Corporate Governance Systems and Firm Value:
Empirical Evidence from Japan’s Natural Experiment
Robert N. Eberhart
SPRIE Fellow
Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Stanford University
(650) 725-0121
(650) 723-6530 (Fax)
eberhart@stanford.edu

ABSTRACT
This study uses panel data to explore economic efficiency of corporate governance systems by
examining the effects of cross-sectional differences among Japanese firms selecting one of two
legal systems. The paper presents evidence that the adoption by Japanese firms of a shareholderoriented,
more transparent, system of corporate governance creates greater corporate value in
comparison to the traditional system of statutory auditors. The effect is not only significant, it is
important in magnitude. This paper takes advantage of the unique opportunity afforded by
Japan’s introduction of a dual system of corporate governance in 2003, when companies were
offered a choice to adopt a new system of outside directors, which is a shareholder-oriented
committee system. Data analysis shows a significant increase in firm valuation, as measured by
Tobin’s q, for companies that adopted the committee system, even though comparative financial
data show little difference. This finding is attributed to signal sending, as companies that
adopted this system signal a choice toward transparency via monitoring by outsiders, suggesting
a reduction of asymmetric agency costs.
Keywords: Corporate Governance, Japan, Committee System, Board of Directors
I gratefully acknowledge the invaluable help, constructive editorial suggestions, and advice from Martin Kenney,
Masahiko Aoki, Charles O'Reilly, Ulrike Schaede, George Foster, Christina Ahmadjian, Rafiq Dossani, Richard
Dasher, Henry Rowen, William Miller, Avner Greif, Mamiko Yamashita, Takuro Yamashita, and Shinji Ide. Errors in
this paper are fully and completely my own.
Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=17392922
1. INTRODUCTION
Recent economic turmoil has refocused examination of corporate governance systems.
Seen by some observers as the standard of corporate governance, the US system of shareholderoriented
governance by board committees and independent directors has come under reexamination.
Before September 2008, some streams of academic thought pictured a de facto
convergence on the US governance model because, it is reasoned, economic efficiency will
motivate governments seeking efficient systems to adopt legal structures to emulate US norms.
In Japan, firms such as Sony and Hitachi sought to create Anglo-American firm-level
governance institutions within the laws that then existed, (Nottage and Wolff 2005), and foreign
shareholders exerted influence to revise corporate governance practices, (Simon and Deakin
2009). However, the question of whether different corporate governance systems result in
demonstrably differential corporate value—so that the supposed efficiency gains that may drive
convergence can be studied—is incompletely addressed. Now, with U.S. corporate governance
practices being called into question for failures of incentives and monitoring inefficacies,
examination of the purported efficiency gains from an Anglo-American corporate governance
system seems beneficial.
Despite the abundant academic research on comparative corporate governance systems,
where much attention is paid to the issue of convergence, the issue remains unresolved. (Jacoby
2002), argues that the dynamic economy and increasing assets values on financial markets
during the 1990s—in contrast to Japan and Europe—drove firms to seek listings on US
exchanges and consequently caused those firms to adopt US corporate practice. Other scholars
take the position that economic efficiency drives corporate governance systems toward
3
convergence, (Hansmann and Kraakman 2001). Indeed, they propose that convergence towards
the Anglo-American shareholder-oriented model has already occurred, to what Nottage and
Wolff (2005) called a “shareholder-oriented model of corporate governance, involving extensive
use of market-based control mechanisms to guide corporate activity and corporate law.” There
is some evidence that at least a convergence of opinion on corporate governance principles, such
as the necessity of transparent information systems (Khanna, Kogan et al. 2006), or the US
market for corporate control (Jensen and Ruback 1983) has occurred.
In contrast, other scholars, for example, (Bebchuk and Roe 1999), (Schmidt and Spindler
2002), and (Gordon, Roe et al. 2004), argue that the path-dependent nature of corporate
governance structures — via the presence of sunk costs, the logic of corporate governance,
complimentarity, or institutional inertia — imply that any convergence will be gradual if not
meet outright resistance. Moreover, comparative institutional analytic literature suggests pathdependence
from the systems of corporate governance deriving from the underlying local
organizational and industrial architecture (Aoki and Jackson 2008), or historical-economic
context (Greif 2006). Gilson proposes that, even if governance practices should follow pathdependent
trajectories and retain formal structures, there may be a convergence in functionality,
given similar economic forces, (Gilson 2001).
Corporate governance plays an important role in efficient financial monitoring and thus
shareholder protection, which affects firm valuation as measured by Tobin’s q (Wolfe and
Sauaia 2003); (Morck, Shleifer et al. 1988); (Pacheco-de-Almeida, Hawk et al. 2008).
Additional literature on the association of corporate systems with firm performance has made
extensive use of q (Shleifer and Vishny 1997); (Denis and McConnell 2003).
4
The link between features of corporate governance and performance are well established,
Brown and Caylor (2006) found a link between a firms value as measured by Tobin’s-q using
the Institutional Shareholder Services database to score firms with seven dimensions of
corporate governance and find valuation positively related to score, (Brown and Caylor 2006).
Miyajima (2006), using similar methods, studied Japanese firm performance under varying
corporate governance variations by assigning scores to normalize the firms’ policies to study
firm performance. He found that Japanese firms with higher scores did have better performance
as measured by return on assets and Tobin’s q. That paper found that increasing economic
pressure from Japanese capital markets encouraged corporate managers to attempt corporate
governance reform and found reform more likely the higher the percentage of foreign investors
and a lower percentage of long-term, stable shareholders. Gompers et al, (2003), found that firms
with fewer shareholder rights had lower valuations,(Gompers, Ishii et al. 2003). Black , et al,
(2006) found that firms in Korea with a high proportion of outside directors have higher values,
(Black, Jang et al. 2006).
Because it is very rare for countries to legislate two parallel systems, studies of intracountry
corporate governance advantages have tended to rely on scoring assessments of
governance practice. Cross-national studies, (Bebchuk and Cohen, 2005; Bebchuk et al., 2005;
Cremers and Nair, 2005) have used the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC)
database to rate corporate governance by scores, and have found that better governance is
associated to higher firm valuation measured by Tobin’s Q. Scores produce a single number
against which firms can be compared and valuation assessed. On the other hand, Bebchuk and
5
Hamdani (2009) argue that scores may not accurately reflect the fit of a governance system in a
national economic ecology. What may be a complimentary and advantageous governance system
in an ecology may not be advantageous in a different ecology. In this sense, it does not
necessarily follow that a governance practice in one economy can be transferred or even
evaluated through the analytic lens of another, (Bebchuk and Hamdani 2009).
Resolution of the debate between convergence and path-dependence is incompletely
resolved because it is difficult to adjudicate with only theoretical work and empirical
examinations of single systems in an economic domain are inevitably confounded by local
conditions as they change over time. Accordingly, an empirical study sufficient to establish
convergence, beyond the analytic understanding of system changes, remains elusive. Crossnational
comparisons are confounded by fundamental economic dynamics and rarely do when
diverse corporate governance regimes are extant at the same time in a national system, they are
focused on differing legal purposes, say partnership versus corporation, and thus the legal
functional differences confound efficiency comparisons. A reasonable comparison for analysis
requires that systems of corporate governance co-exist in an economic ecosystem so that
comparative efficiencies and perhaps convergence itself can be observed.
Japan provided an opportunity to study this empirical conundrum in a law enacted in
2002 allowing two corporate governance systems to operate concurrently in the same corporate
domain, Japanese stock issuing public corporations. The Japan Commercial Code revision of
2002 introduced a new committee system similar to Anglo-American systems, designed
deliberately as a competitor to the then extant stakeholder-oriented system. By April 2009, 112
publicly traded companies, including prominent business groups like Hitachi, Nomura, and
6
Sony, adopted the new system1. This study proposes that by examining the differences in value
among firms in the same national economy at the same time, useful data might be generated that
can contribute to this inquiry. Such opportunity for study, by having two legal structures operate
in one economy at the same time, is seldom available.
Since enactment of the new corporate law establishing the parallel systems, few
empirical studies have compared the two systems given the little time that has passed since
companies began adopting the new system. Using event-study methods to examine share prices,
(Gilson and Milhaupt 2004) found little discernable difference in the value of the firms as tested
by stock price trajectories. More recently, (Buchanan and Deakin 2007) conducted a survey of
CEOs, directors and senior managers, academics and government officials to determine how
divergent assessments of Japan’s corporate governance experimentation are. They found it
paradoxical that changes in corporate governance practice did not depend on whether a firm
selected the iinkai system or not. Further, they conclude that the adoption of western structures,
as envisioned in the iinkai system, does not result in actual practices that diverge widely from the
more traditional models. Resolution of these paradoxes is difficult without empirical evidence
of the comparative, intra-economy value of a comparative corporate change.
This paper, seeking to address the empirical need, examines the comparative change in
corporate value upon a Japanese firm’s adoption of the committee system of corporate
governance against the value of firms that did not transform, and finds higher value among
adopting firms. It may be that by selecting the new system, wherein management submits its
1 Interestingly, in addition to Nomura, forty-seven private, newly-formed companies have also adopted the iinkai
system as of 2008. (Teikoku Data Bank, 2008).
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books and other records to outside directors for examination, away from the supervision of the
CEO and the board of directors, a firm signals a willingness to be examined by outsiders. 2 To
the extent that transparency is the disclosure of accurate information to outsiders, (Bushman,
Piotroski et al. 2004), the iinkai system is more transparent and might therefore accrue greater
value in the capital markets. The implication of this result is relevant to research on corporate
governance convergence as well as agency costs from information asymmetries. Section 2 will
describe the legal and functional nature of the two parallel corporate governance regimes and
compare them descriptively; section 3 contains the methodology for the empirical results in the
paper using univariate analysis, event study, and regression analysis. Section 4 discusses the
results of and Section 5 concludes.
2. Japanese Corporate Governance Changes
In what has come to be called the “J-firm” (Aoki 1990); (Aoki and Dore 1994), describe
the contingent governance system of Japanese firms characteristic of the postwar period. The
firm manages its own affairs, supervised by boards usually composed of insiders promoted from
