Contingent value of director identification: The role of government directors in monitoring and resource provision in an emerging economy

Research summary: Although previous studies have explored the value of government directors, less attention has been directed at the antecedents of government directors' engagement in value‐adding activities, such as managerial monitoring and resource provision. Drawing on social identity theory, we offer a novel model that specifies how a government director's dual identifications with the focal firm, and with the government individually and interactively affect his or her governance behavior. An investigation of government directors in China shows that their identification with the focal firm enhances monitoring and resource provision, while their identification with the government affects monitoring and resource provision differently. depending on the dominance of state ownership. The synergistic/substitutable effects between the two types of identification are contingent on state ownership and governance roles. Managerial summary: This study examines how a government director's dual identities—as a government official and as a board member of a focal firm affect his or her engagement in managerial monitoring and resource provision. Using data of Chinese listed firms, we find that government directors who strongly identify with the focal firm or with the government are highly motivated to fulfill their fiduciary obligations. However, the positive effects of their identification with the government differ between state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) and non‐SOEs. The combination of the two identifications offers a further boost to monitoring in non‐SOEs, and to resource provision in both SOEs and non‐SOEs, but it acts as a disincentive to monitoring in SOEs. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Shareholder Heterogeneity and Conflicting Goals: Strategic Investments in the Japanese Electronics Industry

This article investigates the effects of the changing institutional environment on strategic orientations of Japanese electronics firms during the 1990s. We examine the effects of three different types of shareholders on strategic directions of their invested firms. The first one, foreign portfolio investors, characterizes the emerging influence that pressed for change in corporate strategies. The two domestic shareholders, corporate investors and financial institutions, represent the conventional forces for continuity. Between the two domestic forces, though, while corporate investors attempted to maintain status quo, financial institutions have shifted towards market‐oriented behaviour of investment. Specifically, we explore: (1) the influence of each type of shareholder on a firm's diversification strategy and capital commitment; and (2) the moderating effects of firm performance on the relationships between ownership structure and strategic choices. The results suggest that foreign investors prefer the focused product portfolio and conservative capital commitment. They also prefer the reduction of capital investment when the financial performance of their invested firms is poor. Domestic financial institutions are now similarly sensitive to the performance of their invested firms when those firms make strategic investments. By contrast, domestic corporate shareholders remain indifferent to performance, while they aim to maintain relational business ties with invested firms.     

The Role of Demand in Macroeconomics

I argue that the standard approach represented by real business cycle theory is misguided, and that a fundamentally different approach is necessary. The new approach, based on the method of statistical mechanics, leads us to a new concept of “equilibrium”. In equilibrium we must have a distribution of productivities rather than a unique level of productivity. We then find that demand plays a crucial role in the determination of the aggregate output, as the old Keynesian economics claims. I show that the demand constraint is important not only in short‐run but also in long‐run economic growth.     

CONFORMISM AND STRUCTURAL CHANGE

Using a simple, multisector model of endogenous growth, we show that commodity‐specific consumption externalities can be a source of structural change. When the degrees of consumption externalities are different between goods, each sector grows at a different rate. However, the aggregate economy exhibits balanced growth in that capital stock and expenditure grow at the same constant rate. A three‐sector version of our model may reconcile Kaldor's stylized facts with empirically plausible profiles of industrial structure transformation.     

Postwar business cycles in Japan: A quest for the right explanation

This paper explores the nature of postwar business cycles in Japan. Our basic strategy is to study different production behaviors of various manufacturing industries over business cycles. We are particularly interested in the problems of whether only monetary shocks are important and, if not, what kind of real shocks are important. We conclude that purely monetary theory is inadequate, and that construction activities were major causes of aggregate fluctuations in the pre-first oil shock period of rapid growth. We also present some evidence suggesting that real business cycle theory is implausible.     

The Concept and Practice of the Production Seat System

This paper presents features of the production seat system and its industrial applications in Japan. Like an airline reservation system, customers' orders are booked on the production seat table in the production seat system. Then orders are released from the production table to work processes at every production order cycle. To show the effectiveness of the production seat system, a simple simulation was conducted. It was observed that the production seat system would achieve better observance of customer delivery dates and would reduce the average production lead time when compared with the traditional production planning and scheduling system. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Agency Theory and Japanese Corporate Governance

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.