RENTS FROM CORPORATE DIVERSIFICATION?THE
INFLUENCE OF OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE
PARTHIBAN DAVID American University JONATHAN P.O’BRIEN Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
TORU YOSHIKAWA McMaster University ANDREW DELIOS
National University of Singapore
Prior work on the performance consequences of corporate diversification has treated all powerful owners as seeking the same benefits from diversification (i.e,higher profit rather than growth)and therefore limiting value appropriation by other stakeholders such as employees and managers.In contrast,we distinguish between domestic “re-lational”owners and foreign “transactional”owners in Japanese corporations.Al-though transactional owners do indeed prioritize profitability when diversifying,relational owners primarily seek growth rather than profits from diversification.Furthermore,relational owners also allow managers and employees to appropriate more of the rents arising from diversification than do transactional owners.
A central question in corporate strategy research concerns the nature of the relationship between performance and diversification (for reviews,see Hitt,Tihanyi,Miller,and Connelly [2006];Hoskis-son and Hitt [1990];Palich,Cardinal,and Miller [2000];and Ramanujam and Varadarajan [19]).Both product and geographic diversification can facilitate the leveraging of a firm’s competencies and enable it to exploit opportunities in multiple markets.However,the bureaucratic and agency costs associated with diversification can impair firm performance (Collis &Montgomery,1997;Lu &Beamish,2004).An implicit assumption in the extensive research on the relationship between di-versification and firm performance is that all firms should diversify with the same objective:to maxi-mize the profit (returns)to shareholders.Yet this assumption stands in opposition to much existing work in strategy that emphasizes the importance of stakeholders (Freeman,1984)as well as differences
among shareholders (David,Kochhar,&Levitas,1998;Hoskisson,Hitt,Johnson,&Grossman,2002;Kochhar &David,1995).
The rent appropriation perspective (Coff,1999)provides a useful lens for understanding how a firm’s stakeholders can influence both the type and distribution of the firm’s returns from the imple-mentation of a particular corporate strategy.Most other stakeholders are priority claimants relative to shareholders.They have contracts with the firm,albeit sometimes implicit,that guarantee them pay-ments equal to or greater than their “opportunity costs,”and they can resort to court adjudication if those contracts are violated.Shareholders,as resid-ual claimants,forego the benefit of contractually guaranteed returns and face greater risk.Managers should therefore run a firm,within the confines of the law,so as to maximize the riskier returns of shareholders,while limiting stakeholder claims to opportunity costs (Friedman,1970).However,some stakeholders may be able to appropriate the “economic rents”that accrue from diversification by obtaining payments in excess of their opportu-nity costs.Hence,a firm’s diversification strategy may yield economic rents but may,nevertheless,fail to yield performance returns for shareholders if other stakeholders appropriate those economic
We thank Dave Ketchen,our action editor;the three anonymous reviewers;Bob Hoskisson,Hicheon Kim,Mark Sharfman,and Bill Wan;and workshop participants at American University,Syracuse University,the Univer-sity of Oklahoma,and the Mitsubishi UFJ Foundation In-ternational Conference for their helpful comments.
Academy of Management Journal 2010,Vol.53,No.3,636–654.
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Although existing research on the relationships between ownership,diversification,growth,and profits is insightful,it is also incomplete in at least one important respect.Owners differ not just in their power but also in their performance goals (Hoskisson et al.,2002).Although much of the re-search on ownership heterogeneity concerns U.S. corporations(David et al.,1998;Hoskisson et al., 2002;Kochhar&David,1995),Japan presents an interesting contrast among owners.The1990s marked a significant shift in the ownership struc-ture of Japanese corporations that Ahmadjian and Robbins(2005)termed a“clash of capitalisms.”In this clash,two important groups came into conflict: the traditional“relational”owners(typically do-mestic corporations and financial institutions that rarely sell their shares and have close relational ties with firms)and a new set of“transactional”owners (mostly foreign institutional investors from the United States and the United Kingdom with only arms’-length relationships with the Japanese firms in which they hold shares).As transactional own-ers lack the multiple business relationships with a firm that typify relational owners,they can only appropriate rents from the firm in the form of fi-nancial profits(i.e.,dividends and share price ap-preciation).Relational owners,however,appropri-ate rents both from financial profits and from firm growth.Growth yields additional return to rela-tional owners because of their multiple business relationships.Thus,dissenting from the assump-tion in prior work that all powerful owners appro-priate rents solely through higher profits,we pro-pose that some powerful owners may appropriate rents through growth and may influence a firm’s managers accordingly.