the managerial ranks - unless the corporation found itself in financial difficulty. In that
contingency, the financers of the firm, usually the bank, would rescue or liquidate the firm (Aoki
and Patrick 1994). In part to detect such contingencies, a monitor, or committee of monitors,
called a “statutory auditor,” or kansayaku in Japanese, is chartered to audit and present the
financial and legal condition of the firm to shareholders, (JCAA 2008). In addition, while the
shareholders elect the auditor, he is nominated by the board, that consisted of managers who
3 In Japanese law, “outside” directors are legally distinct from the more Anglo-American concept of “independent”
directors. In Japanese law, “outside,” while meaning the officer is not, and never has been, employed by the subject
company; family ties, affiliation, and being the employee of a parent firm, conform to the legal definition of “outside”
director.
8
reported to the CEO who, in turn, were thought to distribute the auditors’ information amongst
stakeholders.
A broad academic and business practitioner criticism arose of this contingent governance
and associated monitoring system during the 1980s and accelerated during the 1990s in response
to changes in Japan’s socio-economic environment in the post-bubble period.3 Beginning in
1997, in response to these criticisms, the continuing broad economic slowdown and the equity
market boom in the United States, Japan underwent a series of aggressive reforms to its
corporate governance legal structure, (Schaede 2008). Stock option plans and repurchasing of
company shares was liberalized, merger law was rewritten, holding companies were allowed,
startup capital requirements were severely lowered, limits placed on director liability, and
bankruptcy laws were reformed.
These reforms were undertaken with several goals sought by the policy makers in the
Japanese government. First, the reforms were intended to create a more transparent corporate
governance system from the standpoint of shareholders and, secondly, to modernize corporate
law to accommodate the demands of funding new industries. Third, reformers hoped to improve
financial intermediation, especially venture capital fundraising measures and, fourth, to create a
greater congruence with the increasing internationalization of corporate legal practice and
norms. Finally, there was a technical objective of modernizing language terms and consolidating
provisions of the company law, (Egashira 2005).
In 2002, one of the series of reforms to the commercial code permitted the optional
3 For an excellent discussions, see Milhaupt 2001, Gilson & Milhaupt 2004, and Nottage & Wolfe 2005.
9
adoption of a shareholder-oriented, Anglo-American form of corporate governance option for
Japanese firms called the “committee system” (iinkai secchi kaisha; abbreviated to “iinkai” in
this paper.). Alternatively, firms could continue with the incumbent “statutory auditor” system,
called kansayaku secchi kaisha, termed “kansayaku” in this paper. The law became available in
2003 and some 40 public firms adopted the iinkai system in its first year, growing to 112 firms
by January 2008, even though a few firms have rescinded the adoption (JCAA 2008). This
represents a quite small proportion of the more than 3000 publicly traded firms in Japan.
The Kansayaku System
Before 2006, a kansayaku company had at least one representative director and one
auditor. The board of directors appoints a representative director, who legally and personally
represents the company, and may optionally appoint subordinate executive directors. The
representative director and executive directors manage the company under the supervision of the
board of directors. The kansayaku are nominated by the representative directors and confirmed
by the shareholders. While their role differs depending on the size of the company,
fundamentally the kansayaku is to audit financial accounting and certify the directors’ proper
and legal execution of affairs.4 In larger companies, more than one auditor performs these tasks.
In a kansayaku firm, both the board of directors and the corporate auditors are expected
to monitor and control the firm, but the kansayaku gained a reputation of ineffectiveness in this
4 In Japanese corporate law, additional rules exist for the auditing system, depending on the size of the company,
Takahashi, E. S., Madoka (2005). "The Future of Japanese Corporate Governance: The 2005 Reform." The Journal
of Japanese Law 19(35).. For small firms, for example, the full iinkai structure is not required. In addition, the role of
a corporate auditor in a small company is only to audit accounting and does not include the corporate auditor
function. For this study, examines only public firms, which are all large by legal definition, and the commentary is
restricted to those features of Japanese law that are relevant to large companies.
10
role, (Sarra and Nakahigashi 2002). They were not nominated by shareholders and rarely
rejected by them, were poorly supported with inside staff with divided loyalties, and had poor
status as they were often viewed as senior employees who failed to become directors
(Ahmadjian 2003). Perhaps more importantly, the kansayaku lacked sanctioning authority—the
power to nominate, appoint, or remove directors—and thus could not necessarily enforce
shareholder or employee interests. Further, frequently the board that nominated the auditors
consisted of managers whom rarely challenged a chief executive. Thus, the question of who
monitors the monitor was inadequately resolved in this system. With management retaining
both selection and retention decisions with respect to the kansayaku, the incentives of the system
simply did not include the primary interests of shareholders and other stakeholders, and was
thus inconsistent with the concepts of stakeholder advocacy in Japanese corporate governance.5
The Iinkai System
The iinkai system is a shareholder-oriented alternative to the kansayaku system enacted
in 2002 but available for adoption in 2003. It was METI’s original intention, during the
formulation of reforms in the late 1990s, to simply replace the kansayaku system with an Anglo-
American committee system, giving a more ascendant position to shareholders through a
governing system by committees of independent directors modeled on reforms innovated by
Sony, (Whittaker and Deakin 2009). Responding to the wishes of corporation organizing bodies
such as Keidanren, and constituencies within METI and other government organs, the reform
was instead offered as a choice. Firms could choose either system following shareholder
approval. Its designers supposed that this might also create competition between the two
systems and thus perhaps the market would select the more efficient system and improvements
5 Starting in 2006, committees of kansayaku were required to include more outside auditors.
11
to corporate governance would follow (Nottage and Wolff 2005).
In contrast to statutory auditor companies, iinkai companies have three committees—a
nominating committee, an audit committee, and a compensation committee—and must appoint
one or more executive officers. The board of directors appoints the members of each committee
of three or more directors, with outside directors holding the majority of each committee. These
committee’s decisions immune to veto by either the whole board or the management, including
the president or CEO6, (Ohara 2009).
In an iinkai firm, similar to a kansayaku firm, executive authority rests with the president
and subordinate executive officers. On the other hand, in an iinkai company, the nominating
committee appoints the president and executive officers, and compensation for the president and
executive officers is determined by another board level committee, subject to confirmation by
the shareholders. Moreover, the financial information reported to shareholders as well as the
legal veracity of company actions are monitored and certified by an audit committee. Since
these key functions—executive pay, executive appointment, and financial monitoring—are
supervised by committees, the majority of whose members are outsiders, and which cannot be
overruled by the president, the iinkai system was, and is, hoped by its designers to provide more
transparent and effective monitoring.
The iinkai law prohibits co-mingling features of both auditor and iinkai systems. That is,
a company cannot have, for example, only one or two of these three committees, or both a
6 In this paper, “president” or “CEO” is more technically correctly called the “representative director” or daihyo
torishimariyakyu. We adopt the common CEO term to more effectively communicate the parallel role.
12
corporate auditor and the audit committee. Nevertheless, this is not to say that kansayaku firms
eschew all forms of the committee system. In a corporate governance form-versus-function
phenomenon anticipated by Gilson in 2001, essential features of the iinkai system such as
outside directors and the separation of executive management from board management are
increasingly being adopted by many traditional firms. While only about 100 firms adopted the
iinkai system, a Tokyo Stock Exchange Survey of 2006 found that 42.3% of all listed companies
had outside directors (TSE 2007). Further, the distinction between them diminished after 2005
and is more completely explored in the next section.
In 2005, Japan enacted a further revision to its commercial code, which reformed the
authority and responsibilities of kansayaku firms, that both allows and requires them to more
closely resemble iinkai firms (Takahashi 2005), reducing the scope of institutional differences.
The law provided that, for large public companies, the majority of the appointed auditors must
be independent and that at least one of a firm’s auditors must be engaged by the firm on a fulltime
basis. Moreover, the new law required firms to establish either governing bodies, such as a
board of kansayaku consisting of accounting consultants (kaikei san’yo), or the three committees
(nominating committee, audit committee and compensation committee), which are close analogs
of the iinkai framework. With the 2005 law, then, a kansayaku firm could closely mimic an
iinkai system firm in almost all its essential features.
For the purposes of this paper, then, the differences in the institutional framework was at
its greatest from 2003 through 2005 and those years are the focus of the natural experiment that
we examine.
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3. EMPIRICAL METHODOLOGY
The Sample
Proprietary and public databases are used for this research. To learn company financial
information for Tobin’s q computations, two sources are employed. The primary source is the
Thomson Financials One Banker database that presents financial information in standard format
conforming to Japanese standard accounting practices. Thomson compiles its data from the
reports that all public Japanese companies, iinkai or kansayaku, are required to file (equivalent to
US 10K forms) (Thomson Corporation 2003). For non-financial statement data that is not
available from the Thomson reports, such as the presence of a stock option, we relied on data
sources from the Financial Services Agency of the Japanese Government, (Financial Services
Agency (2008)).
The data for this study consists of kansayaku and iinkai companies, with the iinkai firms
identified by the Japanese Corporate Auditors Association, www.kansa.or.jp, (JCAA 2008).
They include 103 Japanese firms that have adopted the system through December 2007. 7 To
control for differences across industries, the 103 companies were grouped into industry groups
using the Japan Standard Industrial Classification system. Selected firms are publicly traded and
have data on relevant variables available during the study period of the 1999–2007 fiscal years.
Of the 103 total available firms, a market price is not directly obtainable for 21 firms because
they are subsidiaries of other companies. As subsidiaries, the independence of board committees
7 As of April 11, 2009, 114 public, or subsidiaries of public firms have selected the iinkai system as reported by the
Japanese Corporate Auditors Association.
14
might be compromised by assigning parent company employees to the committees, which is
consistent with law. In addition, most of these subsidiaries have Hitachi as the parent and
inclusion of all these Hitachi related companies was thought to introduce bias into the sample.
Moreover, forty iinkai companies were unsuitable for the analysis because they were private or
