japanese managerial behavior accompanying an increased exposure to global capital markets. Using data from Japanese firms, we found some support for the usefulness of agency theory to non-Anglo-American settings when the rules of capital market discipline are allowed to operate.
AB - Agency theory has been used to predict managerial strategic behavior in the past. However, critics have commented that this theory, in its applications, has been too Anglo-American specific. Research in non-Anglo-American settings has been scarce. Recent changes in the Japan Commercial Code and moves by Japanese corporations to access global equity markets allow us to test the veracity of this criticism by examining how Japanese firms respond strategically to the increased requirement for disclosure and transparency; whether they behave in ways congruent with agency theory predictions. Agency theory states that managers who are held accountable for their use of corporate resources will deploy them in ways to enhance stockholder value rather than increase their shares of the economic residual. Thus, we would expect to observe a difference in Japanese managerial behavior accompanying an increased exposure to global capital markets. Using data from Japanese firms, we found some support for the usefulness of agency theory to non-Anglo-American settings when the rules of capital market discipline are allowed to operate.
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U2 - 10.1023/A:1015440702758
DO - 10.1023/A:1015440702758
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0038663968
SN - 0217-4561
VL - 17
SP - 1
EP - 27
JO - Asia Pacific Journal of Management
JF - Asia Pacific Journal of Management
IS - 1
ER -