We further extend prior work by considering how the power and identity of a firm’s owners affect the returns of other stakeholders.In addition to benefiting the firm’s owners,diversification may also benefit other stakeholders—for example,by enhancing the career advancement opportunities and job security of employees(Wang&Barney, 2006)and executives(Rose&Shepard,1997).Al-though stakeholder considerations have universal importance(Wang&Barney,2006),they are espe-cially salient in Japan,where companies have an institutionalized commitment to stakeholders other than shareholders(Aoki,1988;Kester,1991).Coff (1999)argued that shareholders can appropriate more economic rents when they have bargaining power to restrict the flow of rents to other stake-holders.A simple application of rent appropriation might suggest that all powerful owners will seek to appropriate rents for themselves by limiting those appropriated by other stakeholders.To the con-trary,we propose that the performance goals of powerful owners shape the extent of value appro-priation by other stakeholder groups.Prior work has noted that relational owners,unlike transac-tional owners,are supportive of implicit contracts with stakeholder groups such as lifetime employ-ees(Ahmadjian&Robbins,2005;Ahmadjian& Robinson,2001;Yoshikawa,Phan,&David,2005) and core suppliers(Kester,1991),thus facilitating greater value capture by these stakeholders. Diversification can thus serve as a means to mul-tiple ends.These ends can be either consistent or conflicting.In this study,we develop theory to explain why different types of owners may accrue different types of benefits from diversification,and hence may encourage managers to pursue diversi-fication for divergent reasons.Furthermore,these divergent performance goals can have weighty con-sequences for a firm’s other stakeholders.
Our empirical results indicate that relational owners emphasize growth,but transactional own-ers emphasize profit.The relationship between cor-porate diversification and profit is stronger with transactional than with relational ownership.Con-versely,the relationship between corporate diver-sification and growth is stronger with relational than with transactional ownership.Furthermore, we find that relational ownership facilitates greater value capture by stakeholders from diversification than does transactional ownership.Our results in-dicate that diversification provides greater benefits for other stakeholders in a firm,such as its employ-
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David,O’Brien,Yoshikawa,and Deliosees and executives,when relational ownership is high than when transactional ownership is high.
THEORY AND HYPOTHESES Ownership Structure and Identity:Relational and Transactional Owners in Japan
Domestic financial institutions such as banks and insurance companies and domestic nonfinan-cial corporations have traditionally held a large proportion of the shares of Japanese corporations (see Sheard[1994]for a review).Financial institu-tions provide loans and other financial services to the firms,such as brokerage,and nonfinancial cor-porations are typically the suppliers or customers of the firms.Even in the absence of direct business relationships,norms of reciprocity bind owners to provide mutual support when firms experience fi-nancial difficulties.Traditionally,shares have been held reciprocally and,although publicly tradable, have rarely been sold.
The economic downturn of the1990s marked a dramatic shift in the ownership structure of Japa-nese corporations.The economic downturn made it difficult for financially troubled long-term owners to maintain their historic levels of ownership in affiliated firms(Dvorak,Guth,Singer,&Zaun, 2001).Foreign investors often stepped in to pur-chase these shares(Yoshikawa&Gedajlovic,2002), resulting in a net shift of ownership toward foreign investors.Foreign owners gained increasing prom-inence and power as their average stakes increased from4.2percent in1990to13.2percent in2000, while domestic ownership by financial institutions and nonfinancial corporations dropped from70.4 to59.3percent(Ahmadjian&Robbins,2005). These foreign owners were predominantly portfo-lio investors from the United States and the United Kingdom,which accounted for32and39percent, respectively,of all foreign shareholdings in Japan in1997(Bank of Japan,2004).