had insufficient available information caused by bankruptcy or merger. The remaining forty-two
iinkai firms were classified into six industry-type categories: finance, electronics,
pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, trade, and internet/communications. Five dummy variables
control for these differing industries in the regression analysis.
For kansayaku companies, we assigned all companies from the “Kaisha Shikiho (􀕱􀣾􀢛
􀙂􀹃) 2007,” into JSI classifications and then into one of the six industry-type categories. From
these categories, 86 companies for the years FY1999 through FY2007 were selected at random
proportionate to the industries in the iinkai sample. The study uses this proportional sampling
technique because the frequency of pharmaceutical and Internet companies in the iinkai sample
that was substantially different from the population of kansayaku companies that bias might
occur if a simple random sampling was used.
Most sampled companies have a March 31 fiscal year end and the study uses year-end
data. In the few cases where the fiscal year is not 3/31, the actual close is within one quarter and
should not introduce bias into the results. Complete lists of iinkai and kansayaku study
companies are in Appendices 1 and 2 respectively.
15
Dependent Variable - Tobin’s q
Consistent with past research, we use Tobin’s q ratio to measure a firm’s value. The q
ratio is used in studies such as cross-sectional differences in investment and diversification
decisions, the relationship of managerial equity ownership and firm value, the relationship
between managerial performance and tender offer gains, investment opportunities and tender
offer responses, and financing, dividend, and compensating policies, (Chung and Pruitt 1994).
Firms with a q > 1, as opposed to firms with q<1, have been found to be better investment
opportunities, indicate that management has performed well with the assets under its command
(Lang, Stulz et al. 1989), and have higher growth potential (Brainerd and Tobin 1968). The q
ratio is useful to study the effects of corporate decisions on performance, especially where
standard accounting methods have failed to detect any performance effects, as in increases in
intangible asset value. For example, if a firm selects a business strategy that materially improves
the marginal productivity of assets at small marginal cost, the market value of the firm may
increase even though no significant relationship between the selected strategy and the financial
accounts are detected.
The q ratio is used extensively as a measure of a firm's intangible value based on the
assumption that the long-run equilibrium market value of a firm must be equal to the
replacement value of its assets, giving a q-value close to unity. Deviations from this relationship
(where q is significantly greater than 1) are interpreted as signifying an unmeasured source of
value and generally attributed to intangible value in the firm. Studies have exploited the
relationship between q and intangible value to examine the effects of factors such as R&D,
advertising, and brand equity, which are deemed to contribute to a firm's intangible value
16
(Megna and Klock 1983); (Hall and Hall 1993); (Simon and Sullivan 1993). Recently, several
studies have used the q ratio to establish important results. (Ciner and Karagozoglu 2008) found
that foreign trading activity is associated with information trading on the Istanbul Stock
Exchange, and it was recently shown using Tobin’s q that firms gain a valuation advantage when
selecting business strategies based on service as opposed to product (Fang, Palmatier et al.
2008).
For this study, Tobin's q calculations follow the method of Chung and Pruitt (1994),
which resolves the practicable difficulties of calculating the q-value since market values of assets
are difficult to obtain or estimate ex post. Their method instead estimates the market value of the
firm as the sum of the market value of common and preferred shares for the period under
examination, plus the current liabilities (net of current assets), book value of inventories, and
long-term debt. This sum is divided by the total book value of assets to obtain an approximate qvalue
for a firm. This calculation method allows use of publicly available financial data and is
robustly correlated with q-values calculated by more complex alternative methods.8
Descriptive Statistics
Table 1 presents descriptive statistics of the companies in our sample over the fiscal
years 1999 through 2007 grouped by governance system: iinkai and kansayaku.
Insert Table 1 about here
8 Chung and Pruitt (1994) found that their method of calculating q explained at least 96.6% of the variability in Tobin's
q obtained via Lindenberg and Ross's more complex model Lindenberg, E. B. and S. A. Ross (1981). "Tobin's q
Ratio and Industrial Organization." The Journal of Business 54(1), ibid..
17
While the overall Tobin q values of committee system firms appear greater than auditor
firms, the difference is significant only after 2004, (Table 2). Iinkai companies in the sample
also differ from sampled kansayaku firms in closely-held shares proportion, foreign ownership
and the frequency of a stock option plan but do not seem to differ in profit as a percent of sales,
revenue per employee, cash flow as a percent of sales, or return to assets. Iinkai firms, while
apparently performing no better than kansayaku firms, are more broadly owned by foreign
interests (26% versus 12%), are held more closely by insider shareholders (45% to 35%), and
much more frequently have stock option plans (83% to 34%).
Noticeably, q-values for both styles of firms decline from 2005 onward and the
difference between the medians narrow to insignificance by 2007. Two likely possibilities act
individually or in concert to explain this narrowing of value differences. First, the iinkai system
could be novel when selected and act to signal a welcome corporate push for increased
performance. When the performance differential is not delivered, shareholder evaluations may
be subject to downward revisions. Alternatively, or in concert, it may also be that the diminished
formal legal difference between the two systems from 2005 onward, created a diminishing
comparative expected transparency difference, that is, a lessened clarity of signaling for
governance practices, with respect to the committee system. A more complete discussion is in
the concluding section.
Insert Table 2 about here
Within differing industries, in contrast, the data show marked differences. Figures 1
through 6 give the Tobin’s q medians and ranges for each studied industry: trade, electronics,
18
manufacturing, ICT, pharmaceuticals and finance. While those companies using the iinkai
system retain greater median Tobin’s q-values in each industry, the range and degree of
difference seems to depend on the industry. The data shows that q-values trend downward for
both types of firms from 2005, and that the difference between systems’ values narrows,
consistent with the convergence of laws governing iinkai and kansayaku firms after the 2005
legal reforms.
Insert Figure 1 through 6 about here
Model Specification and Econometric Concerns
To extend these univariate results and determine whether they are robust to controlling
for financial and governance variables, as well as controlling for the firm’s industry, a Tobit
random-effects panel regression is used to analyze the data.
The dependent variable of the study, Tobin’s q, is a continuous variable and takes only
non-negative values between zero and one. Since the percentile value is left-censored, the Tobit
regression model’s assumptions of homoskedastic, normally distributed errors with censored
data are thus consistent with our dataset. We regress the Tobin’s q data against the independent
variable of the corporate governance system, a set of variables to control for governance and
financial effects, and on a set of dummy variables for the different categories of companies. For
the study’s independent variable, the iinkai system is modeled as a dummy variable that takes a
value of one if the company has selected that system.
19
Variables
Governance Controls—From the available literature, limited to the studies consistent
with the data available for our study, four indicators of corporate governance were selected: the
size of the board of directors, the presence of a stock option plan, the ratio of debt to equity - as a
measure of the risk choices of the firm and as a variable of the director’s choice of corporate
structure, and, lastly, the proportion of closely held shares
Agrawal and Knoeber (1996) examine mechanisms to mitigate agency costs with control
mechanisms such as debt structure. They find that controlling shareholders, outside directors,
board composition and debts structure among other aspects, are interdependent and decisive in
determining a firms value in terms of Tobin’s Q. Following that literature, our board size
variable captures the idea that larger boards are more amenable to control by a small faction
allied with the CEO who might have an opportunity to advance private interests. Since it is
argued that differing corporate governance aspects will determine the debt structure of a firm, we
employ the debt-to-equity ration to capture this. That this is an exogenous selection of policy is
supported by the control literature similar to Agrawal, and Knoeber.
Similarly, a rich set of literature suggests that a board which collectively owns a larger
proportion of shares in a focal firm is presumed to be motivated differently than a board owning
few shares, a variable capturing the proportion of closely held shares is used to control for the
differing effect of entrenchment in firms. Several empirical studies have made much of the
closely held proportion of shares as an entrenchment mechanism, (Kaplan and Minton 1994);
20
(Bebchuk, Cohen et al. 2004)).9 Moreover, (Bebchuk and Fried 2004) associate high rates of
closely held shares with lower CEO pay and better governance.10 Schmidt and Spindler (2002)
theorize that controlling interests seek status quo governance structures as a means to extract
ownership rents. In the context of this paper, firms with controlling owners, motivated as
Schmidt and Spindler hypothesize, might resist adoption of the iinkai system. Accordingly, we
control for this effect by including a variable of the percentage of shares held by officers.
Although, since this data is not available for all firms, we analyze this effect in a third model,
consisting of the sample of 221 observations that report closely held shares.
We capture the influence of foreign business practice by including two variables, the
foreign sales as a percent of total, and the presence of a stock option plan. In Japanese corporate
governance literature, the shareholder-oriented iinkai system is viewed as an Anglo-American -
or at least a foreign - system and there is some evidence in the literature that foreign ownership
and influence can change the value of a firm, (Asaba 2005). To control for foreign influence on
firm governance, the study measured foreign ownership as a percentage of total shares
outstanding. Another measure of foreign influence might be the recent stock option plan
implementations in Japan. While initially promulgated in 1997, these plans were reformed in
2002 in the same corporate law change that created the iinkai system. This study uses the
adoption of this, an innovation in Japan, as a control for foreign influence and its potential effect
on q, similar to foreign ownership, and thus includes a dummy variable that takes on a value of
one if the firm has a stock option plan.
9 Entrenchment, in this regard, means structures and mechanisms of corporate governance that impede the
replacement of managers who control the assets.
10 In contrast, Miyajima’s 2006 study, using corporate governance scores to capture entrenchment, finds the closely
held proportion of shares unrelated to performance.
21
Financial Performance Controls— To examine the performance variables suggested by
this literature, we present models using, return on assets, sales per employee, foreign sales, and
dividends. For financial performance controls, our study relies on the empirical literature in
economics, finance, law, and Japanese corporate governance that had modeled firm performance
(Hoshi, Kashyap et al. 1991); (Bebchuk, Cohen et al. 2004). Other studies for the United States
have found that Tobin’s q is related to common financial measures (Hermalin and Weisbach
1991); (Gompers, Metrick et al. 2002) such as sales, cash flow, and profit from operations. Since
