著者

三輪 晋也

出版者

日本経営学会

雑誌

日本経営学会誌 (ISSN:18820271)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.25, pp.15-27, 2010-04-30 (Released:2017-08-01)

参考文献数

21

被引用文献数

1

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This paper's purpose is to examine empirically whether the increase in the number of outside directors positively impacts Japanese firms' long-term performance. Most prior research has analyzed empirically the relationship between outside directors and Japanese firms' performance by conducting cross-sectional regressions. Although those studies show that the percentage of outside directors on Japanese firms' boards is positively related to firms' performance in one year, they do not reveal how that percentage influences those firms' long-term performance. This paper investigates this relationship by using panel data for firms listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The percentage of outside directors on Japanese companies' boards generally tends to be much lower than on American boards. One reason for this difference is that many Japanese managers have been reluctant to put independent directors on boards. Despite their desire to exclude independent directors, however, such managers recently have faced demands to increase the number of independent directors from foreign institutional investors, such as investment trusts and pension funds, which seem to think that independent directors matter in terms of boards' governance. My empirical result is important for considering whether these foreign investors' demands are reasonable. My empirical analysis shows that the percentage of outside directors does not influence Japanese firms' long-term performance. This result is not consistent with the results of prior research referred to above. This might be because outside directors are not really independent of managers in Japan because those managers, rather than shareholders, actually elect them, or because those outside directors are at a disadvantage when collecting in-house information needed to make managerial decisions, compared to inside directors, who have more firm-specific knowledge. My results do not suggest that outside directors necessarily play an important role in raising firms' long-term performance, or that they are appropriate monitors of Japanese firms' management.