Ownership Structure Follows Managerial Strategy

• Main Author: Nobuo TAKAHASHI
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Global Business Research Center 2017-02-01
• Series: Annals of Business Administrative Science
• Subjects: corporate governance; ownership structure; dispersion of stock ownership; separation of ownership and control; zaibatsu
• Online Access: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/abas/16/2/16_0170125a/_pdf/-char/en

Economics of corporate governance treats the ownership structure of shares as an independent variable. This follows the scheme by Berle and Means (1932) that asserts the fact that the broad dispersion of stock ownership promotes “management control” by managers. However, Chandler’s (1977) review of the cases of the telephone and railways at the time indicate that the arrow of cause and effect for the telephone is pointed in reverse, and the pursuit of a larger scale of capital by outstanding managers leads to a dispersion of stock ownership. In railways, management work was extremely complex, and management was left to managers since specialized skills and training were required. In other words, ownership structure was not an independent variable for the separation of ownership and control. In actuality, salaried managers acquired power in Japan’s zaibatsu, which had no dispersion of ownership, at the time.