Tobin’s q is affected by the market value or the book value of the firm, we sought controls
amongst the common performance variables that might most directly affect book or market
value. Return on assets is a common measure of operational efficiency of a firm. A positive
return implies that the firm is generating profit and cash, and the more efficiently it does this
with a set of assets, the greater the return. Future return is also enhanced as a more efficient use
of assets implies a lower gross funding need than a less efficient firm. Accordingly, we suppose
that return on assets captures the panolopy of operational performance such as profit and cash
flow data but that benefits from being a dimensionless ratio directly comparable across firms in
the same line of business.
Productivity of the firms is also a reflection of the efficiency of the use of assets and the
environment within which the firm operates. While estimates of total factor productivity and
capital productivity are not supported by the scope of the data in this analysis, sales per
employee is a common measure of overall productivity of the firm. Sales per employee has been
used to study the productivity of Japanese automobile firms, (Cusmano 1985), the effectiveness
of human resource management, (Huselid, Jackson et al. 1997), and explain the productivity
22
gains from human capital flows and technology gains across national domains, (Saxenian 2002).
We adopt it to control for the effect of productivity changes on the value of a company.
(La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes et al. 2000) found, in an empirical analysis across diverse
economic national domains, that higher dividends may be associated with shareholder rights. To
control for this effect, we also include the dividend, measured as the log of the annual payment,
following the prior analysis of ultimate returns from an agency theory perspective. In calculating
logarithms, we ensure a minimization of bias by retaining all firms, including those with zero
dividends, by using an infinitesimal epsilon quantity in otherwise zero cells.
All models also control for the industry classification of the firm with five dummy
variables for the machinery, electronic, manufacturing, finance, and trade (retail and wholesale)
industries holding the pharmaceutical industry as the baseline.
We present three random effects Tobit regression models. Model 1 enters the corporate
governance and performance variables, however to avoid econometric difficulties given some
firms did not report ownership data, this model does not include the insider control variable.
Model 2 employs an instrument to address the concern that return on assets may be endogenous
by using profit as a percent of sales as one of the more material efficiencies in return to assets. It
is a measure of efficiency of cash operations for a focal firm but at best only weakly related to q.
Similarly, Model 3 uses the somewhat reduced sample of firms that report managerial share to
control for managerial ownership with both governance and financial controls that we discussed
in an earlier section. Table 3 reports the results of all three models.
23
Insert Table 3 about here
4. DISCUSSION
The coefficient on the governance system variable is positive, material, and significant in
all models. This finding suggests that selection of the iinkai system seems to confer a value
advantage. The magnitude of the coefficient is material economically implying that selecting the
iinkai system increases a companies Tobin q value by over .91 in model 1 and over 1.01 in
model 3. The study also found that amongst the study’s governance variables, this was the only
variable with a significant affect. Among performance controls, the variable measuring the
efficiency of the firm – return on assets - was significant at the 99% level and also material in
magnitude while all other controls had insignificant coefficients. When ROA was instrumented
by sales efficiency, (profit as a percentage of sales), the control variable was not significant. This
implies that unobserved variables, or the endogeneity of the ROA variable, contributed to its
significance in the non-instrumented model. Since the variable of interest, the corporate
governance system, has similar magnitudes and significance in both approaches, we are
confident that, in addition to the univariate analytic charts and the event study, that the system
selection seem to be causal of increased company value after selection. These results are
consistent with the idea that corporate governance changes are a signal, rather than an
operational enhancement, and the signal manifests itself as intangible value. To add robustness
to the idea that intangibles might be driving q-values, the coefficients on the dummy variables
for the electronics, trade, and manufacturing industries are negative, with the pharmaceuticals
being the base industry in the regression.
24
In terms of financial controls, industry selection seems to be an important determinant of
value. Increasing Tobin’s q is associated with increasing intangible assets. Since technology and
information firms are associated with human capital intangibles, we expect and find that firms in
the information, communication and technology industry segment have greater values than other
industries. We find that the coefficients on all variables were not significant suggesting that the
increased q value in iinkai firms is not the results of operating or payout performance. The
significant negative coefficient of the dividend payout level does not hold in significance or sign
in the instrumented analysis, implies, as in the case of return to assets, that unobserved variables
may affect this value.
It is notable that the results in model 3 discover no significant coefficient on the closely
held share variable. We hypothesized that firms with a larger proportion of ownership by
outsiders would tend to resist the adoption of the iinkai system with its requirement of injecting
outsiders into board decisions. However, the small value and insignificance of the coefficient
make it also possible that, since iinkai companies certainly overcame some opposition, residual
effects on firm value from continued resistance, if present, are not detected.
Performance, Endogeneity and Timing
We found that there si a difference in value between differing system firms, but have left
unresolved as to the direction of causality. For, its it that the committee system inceases a firm’s
value or do simply the better firms select the committee sysem? To better understand these
apparent differences in value, it is of interest to see; a) if firms that selected the committee
system differed from firms that did not before adoption of the new system, b) if adoption of the
committee system is temporally associated with the increase in value, and, c) if firms that adopt
25
the system react similarly to other exogenous events. This is important also for determining the
mechanism and causal direction of increased value since, if the value rise manifests soon after
adoption of the new system, it implies that the market value of the firm has changed (the
numerator of the q calculation), as opposed to the liquidation value or efficiency of the firm’s
assets (the denominator). We examine these questions with a univariate analysis of performance
data, and an event study to analyze the temporal nature and uniqueness of any value change.
We examine the trajectory of performance measures for companies that selected the
iinkai system in 2003 and compare them to kansayaku firms. We track the period FY 1999
through FY 2008, thus looking at data two years before the system could be formally adopted to
asses any differences before new system selection and to capture changes in value upon both
adoption. For the univariate analysis, we examine; return on assets, return on equity, total
investment return, to capture performance; foreign income as a percent of total, and research and
development expenditures as a percent of sales, to capture important discussion in the academic
and business literature on important strategies for Japanese firms. The results are shown in
figures 7 though 11.
Insert Figure 7 through 11 about here.
There are no material apparent differences between kansayaku and iinkai companies ex
ante, or ex post selection of the committee system by iinkai firms in terms of performance, with
the only exception being an advantage to auditor firms with respect to foreign income in 2003.
Further, while to-be committee firms consistently spend marginally more than auditor companies
on research and development, t-tests (available from the author) show that the difference is not
26
significant before or after selection of the new system. In short, the univariate analysis does not
support the endogeneity argument that firms that selected the committee system may have
already had advantages that would be expressed in greater performance or value.
To analyze the temporal and the possibility of unique manifestation of value, and to add
further robustness to the idea that firms selecting the committee system are not unique before the
selection, we study the data over a longer period, FY1999 through FY2007, using event study
methodology.
Our null hypothesis is that the event of selecting the committee system has no abnormal,
differential affect on the q value of firms that selected it. Said otherwise, we want to find if the
selection event affects q values differently than non-selecting firms but that prior events do not.
To test this hypothesis, let “Unanticipated TQ” be the difference between the measured q value
of a firm and its expected value attributable to unexpected variation in q,:
,
(1)
where is the observed Tobin q value for firm i at time j, given by:
, after Chung and Pruitt, (1994), (2)
and are the firm’s common and preferred stock issues respectively, is inventory,
is net debt, is total assets, and is a vector comprising the financial information,
decisions, and outcomes of the firm.
Calculating these values for the years FY1999 though FY 2008, using the Bank of Japan
discount rate as , and the Nikkei 225 index to estimate the market returns, average values
, of 38 committee system firms and 75 randomly selected auditor firms, (normalized to a market
beta of ), are shown in Fig. 9 with p=.05 limits. At , we align the date that committee
system firms implement the system. The result is in figure 12, below.
Insert Figure 12 about here
Before the announcement, no unanticipated variation in either system is evident, while in
the year that firms implement the new system, q values of committee system firm deviate from
predicted values at a significant 95% confidence level, causing us to reject the null hypothesis
that no differential effect would manifest itself. Subsequent non-deviation from predicted values
This data is
suggestive of an immediate manifestation of value upon announcement and is consistent with the
idea that shareholders’ changing evaluations of the firm caused the change in q values.11
Other exogenous events could cause the deviation of actual q values from predicted but
given the artificial alignment of announcement dates for this analysis, that is unlikely. We
aligned the announcement dates of all firms at t=0, regardless of whether it was 2003, 2004 or
any year. So, an alternative exogenous event would need to have a temporal effect pattern
identical to the adoption years of iinkai firms and only affect those particular firms. We view
this as a singularly unlikely circumstance.
5. CONCLUSIONS
The objective of the study was to detect if there is empirical evidence of differing
company value between differing corporate governance systems co-existing in the same
economy. We find that the iinkai corporate governance system produces higher corporate value
than the traditional kansayaku governance. The study also finds evidence that it is the
governance signal provided by adoption of the legally credible system, not the financial
performance variables, which account for this difference. For, without evidence of clear
performance advantages, and with the diminishing advantage as the institutional differences
lessened, the value seems to derive from the key difference between the systems, which is the
inclusion of outsiders that are independent of board and managerial control on committees.
11 The q-value can be increased through its denominator, if, for a given market value, less assets are used, or
through the numerator, by increasing the market value on the stock market. Since value increased in anticipation of
iinkai system adoption, sufficient time for changing the pr