In Japan,foreign owners differ from domestic owners in several critical ways.First,domestic owners typically have large block holdings,but foreign shareholdings are typically dispersed among a very large number of investors.Second, major domestic owners are often suppliers of goods and services to the firms they own shares in,but foreign owners usually do not have any business relationships with the firms in which they have ownership positions.Third,domestic owners tend to hold their shares for the long term,but foreign owners tend to trade their shares frequently.Thus, if a firm encounters problems,foreign owners are able to sell their shares and disassociate themselves from the firm.Domestic owners,rather than selling their shares,tend to provide mutual support to help firms weather their financial difficulties(Sheard, 1994).Accordingly,we label domestic owners“re-lational”because they are long-term owners with complex performance goals.Domestic owners do not just seek financial gains from their sharehold-ings in firms—they also have other business and reciprocal relationships with those firms that yield benefits(Aguilera&Jackson,2003;Porter,1992; Rousseau,1995).Furthermore,we describe foreign owners as“transactional”(Rousseau,1995)be-cause they obtain returns solely from their share-holdings and lack other relationships with the firms in which they have ownership positions. Although both transactional and relational own-ers can influence a firm’s managers,they differ in the nature and source of the influence exercised. Relational owners often obtain representation on a firm’s board of directors(Kaplan&Minton,1994)to gain a subjective understanding of strategic issues. Most large Japanese firms borrow from multiple banks but maintain a closer relationship with a “main bank,”typically the largest lender and owner,which takes a lead role in monitoring the firms on behalf of other relational owners(Aoki& Patrick,1994).When firms face financial difficul-ties,relational owners,led by“main banks,”act in concert to help firms work through their problems by providing capital and exchanging goods and services on advantageous terms(Hoshi&Kashyap, 2001).Empirical evidence has affirmed the profit redistribution contention,wherein relational own-ers“tax”profitable firms to benefit poorly perform-ing firms that need financial assistance(Gedajlovic &Shapiro,2002;Lincoln,Gerlach,&Ahmadjian, 1996).Board membership and delegated monitor-ing by a main bank grants relational owners con-siderable influence in this profit redistribution pro-cess.Thus,although relational owners depend on a firm for business(Kochhar&David,1995),this dependency is mutual,and through the governance safeguards described above,relational owners gain considerable influence.
Although transactional owners lack direct influ-ence derived from board representation,the threat of selling shares provides them with considerable influence.As Ahmadjian and Robbins noted,“For-eigners were known for pulling out of a stock very quickly when they were unhappy”(2005:457).For-eign owners traded extensively,accounting for nearly30percent of all stock transactions in1996, although they held just10percent of aggregate stock ownership(Ahmadjian&Robbins,2005). Further,foreign owners often exhibit herd behavior (Kamesaka,Nofsinger,&Kawakita,2002)that cre-
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Academy of Management Journalates a snowball effect that can significantly impair stock prices.Sell-offs can signal that a firm is poorly managed,thus increasing the threat of de-fault and raising the cost of capital(Bhojraj&Sen-gupta,2003;Brennan&Tamarowski,2000).As fi-nancially distressed relational owners sometimes need to cash out their investments,Japanese man-agers have been pressured to attract and retain for-eign owners to avoid the negative consequences of sell-offs.Japanese managers have therefore been responsive to the expectations of foreign owners about reducing costs and maximizing profits. Prior research has shown that foreign ownership fosters value-enhancing strategic investments (David,Yoshikawa,Chari,&Rasheed,2006)and employee layoffs and divestitures(Ahmadjian& Robbins,2005;Ahmadjian&Robinson,2001), particularly in poorly performing firms(Yo-shikawa et al.,2005).
Although they differ in how they exercise influ-ence,both transactional and relational owners have the power to shape firm strategy.Below,we explain how the differences in the performance goals of transactional and relational owners can influence a firm’s diversification strategy and the performance outcomes that accrue from that strategy. Corporate Strategy,Profit,and Growth:A Rent Appropriation Perspective
Corporate strategy involves the pursuit of eco-nomic rents by leveraging competencies to sell goods and services in multiple markets(Collis& Montgomery,1997).The performance conse-quences of diversification into multiple product and geographic markets has been a central question in strategy research(for reviews,see Hitt et al. [2006];Hoskisson and Hitt[1990];Palich et al. [2000];and Ramanujam and Varadarajan[19]). Although diversification can yield numerous ben-efits to a firm,such as scale and scope economies, increased bureaucratic and agency costs can impair performance(Lu&Beamish,2004).Extensive em-pirical research has reported mixed results on the actual performance implications of diversification (Hoskisson&Hitt,1990).It is important to note that when assessing performance,this research has em-phasized the profits that flow to shareholders,as measured by accounting-based returns or stock market performance.However,the achievement of competitive advantage in a corporate strategy such as diversification does not necessarily yield higher performance returns for a firm’s shareholders,be-cause the rents created are often captured by the various stakeholders of the firm who contributed to value creation(Coff,1999).The governance litera-ture has addressed rent appropriation concerns as conflicts of interest between two major stakeholder groups,owners and managers,over the goals of profit versus growth(Amihud&Kamin,1979; Brush et al.,2000;Marris,19).1
Considerable work has treated growth and profit as alternate measures of the performance benefits ac-cruing to shareholders from diversification(Geringer, Tallman,&Olsen,2000;Rumelt,1974;Varadarajan, 1986).The neoclassical theory of the firm,however, shows that profit maximization is the desirable objec-tive for shareholders and that growth is not always consistent with profit maximization(Baumol,1959). Profit maximization requires firms to grow their sales to the optimal level,defined as the point at which marginal revenues from an added unit of sales equal the marginal costs.Although sales growth enhances profits when sales are below the optimal level,incre-mental sales growth erodes profits when sales are above the optimal level.