Persaingan Rokok Mild: Berat, Tak Seringan Namanya 

Kehadiran A Mild tahun 1989 mengubah lanskap bisnis rokok nasional. Hampir semua produsen rokok ikut meramaikan persaingan di kategori rokok ringan ini. Perang komunikasi dan bajak-membajak tenaga kerja pun tak terelakkan.

Menjelang tutup tahun 1989, industri rokok di Indonesia dikagetkan oleh langkah berani PT HM Sampoerna Tbk. (HMS). Produsen rokok keretek Dji Sam Soe ini meluncurkan produk terbarunya yang tergolong unik. Kenapa unik? Karena produk itu tidak masuk dalam tiga kategori besar rokok yang ada saat itu, yaitu sigaret keretek tangan (SKT), sigaret keretek mesin (SKM) reguler, dan sigaret putih mesin (SPM). Lewat produk yang diberi merek A Mild, HMS membuat sebuah kategori baru: SKM mild.

HMS jelas serius menggelontorkan A Mild. Ia membutuhkan waktu hingga lebih dari dua tahun untuk proses persiapannya. Maklum, saat itu tidak ada benchmark produk yang dapat dijadikan acuan, termasuk di pasar internasional. Yang ada cuma berbagai survei dan riset yang melibatkan konsumen. Termasuk di antaranya, uji buta yang tidak hanya dilakukan sekali, tapi beberapa kali di beberapa kota.

Entah berapa banyak dana yang dikucurkan HMS dalam meracik A Mild. Namun, Putera Sampoerna yang kala itu menjabat Presiden Direktur HMS tetap ngotot untuk dapat menimang bayinya itu. “Sejak awal A Mild sudah dirancang untuk menjadi produk yang tidak ada duanya di pasar domestik,” ungkap Muhammad Warsianto, salah satu tokoh kunci di balik lahirnya A Mild.

Putera memang punya ambisi yang besar. Tidak hanya bagi perusahaannya, Putera juga menyimpan ambisi pribadi untuk menghasilkan produk baru yang sukses di pasar. Maklum, sebagai pemegang tongkat estafet di perusahaan keluarganya, Putera boleh dibilang gbelum menghasilkanh, kecuali melanjutkan produk-produk yang telah ada dari generasi sebelumnya.

Di generasi pertama, tahun 1913, Liem Seeng Tee sebagai pendiri HMS melahirkan produk yang hingga saat ini masih menjadi tulang punggung HSM, yakni Dji Sam Soe. Jejak Liem juga diikuti oleh putranya, Liem Swee Ling atau yang lebih dikenal dengan nama Aga Sampoerna dengan meluncurkan Sampoerna A (sekarang dikenal dengan merek Sampoerna Hijau – Red.) tahun 1968. Meski tak sesukses Dji Sam Soe, Sampoerna A mampu memberikan kontribusi yang cukup besar terhadap total pendapatan HMS.

Nah, Putera yang mulai aktif di perusahaan tahun 1970-an dan mulai memegang tampuk pimpinan tahun 1980-an, hingga saat itu belum menghasilkan produknya sendiri. Padahal dari sisi manajerial, kinerja Putera tergolong sangat bagus. Dialah yang membawa HMS masuk ke kategori SKM dengan investasi yang tergolong sangat besar, yaitu US$ 25 juta. Namun itu belum membuat Putera puas. Pasalnya, di era kepemimpinannya ia belum bisa melahirkan produk yang sukses di pasar.

Akhirnya, saat yang ditunggu-tunggu tibalah. Senin, 18 Desember 1989, HMS secara resmi meluncurkan A Mild ke pasaran. Senyum puas tampak jelas di wajah Putera. Bahkan, Putera pun tak ragu untuk membubuhkan nama dan tanda tangannya pada kemasan A Mild.

Kehadiran A Mild tak membuat kompetitor HMS gentar. Mereka bahkan seolah-olah mencibir pada rokok yang mengusung tema komunikasi Taste of the future itu. Parahnya, tidak hanya kompetitor yang mencibir. Konsumen pun memberi cibiran yang tak kalah pedas. Maklum, konsumen yang sudah terbiasa dengan jenis rokok yang sudah ada (SKT, SKM dan SPM – Red.), A Mild dianggap sebagai rokok yang tidak berasa apa pun.

“A Mild menghadapi tantangan berat karena konsumen memosisikannya sebagai rokok putih, sehingga kesannya kurang macho,” ungkap Surja S. Handoko, CEO Colman Handoko yang juga mantan Direktur Pemasaran HMS. Penjualan rokok low tar low nicotine (LTLN) dari HMS itu seret. Bahkan, hingga tiga tahun sejak peluncurannya (1992 – Red.), penjualan A Mild masih tertinggal jauh dibanding kategori lainnya. Dari total produksi rokok nasional yang sebesar 152,7 miliar batang (berdasarkan pembelian pita cukai), A Mild hanya memberi kontribusi 0,33%, atau 0,5 miliar batang. Bandingkan dengan SKM reguler yang produksinya mencapai 94,2 miliar batang, atau 61,69% total produksi rokok nasional.

Ini jelas bukan kondisi yang nyaman bagi HMS. Padahal, tidak sedikit sumber daya yang telah gdibuangh untuk mengerek rokok yang memang sama sekali baru bagi industri rokok ini – termasuk di industri rokok dunia — termasuk mengubah kemasan, dari 20 batang menjadi 16 batang. Kendati demikian, Putera tetap yakin dan percaya bahwa A Mild akan berjaya dan menganggap semua itu sebagai angin lalu.

Baru di tahun 1994, A Mild meninggalkan tema kampanye lamanya Taste of the future dan menggantinya dengan How low can you go? Dengan bahasa yang lebih membumi dan agak provokatif, HMS seolah-olah ingin membuat konsumen berpikir ulang tentang produk yang selama ini mereka kenal dan gunakan.

Cara ini terbukti efektif. Tahun 1994, penjualan A Mild melonjak tiga kali lipat — dari sebelumnya hanya 18 juta batang per bulan menjadi 54 juta batang per bulan. Dan seiring bergulirnya waktu, penjualan A Mild pun terus beranjak naik. Tahun 1996, A Mild sudah menembus penjualan sebanyak 9,8 miliar batang, atau 4,59% total penjualan rokok nasional. Tahun-tahun berikutnya, sepertinya menjadi masa keemasan A Mild atau rokok mild secara keseluruhan. Terakhir (2005), rokok SKM mildsudah mengambil porsi 16,97% total rokok nasional (lihat Tabel).

Tabel:

Pembelian Pita Cukai Berdasarkan Segmen 1992 – 2005 (dalam miliar batang)

1992

1996

2000

2004

2005

Sumber: wawancara dengan Warsianto.

Meledaknya penjualan A Mild membuat pemain lain kepincut untuk masuk ke kategori SKM mild. Tahun 1997, secara hampir bersamaan, dua musuh bebuyutan HMS: PT Djarum dan PT Bentoel Prima (BP), ikut mencari peruntungan di kategori ini. Djarum mengusung merek LA Lights, sedangkan BP mengibarkan Star Mild.

Masuknya BP ke kategori ini tak lain karena pada saat itu Warsianto, yang punya kontribusi cukup besar dalam proses kelahiran A Mild, sudah mendarat di BP. Seperti halnya di HMS, Warsianto memimpin lahirnya produk baru ini, bahkan dari mulai bentuk proposal. Dengan slogan: Losta masta,Star Mild menantang A Mild, di wilayah Jawa Barat, khususnya Bandung (sebelum dipasarkan secara nasional, awalnya Star Mild hanya dipasarkan di wilayah Ja-Bar – Red.). “Kami ingin menguji seluruh elemen pemasarannya lebih dahulu,” ungkap Ginawati Wibowo, Chief Marketing Office BP.

Jika kandungan tar dan nikotin A Mild adalah 14 mg dan 1,0 mg sehingga berani keluar dengan kampanye How low can you go?, Star Mild lebih rendah lagi, yaitu 12 mg dan 0,9 mg. Ini dijadikan senjata untuk menantang A Mild lewat kampanye bertema: Lower than low. Dan, karena pasar sudah relatif terbentuk, Star Mild dapat lebih cepat diterima pasar. Apalagi posisi harga Star Mild yang berada di bawah A Mild juga sangat cocok dengan kondisi saat itu, di mana krisis ekonomi mulai melanda negeri ini.

Tah heranlah, di tahun pertamanya saja, produksi Star Mild sudah mencapai 754 juta batang; kemudian meningkat menjadi 1,87 miliar batang di tahun 1998; dan 2,9 miliar batang tahun 1999. Tahun 2000, menurut data ritel AC Nielsen, Star Mild telah menguasai 3% pangsa pasar rokok secara keseluruhan, dan semakin dekat dengan A Mild yang menguasai 4,1% pasar rokok nasional.

Kehadiran Star Mild cukup membuat HMS gerah. Namun, HMS tidak kehabisan ide dalam menghadapi Star Mild. Sadar bahwa A Mild bukan lagi yang terendah dalam hal tar dan nikotin, HMS meluncurkan tema kampanye baru yang secara terbuka menyerang para pengekornya, lewat slogan citra (tag line): Others can only follow. “Slogan ini bertujuan untuk semakin mengokohkanleadership A Mild di pasar rokok mild Indonesia, karena semakin banyaknya merek rokok mild baru yang bermunculan,” ungkap Sendi Sugiharto, Kepala Kategori LTLN HMS.

Melihat perkembangan Star Mild yang cukup oke, kuartal ketiga tahun 1999 BP memberanikan diri melempar produk mild keduanya, Bentoel Mild. Bahkan, produk ini diposisikan untuk langsung berhadapan dengan A Mild dan LA Lights, setidaknya dari sisi harga.

Memasuki era tahun 2000-an, pertarungan di segmen SKM mild kian ramai. PT Gudang Garam Tbk. (GG) yang sebelumnya seperti tidak berminat untuk masuk ke kategori ini akhirnya tak kuasa menahan godaan potensi pasar kategori yang memang terus berkembang ini. Pada September 2002 GG resmi melepas Gudang Garam Surya Signature. gSudut pandang bahwa GG terlambat dalam memasuki segmen SKM mild saya kira perlu diluruskan. Apakah menjadi keharusan bagi produsen rokok memasuki segmen SKM mild? Kalau benar, apa dasar yang melandasinya?h ungkap sumber SWA di GG dengan nada kesal.

Diakuinya, segmen SKM mild memang berkembang. “Tapi itu kan baru beberapa tahun belakangan. Jangan lupa, dalam menggembala A Mild, HMS harus berada dalam kondisi merugi sekitar 7 tahun, terhitung sejak dilahirkan,” ungkapnya lebih lanjut.

Dia menambahkan, dalam meluncurkan produk baru, GG menerapkan asas kehati-hatian dan tidak berpikir pada kerangka emosional. Karenanya GG tidak mau latah untuk langsung terjun ke segmen SKM mild begitu tahu pemain lain memasuki segmen itu. Saling bertempur menggunakan strategi komunikasi sama, maka otomatis akan ada yang bakal jadi korban. “Sudah energi dan dana yang dikucurkan tidak sedikit, eh malah hancur lebur,” ujarnya. Karena itu, menurutnya masuknya GG ke SKM mild tahun 2002 merupakan waktu yang tepat, di mana pasar SKM mild sudah benar-benar berkembang. “Jangan sampai ketika GG masuk, ternyata besaran pasarnya hanya semu. Tidak sebesar sebagaimana citra yang ditampilkan oleh produsen sebelumnya. Kalau itu yang terjadi, kehadiran GG justru makin mendongkrak popularitas sang pendahulu,” ia menjelaskan.

Karena itulah, GG tidak sembarang memasuki segmen SKM mild. Jika pemain lain masuk dengan ukuran diameter slim, GG menawarkan hal baru, SKM mild diameter reguler. Pembeda ini, menjadikan GG tidak bertempur head to head dengan HMS, BP ataupun Djarum. “Jika semua menjadikan anak muda sebagai target pasar. Kami menyasar kalangan di atasnya, yakni eksekutif mapan. Kalau diandaikan dengan manusia, umurnya berada di atas 30 tahun,” ia menguraikan.

Harus diakui, kategori SKM mild memang punya daya magnet yang luar biasa. Tak terkecuali produsen rokok gkecilh sekelas Nojorono pun turut gberjudih di kategori ini. Setelah berhasil membujuk Warsianto untuk turun gunung (setelah lepas dari BP, Warsianto sempat pensiun – Red.), perusahaan asal Kudus yang menggunakan bendera PT Nojorono Tobacco Indonesia (NTI) ini pun ikut meramaikan pesta mild lewat merek Clas Mild.

Dibanding rokok mild lainnya, Clas Mild menyasar konsumen yang lebih bawah. Kondisi makroekonomi yang belum pulih benar akibat dihantam krisis tahun 1997, sepertinya menjadi pembenaran bagi NTI yang mengklaim memberikan perceived value yang lebih kepada konsumen, walaupun harganya relatif lebih murah. Clas Mild pun mendapat sambutan yang sangat baik dari konsumen.

Kehadiran Clas Mild ternyata cukup mengusik posisi Star Mild. Untuk menghambat Clas Mild, BP pun mengambil manuver berani dengan meluncurkan rokok mild ketiganya, X Mild yang dari posisi harga sengaja dirancang setara dengan Clas Mild.

Toh, menuver itu tidak banyak berarti. Clas Mild terus melambung. Puncaknya, pada pertengahan 2005, Clas Mild bertengger di posisi kedua kategori SKM mild dengan menggeser Star Mild yang sudah sekian lama duduk di posisi itu. Sebuah prestasi fenomenal yang belum mampu dilakukan oleh saudara sekotanya yang sebenarnya punya amunisi jauh lebih banyak, Djarum.

Upaya yang dilakukan Djarum untuk melambungkan LA Lights bukan tidak ada. Segala daya dan upaya sudah dilakukan. Tema komunikasinya pun berulang kali diubah. Demikian pula dengan uang gdibuangh yang jumlahnya tidak sedikit. Toh, LA Lights tak kunjung lepas landas, malah selalu dilangkahi oleh produk-produk lain yang muncul belakangan, termasuk Clas Mild yang dari sisi perusahaan tidak ada apa-apanya dibanding Djarum.

Tak hanya BP yang waswas melihat pergerakan Clas Mild. HMS yang begitu percaya diri pun melakukan manuver untuk membendung Clas Mild. Dengan menggunakan kendaraan PT Asia Tembakau, HMS mendarat di pasar SKM mild level bawah lewat merek U Mild. Namun demikian, HMS mengelak jika U Mild disebut sebagai fighting brand bagi A Mild. “Seperti hadirnya Sampoerna Hijau yang sama-sama SKT dengan Dji Sam Soe. Jadi tidak benar U Mild lahir sebagai fighting brandA Mild, tetapi demi meramaikan pangsa pasar rokok mild, khususnya yang menyasar kelas B-C. Alasan lain, demi semakin mengokohkan HMS sebagai pemimpin pasar di kategori rokok mild di Indonesia,” kilah Sendi.

Terakhir, di penghujung tahun 2005, Djarum menunjukkan rasa penasarannya untuk menaklukkan – setidaknya bicara banyak – di kategori ini dengan meluncurkan Djarum Super Mezzo. Nama besar Djarum Super tetap disertakan untuk membuat produk ini langsung take off mengikuti jejak produk andalan keluarga Hartono itu. Kehadiran Mezzo semakin memperpanjang deret merek rokok mild yang kabarnya telah menembus angka 100 merek – termasuk yang diproduksi oleh home industry.

Apa rahasia kesuksesan Clas Mild? “Kami tidak pernah main-main dalam hal kualitas. Rokok adalah sebuah produk rasa. Keberhasilan produk rokok dapat diterima pasar sangat tergantung pada kualitas rasa yang ditawarkannya,” tutur John Dharma J.K., Direktur Pemasaran NTI. Selain itu, NTI juga sangat memperhatian citra produknya. Karena itu, kendati dari sisi harga posisi Clas Mild berada di bawah produk lainnya, tema komunikasi yang diusungnya tidak kalah. “Memang, upaya-upaya promosi yang kami lakukan hampir mirip dengan apa yang dilakukan kompetitor. Tetapi, kami tetap punya ciri khas yang membedakan dari rokok mild sejenis,” tukas John.

John menjabarkan, sama seperti pemain lainnya, Clas Mild juga banyak bermain dengan event.Namun, yang membedakan adalah pemilihan lokasi penyelenggaraan event itu. “Kami sering kali membuat event di tempat yang tidak biasa, misalnya di atap gedung pencakar langit,” ujarnya. Dengan menggelar event-event seperti itu, citra Clas Mild akan terangkat jauh lebih tinggi ketimbang aslinya. Bahkan, NTI pun tak ragu untuk membawa Clas Mild ke tempat nongkrong paling beken bagi anak muda Jakarta: Hard Rock Café (HRC), dengan mensponsori acara andalan HRC, I Like Monday.

Demikian juga dengan TV Commercial yang ditampilkan Clas Mild sama sekali tidak mencirikan bahwa produk ini ditujukan untuk segmen menengah-bawah. “Rokok mild punya target audiens yang sama dari demografi, tapi masing-masing merek mencoba mencari psikografi yang agak berbeda,” kata Andoko Darta, General Manager Adwork! EuroRSCG. Maka tak heranlah, masing-masing merek rokok mild ini keluar dengan tema iklan yang berbeda-beda, sesuai dengan target konsumen yang dibidik dan juga citra yang diharapkan tercipta dari komunikasi yang dilakukannya.

Dia mengatakan, sebagai pelopor di kategori ini, A Mild bisa menunjukkan kepemimpinannya. A Mild selalu tampil dengan iklan-iklan yang out of the box, dengan tema-tema yang sama sekali berbeda darimainstream produk rokok.

Iklan memang menjadi arena perang tersendiri bagi kategori rokok mild. Setiap pemain dengan gagah berani menggelontorkan uang miliaran rupiah untuk mengomunikasikan produknya di berbagai media, utamanya televisi. Tahun 2005, menurut catatan Nielsen Media Research ratusan miliar rupiah dihabiskan para pemain di kategori rokok mild ini.

Sebagai pemimpin pasar, A Mild juga memimpin dalam besaran dana yang dikeluarkan untuk promosiabove the line. Tak kurang dari Rp 144,16 miliar dihabiskan HMS untuk mempromosikan mereknya di berbagai media. Dengan dana sebesar itu, harus diakui, A Mild memang lebih bernyali dibanding pemain lainnya dalam hal beriklan. Pasalnya, jumlah dana yang dikeluarkan pemain lain tidak mencapai separuh dari yang dikeluarkan A Mild. Clas Mild hanya mengucurkan Rp 61,63 miliar; Star Mild Rp 58, 89 miliar; LA Lights Rp 57,07 miliar; U Mild Rp 50,06 miliar; dan X Mild Rp 41,84 miliar.