Even though growth above the optimal level can reduce shareholder profit,firms may often still pur-sue growth because it benefits a specific group of stakeholders.Sales growth can provide managers with private benefits such as higher pay,power,and prestige.Therefore,managers often favor higher lev-els of sales growth than is optimal for profit-oriented shareholders(Amihud&Kamin,1979;Brush et al., 2000;Marris,19).Maximizing growth while ignor-ing profits could ultimately lead to financial distress, culminating in bankruptcy and concomitant adverse consequences for managers.Hence,Baumol(1959) explained that managers maximize growth subject to maintaining an acceptable level of profits in order to preserve the private benefits from high growth while avoiding the deleterious consequences from exces-sive growth.Thus,agency theorists have concluded that managers emphasize growth over profit(Amihud &Kamin,1979;Marris,19),but owners prefer profit over growth.
The power of a firm’s owners helps determine whether profit or growth will manifest as a firm’s strategic intent.Managers shape corporate strategy, subject to the governance oversight provided by owners.Thus,the performance consequences of diversification should reflect the balance of power 1We follow prior research and label the rent appropri-ated by shareholders as profit.Neoclassical economic logic treats stakeholders as fixed factors of production and therefore leads to the conclusion that the residual profit remaining after paying various stakeholders is equivalent to economic profit.As noted,in the rent ap-propriation view,both shareholders and stakeholders can appropriate economic profit.Thus,shareholder profit is a subset of total economic profit.
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David,O’Brien,Yoshikawa,and Deliosbetween owners and managers(Marris,19).Prior research has shown that owner-controlled firms emphasize profits,and manager-controlled firms emphasize growth(Amihud&Kamin,1979).Fur-thermore,in a study of Japanese business groups, Kim et al.(2004)reported that diversified firms emphasized growth over profits when governance oversight was weak but emphasized profits over growth when governance oversight was strong. Although insightful,prior research is incomplete in that its implicit assumption is that all powerful owners will favor diversification as a means to in-crease profits rather than as a vehicle to generate sales growth.This view stands at odds with recent work that has shown that different groups of owners may have divergent performance goals(Hoskisson et al.,2002;Thomsen&Pedersen,2000).Thus,although both relational and transactional owners can use their influence over managers to affect a firm’s strategy—such as its level of diversification—the outcomes they are seeking from diversification may differ.Below, we explain how these differences can influence the types of performance consequences obtained from a diversification strategy.
Diversification and Performance Implications for Relational and Transactional Owners
Relational owners are also stakeholders,embed-ded in a network of relationships with the firms in which they hold ownership positions.Relational owners obtain returns both from the financial per-formance of the firms and from their multiple busi-ness relationships with them.Relational owners are therefore not solely concerned with the returns arising from the stock price appreciation and divi-dends that accrue from residual profits.Although as owners they cannot be indifferent to profit,their business relationships temper the importance of dividend payments and stock price appreciation. With reciprocal shareholdings,relational owners are unlikely to press firms for higher dividends because they must,in turn,pay out a commensu-rate amount of dividends to their own relational owners.They are also less concerned with variations in share price because shares are held as stable,long-term holdings that are rarely sold,except in the event of serious financial distress.Furthermore,at least un-til the late1990s,Japanese corporations reported share values at purchase prices in accordance with accounting regulations,thus reducing any negative consequences to relational owners from write-downs to asset values(Ahmadjian&Robbins,2005). Although growth beyond the profit-maximizing level impairs profits,such growth can benefit rela-tional owners in two ways.First,the opportunities for ancillary business relationships are enhanced as a firm’s sales grow.Banks can underwrite more busi-ness loans and services,and suppliers of other goods and services can obtain more contracts as the firm diversifies and grows its sales.Second,the larger the firm,the lower the risk to survival from a hostile takeover or bankruptcy(Bercovitz&Mitchell,2007). As Kester noted,considering the complex blend of claims on the firms in which they invest,rela-tional owners“may well accept subnormal rates of return on one component of its blend such as eq-uity,provided it is able to compensate with su-pranormal returns on another part,such as the trad-ing relationship”(1991:59).Capturing value through business relationships rather than through dividends has the added advantage of reducing the amount of tax captured by government.Transac-tional owners,in contrast,lack business or other relationships with the firms in which they have ownership positions.Therefore,they obtain no benefits from sales growth per se and only benefit from the returns arising from arms’-length share-holdings:namely,the stock price appreciation and dividends that arise from residual profits.Hence, the relationship between diversification and firm performance should reflect the propensity for dif-ferent types of owners to attempt to accrue rents from diversification in different ways.As transac-tional owners appropriate value solely from finan-cial profits,they discourage excessive growth and induce managers to pursue diversification only when it enhances profits.In contrast,the multiple business relationships of relational owners allow them to appropriate rents from firm growth,and hence they will be much more tolerant of diversi-fication that enhances growth beyond the profit-maximizing level.Thus,the extent to which diver-sification yields growth or profit will depend upon a firm’s ownership structure,with relational own-ers emphasizing growth and transactional owners emphasizing profits.