Dominasi A Mild dalam belanja iklan nantinya mungkin akan disaingi oleh Mezzo, produk terbaru Djarum. Tahun lalu Mezzo memang hanya menggelontorkan Rp 20,26 miliar. Namun, itu hanya dalam waktu dua bulan (November dan Desember – Red.). Dan jika bercermin pada keberanian Djarum dalam beriklan, rasanya bukan tidak mungkin Djarum bakal mengguyurkan dana yang sangat besar untuk mendukung Mezzo. Gejalanya sudah terlihat di awal tahun ini. Pada Januari 2006, Mezzo tercatat sebagai merek yang belanja iklannya terbesar di kategori mild, yaitu Rp 6,97 miliar.

“Walau bukan satu-satunya faktor, ujung-ujungnya iklan harus bisa meningkatkan penjualan,” ujar Andoko. Karenanya, Andoko menyarankan agar para pemain untuk juga melakukan pascastudi untuk mengukur efektivitas iklan yang sudah dilakukannya. Misalnya ketika iklan sudah berjalan tiga sampai 6 bulan, dilakukan penelitian untuk mengetahui apakah konsumen memahami pesan yang disampaikan dalam iklan itu. “Sayangnya jarang yang melakukan post study ini,” kata Andoko.

Selain iklan, event — khususnya event musik menjadi arena perang produk mild — hampir setiap merek mempunyai atau setidaknya menjadi sponsor pada ajang musik tertentu, baik event outdoormaupun tayangan TV. Aktivitas yang lagi-lagi dipelopori oleh A Mild ini boleh dibilang sangat mengena dengan target pasar rokok mild, yaitu anak muda. Tak heranlah, dalam menggelar aktivitas ini pun terjadi persaingan yang sangat kental.

“Di samping banyak event lainnya, Soundrenaline merupakan andalan kami. Ini semacam kegiatan musik woodstock-nya Indonesia,” kata Sendi bangga. Terakhir, A Mild menjadi sponsor utama penyelenggaraan konser tunggal penyanyi legendaris Lioner Richie.

Clas Mild sebagai pendatang baru pun tak kalah agresif dalam menyelenggarakan pagelaran musik. Di samping acara-acara rutin, seperti I Like Monday di HRC yang sudah masuk tahun ketiga, dan berbagai acara reguler lainnya, Clas Mild juga berani muncul pada acara berskala besar. Terakhir Clas Mild menjadi sponsor utama konser 3 Diva yang menampilkan tiga penyanyi wanita terdepan di negeri ini, Krisdayanti, Ruth Sahanaya dan Titi D.J.

Menurut Ruby Chandra Lionardi, Manajer Merek X Mild, kesamaan cara promosi yang melulu melalui jalur musik, merupakan ground untuk memudahkan masuk ke pasar. Alasan lainnya, musik dianggap merupakan cara komunikasi yang universal. “Lebih click dengan mereka (kaum muda – Red.),” ujar Ruby. X Mild sendiri menggeber promosinya lewat X Mild Noize Trailer Tour. Mengendarai truk trailer, X Mild berkeliling ke seluruh pelosok Nusantara. Di atas trailer itulah digelar pertunjukan musik rock hingga 100 kali di tahun lalu dengan menggandeng rocker-rocker Indonesia. Ada pula penayangan X Mild Noizze Ngejam di Global TV yang sudah berjalan mulai tahun lalu. “Yang tampil artis-artis rock, karena artis rock lebih ekspresif,” sambungnya.

Ginawati menambahkan, kendati sama-sama menggunakan musik, tetap saja target yang ingin dicapai berbeda-beda. “Sama-sama musik, tapi jiwanya disesuaikan dengan segmennya,” ia menuturkan. Walau begitu, lanjutnya, musik hanya menjadi salah satu kendaraan, masih ada kendaraan lain seperti olah raga dan berbagai kegiatan lainnya. Contoh, yang dilakukan Star Mild dengan Crush Bone Basket Ball.

Pertarungan di kategori rokok mild juga tak terlepas dari praktik bajak-membajak tenaga kerja. Yang paling menarik adalah gpertukaranh tokoh kunci antara BP dan HMS. BP menarik Surja S. Handoko dari HMS, sedangkan Sendi Sugiharto dari BP menyeberang ke HMS. Uniknya, sebelum mendarat di BP, Surja lebih dulu melakukan pendekatan untuk menarik Sendi dari BP. Namun kenyataannya, Surja lebih dulu hengkang ke BP sebelum Sendi mendarat di HMS.

Di samping dua nama tersebut, Warsianto sebagai arsitek rokok mild juga jadi perebutan. Kendati tidak lewat proses bajak- membajak, Warsianto hingga saat ini telah merasakan bekerja di tiga perusahaan rokok yang menjadikan mild sebagai andalannya, yaitu HSM, BP dan NTI yang bertahan hingga saat ini dengan jabatan Penasihat Senior.

Agresivitas pemain-pemain di kategori rokok mild sangat bisa dimengerti. Pasalnya, dalam beberapa tahun terakhir, kategori ini merupakan yang paling tinggi pertumbuhannya. Bahkan, bagi HMS, sejak tahun 2004, A Mild menjadi kontributor terbesar dari segi volume dengan mengalahkan Dji Sam Soe yang sudah puluhan tahun menjadi kontributor terbesar, yaitu lebih dari 30%. Namun, dari segi profit, A Mild memang masih kalah dibanding Dji Sam Soe. Pasalnya, cukai SKT memang jauh lebih kecil ketimbang SKM, yaitu 22% berbanding 40%.

Gemerlap persaingan rokok mild bukan tak menelan korban. Memang dari merek-merek yang dikeluarkan produsen besar hampir semuanya masih tetap beredar. Akan tetapi, kinerja penjualannya tidaklah sebaik yang diharapkan. Ambil contoh Bentoel Mild. Kendati masih tetap bertahan, merek ini nyaris tak terdengar. Bahkan, BP sendiri sepertinya sudah mengabaikan merek yang menyandang merek korporatnya sendiri. “Kami perusahaan publik yang harus memilih untuk memprioritaskan merek yang kami miliki. Dengan berbagai pertimbangan akhirnya kami memutuskan untuk mendukung total Star Mild dan X Mild. Pada akhirnya kami harus memilih di tempat yang memberikan returntertinggi,” papar Ginawati diplomatis.

Hal yang sama sepertinya juga dialami GG. Saat ini Surya Signature juga tidak mendapat dukungan yang berarti. Bahkan menurut data Nielsen Media Research, di tahun 2006 (hingga Januari – Red.), GG tidak mengeluarkan uang sepeser pun untuk mengomunikasikan merek barunya itu. Namun demikian, sumber SWA di GG mengelak jika Surya Signature dikatakan gagal. Kendati enggan menyebutkan angka, ia mengatakan bahwa penjualan Surya Signature terus meningkat, khususnya untuk varian yang berwarna merah. “Untuk Surya Signature Biru memang agak seret. Mungkin pasar sudah memersepsikan bahwa ukuran mild adalah slim,” tukasnya.

Wismilak Slim setali tiga uang. Alokasi bujet untuk produk ini terus menurun dari tahun ke tahun. Dan seperti Surya Signature, hingga Januari lalu, produk ini sama sekali tidak melakukan kegiatan above the line. Ini bisa dilihat dari belanja iklannya yang nol pada periode itu. Wismilak belakangan malah semakin rajin mempromosikan produk cerutunya, meski pasarnya sangat niche.

Seleksi alami memang selalu berjalan. Nantinya, hanya produk yang benar-benar punya karakter yang akan bertahan hidup. Hingga hari ini, A Mild masih kokoh duduk di singgasananya dengan penguasaan pasar sekitar 50%. Layak dicermati, akankah Star Mild mampu merebut kembali predikatrunner up yang dulu akrab dengannya dari tangan Clas Mild. Dan, ada baiknya kita tunggu kelanjutan dari perang sengit di kategori rokok ringan ini.

Artikel ini dimuat di Majalah SWA edisi 08/2006, 20 April 2006

Tata Kelola Perusahaan Sistem dan Nilai Perusahaan Di Jepang

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ABSTRAK

Penelitian ini menggunakan data panel untuk mengeksplorasi efisiensi ekonomi sistem tata kelola perusahaan dengan menguji efek cross-sectional perbedaan antara perusahaan- perusahaan Jepang memilih salah satu dari dua sistem hukum. Makalah ini menyajikan bukti bahwa adopsi oleh perusahaan-perusahaan Jepang yang shareholderoriented lebih transparan, sistem tata kelola perusahaan menciptakan nilai perusahaan yang lebih besar dibandingkan dengan sistem tradisional auditor hukum. Makalah ini mengambil keuntungan dari kesempatan unik diberikan oleh Jepang dalam pengenalan sistem dual tata kelola perusahaan pada tahun 2003, ketika perusahaan sedang menawarkan pilihan untuk mengadopsi sistem baru direksi luar, yang merupakan pemegang saham yang berorientasi komite sistem. Analisis data menunjukkan peningkatan yang signifikan dalam penilaian perusahaan, yang diukur dengan Tobin’s q, bagi perusahaan yang mengadopsi sistem komite, meskipun perbandingan keuangan data menunjukkan sedikit perbedaan. Temuan ini disebabkan sinyal pengiriman, sebagai perusahaan yang mengadopsi sistem sinyal pilihan menuju transparansi melalui pemantauan oleh pihak luar, menunjukkan pengurangan biaya agensi asimetris.

PENDAHULUAN
Gejolak ekonomi baru-baru telah memfokuskan kembali pemeriksaan sistem tata kelola perusahaan. Dilihat oleh beberapa pengamat sebagai standar tata kelola perusahaan, sistem AS shareholderoriented pemerintahan oleh komite dewan dan direktur independen telah datang di bawah pemeriksaan ulang. Sebelum September 2008, beberapa aliran pemikiran akademis digambarkan de facto konvergensi pada model pemerintahan AS karena, itu beralasan, efisiensi ekonomi akan memotivasi pemerintah mencari sistem yang efisien untuk mengadopsi struktur hukum untuk meniru norma-norma AS. Di Jepang, perusahaan perusahaan seperti Sony dan Hitachi berusaha untuk menciptakan Anglo (tingkat tata kelola perusahaan Amerika). Dan para pemegang saham memberikan pengaruh untuk merevisi praktek tata kelola perusahaan. Namun, pertanyaan apakah hasil yang berbeda sistem tata kelola perusahaan di perusahaan terbukti diferensial nilai sehingga seharusnya keuntungan efisiensi yang dapat mendorong konvergensi dapat dipelajari tidak sepenuhnya ditangani. Sekarang, dengan US tata kelola perusahaan praktek yang dipanggil ke pertanyaan untuk kegagalan insentif dan inefficacies pemantauan, pemeriksaan peningkatan efisiensi diklaim dari pemerintahan Anglo-Amerika perusahaan sistem tampaknya menguntungkan. Meskipun penelitian akademis berlimpah di perbandingan sistem tata kelola perusahaan, tetapi banyak perhatian diberikan kepada masalah konvergensi, masalah tetap tidak terpecahkan.

Jacoby (2002) berpendapat bahwa ekonomi yang dinamis dan meningkatkan nilai aset di pasar keuangan selama tahun 1990 berbeda dengan Jepang dan Eropa, yang dimana mendorong perusahaan untuk mencari listing di AS dan akibatnya menyebabkan perusahaan-perusahaan untuk menerapkan praktek perusahaan AS. Memang, mereka mengusulkan konvergensi yang menuju Anglo-Amerika pemegang saham model berorientasi telah terjadi, untuk apa Nottage dan Wolff (2005) disebut "pemegang saham model berorientasi tata kelola perusahaan, yang melibatkan penggunaan mekanisme yang berbasis pasar kontrol untuk memandu aktivitas perusahaan dan hukum perusahaan. Ada beberapa bukti bahwa setidaknya konvergensi pendapat tentang prinsip-prinsip tata kelola perusahaan, seperti sebagai kebutuhan sistem informasi yang transparan.

Corporate governance memainkan peran penting dalam memantau keuangan yang efisien, yang mempengaruhi penilaian perusahaan yang diukur dengan Tobin q.
Hubungan antara fitur dan kinerja tata kelola perusahaan yang baik adalah dengan cara menemukan hubungan antara perusahaan diukur dengan nilai sebagai Tobin's-q.
Dia menemukan bahwa perusahaan-perusahaan Jepang dengan skor yang lebih tinggi memang memiliki performa yang lebih baik yang diukur dengan tingkat pengembalian aset dan Tobin q. Kertas yang menemukan bahwa peningkatan ekonomi
tekanan dari pasar modal Jepang mendorong manajer perusahaan untuk upaya perusahaan
pemerintahan reformasi dan menemukan reformasi lebih cenderung semakin tinggi persentase investor asing dan persentase yang lebih rendah jangka panjang, pemegang saham stabil.
Resolusi perdebatan antara konvergensi dan jalan-ketergantungan tidak sempurna
diselesaikan karena sulit untuk mengadili dengan hanya bekerja teoritis dan empiris
pemeriksaan sistem tunggal dalam domain ekonomi mau tidak mau dikacaukan oleh lokal
kondisi mereka berubah dari waktu ke waktu. Dengan demikian, studi empiris yang cukup untuk menetapkan konvergensi, di luar pemahaman analitik perubahan sistem, tetap sulit dipahami.
Sony, mengadopsi system1 baru. Studi ini mengusulkan bahwa dengan memeriksa perbedaan dalam nilai antara perusahaan-perusahaan dalam perekonomian nasional yang sama pada saat yang sama, data yang berguna yang mungkin dihasilkan dapat berkontribusi untuk pertanyaan ini. Kesempatan tersebut untuk belajar, dengan memiliki dua struktur hukum beroperasi
dalam satu perekonomian pada saat yang sama, yang jarang tersedia. Sejak ditetapkannya undang-undang perusahaan yang baru membangun sistem paralel, beberapa studi empiris telah membandingkan dua sistem diberi sedikit waktu yang telah berlalu sejak perusahaan mulai mengadopsi sistem baru. Menggunakan acara-studi metode untuk memeriksa harga saham.
Baru-baru ini, (Buchanan dan Deakin 2007) melakukan survei terhadap
CEO, direktur dan manajer senior, akademisi dan pejabat pemerintah untuk menentukan bagaimana penilaian berbeda dari eksperimen tata kelola perusahaan Jepang adalah. Mereka menemukan paradoks bahwa perubahan dalam praktek tata kelola perusahaan tidak tergantung pada apakah perusahaan memilih sistem iinkai atau tidak. Selanjutnya, mereka menyimpulkan bahwa adopsi struktur barat, seperti yang diharapkan dalam sistem iinkai, tidak mengakibatkan terjadinya praktek aktual yang menyimpang secara luas dari lebih tradisional model. Resolusi ini paradoks adalah sulit tanpa bukti empiris dari nilai, perbandingan intra-ekonomi dari perubahan perusahaan komparatif.
Makalah ini, mencari untuk mengatasi kebutuhan empiris, meneliti perubahan komparatif dalam
nilai perusahaan pada perusahaan Jepang adopsi dari sistem komite perusahaan
pemerintahan terhadap nilai perusahaan yang tidak mengubah, dan menemukan lebih tinggi nilai di antara mengadopsi perusahaan. Ini mungkin bahwa dengan memilih sistem baru.

KESIMPULAN
Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mendeteksi jika ada bukti empiris yang berbeda
nilai perusahaan yang berbeda antara sistem tata kelola perusahaan pada sistem perekonomian. Kami menemukan bahwa sistem pemerintahan iinkai perusahaan menghasilkan nilai yang lebih tinggi perusahaan dari pemerintahan kansayaku tradisional. Penelitian ini juga menemukan bukti bahwa itu adalah pemerintahan sinyal yang diberikan oleh adopsi dari sistem hukum yang kredibel, bukan keuangan variabel kinerja, yang menjelaskan perbedaan ini. Sebab, tanpa bukti yang jelas keunggulan kinerja, dan dengan keuntungan berkurang sebagai perbedaan institusional berkurang, nilai tampaknya berasal dari perbedaan utama antara sistem, yang merupakan masuknya orang luar yang independen dari papan dan kontrol manajerial pada komite.
Hasil ini memberikan bukti empiris dari efisiensi ekonomi, dalam hal nilai investor, dari sistem iinkai dengan implikasi bagi perdebatan konvergensi tata kelola perusahaan. Selain itu, karena sistem baru adalah model pemegang saham yang berorientasi pemerintahan, sebagai lawan model berorientasi pemangku kepentingan incumbent, dukungan ditawarkan untuk penelitian lintas-negara yang telah menghasilkan temuan serupa. Deteksi nilai meningkat dari pemerintahan, pemegang saham yang berorientasi barat gaya sistem di Jepang menyebabkan dua masalah yang kita ingin memeriksa. Pertama, tampaknya penting untuk menentukan apa yang mungkin menyebabkan nilai meningkat. Kedua, mengapa begitu sedikit perusahaan yang mengadopsi sistem, mengingat bahwa nilai yang lebih besar mengikuti adopsi dari sistem iinkai. Efisiensi harus memotivasi
perusahaan, tetapi sedikit lebih dari 100 adopsi dari beberapa perusahaan publik di 3000 Jepang selama lima tahun tampaknya hampir tidak sebuah fenomena yang luar biasa.
Ada empat alasan mengapa perbedaan dalam kinerja atau nilai mungkin ada di antara perusahaan yang menggunakan sistem yang berbeda pemerintahan Jepang. Yang pertama
Alasan potensial adalah sinyal dari praktek tata kelola perusahaan yang baik dianggap meningkatkan nilai pemegang saham jika sistem baru ini dianggap sebagai lebih unggul karena keyakinan bahwa sistem AS lebih unggul. Kedua, endogenitas dapat menjelaskan perbedaan nilai jika perusahaan mengadopsi iinkai sistem karena itu hanya lebih efisien dan tepat untuk perusahaan fokus. Yang ketiga alasan potensial untuk mengadopsi sistem iinkai adalah untuk memungkinkan suatu kelompok untuk mengekspresikan kelompok kontrol lebih dari perusahaan-perusahaan anak perusahaan karena definisi hukum luar izin perusahaan induk untuk memasok perusahaan induk karyawan sebagai "orang luar."
Namun, penelitian ini dapat menambah wawasan ke endogenitas dan argumen sinyal dan kami sarankan bahwa memang sinyal yang memotivasi adopsi. Pertama, penelitian kami tidak mendukung gagasan bahwa arah kausalitas adalah bahwa perusahaan lebih memilih sistem komite. Kami univariat dan acara studi tampaknya untuk mengkonfirmasi bahwa mendapatkan nilai manfaat baik melakukan yang lebih rendah dan lebih baik perusahaan melakukan memanifestasikan nilai pada pengumuman independen terhadap kinerja. Di sisi lain muncul konsisten dengan gagasan bahwa manajemen sinyal meningkatkan perilaku perusahaan dengan mengadopsi sistem pemerintahan (dianggap) unggul.
Perbedaan nilai antara sistem di tahun berikutnya - sebagai perbedaan fungsional menurun menunjukkan bahwa mungkin itu adalah fitur dari sistem iinkai, sebagai lawan kongruensi dengan Anglo-Amerika standar, yang menarik bagi pemegang saham.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1748691