Hypothesis1.The relationship between diver-sification and profit is more positive with transactional ownership than with relational ownership.
Hypothesis2.The relationship between diver-sification and growth is more positive with re-lational ownership than with transactional ownership.
Diversification and Performance Implications for Employee Stakeholders
The value created from diversification does not just flow to a firm’s relational and transactional
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Academy of Management Journalowners,as other stakeholders,such as the employ-ees and executives of the firm,can also appropriate it(Amihud&Lev,1981;Wang&Barney,2006). Diversification into new markets can lower the risk of job loss for employees because the returns from multiple markets are imperfectly correlated(Wang &Barney,2006),which makes diversified firms less susceptible to bankruptcy or hostile takeover(Ami-hud&Lev,1981).Furthermore,diversification pro-vides career advancement prospects for existing employees by often necessitating growth in em-ployment(Simon,1947),and it may even spur higher employee salaries(Marris,19;Peoples, 19;Schoar,2002).As for the executives,diversi-fication is associated with higher compensation (Rose&Shepard,1997;Sanders&Carpenter,1998) and diminished employment risk,as indicated by the lower performance sensitivity of pay(Ander-son,Bates,Bizjak,&Lemmon,2000)and reduced turnover in more highly diversified firms(Berry, Bizjak,Lemmon,&Naveen,2006).Executives may also enjoy the high levels of power and prestige that are associated with managing a large firm(Jensen, 1986).However,these benefits may constitute a form of employee rent appropriation that reduces the rents available for owners.Prior research shows that powerful owners can limit the extent of stakeholder rent appropriation by curtailing ex-ecutive(David et al.,1998;Hambrick&Finkel-stein,1995)and employee(Cronqvist,Heyman, Nilsson,Svaleryd,&Vlachos,2009)compensation and by increasing the likelihood that managers will be fired for poor performance(Allen,1981;McEach-ern,1975).Although this research implies that all powerful owners limit the rents available to other stakeholders,we contend that owners differ in shap-ing the appropriation of the rents that accrue from diversification.We discuss two reasons why transac-tional ownership inhibits employee rent capture to a greater extent than does relational ownership. First,the divergent performance goals of rela-tional and transactional owners make relational owners more amenable to rent appropriation by stakeholders.As transactional owners prioritize profits,rent appropriation by employee stakehold-ers will reduce transactional owners’profits by a corresponding amount,and hence it poses a zero-sum outcome.As relational owners emphasize growth rather than profit,rent appropriation does not necessarily pose a zero-sum outcome because growth can provide increasing levels of benefits to both employee stakeholders and relational owners. Growth allows relational owners to appropriate value from enhanced business prospects while also allowing employee stakeholders to appropriate value in the form of higher salaries,enhanced ca-reer progress opportunities resulting form employ-ment growth,and attenuated employment risk. Thus,though transactional owners are likely to use their power to limit employee rent appropriation, relational owners are less likely to do so. Second,not only are the interests of employee stakeholders and relational owners generally better aligned than are the interests of employee stake-holders and transactional owners,but also,rela-tional owners have incentives to exhibit forbear-ance with respect to the rent appropriation activities of stakeholders,especially in comparison to transactional owners.To preserve long-term business relationships,relational owners are more likely to desist from appropriating the quasi-rents of stakeholders such as employees,executives,and suppliers(Lincoln et al.,1996).Although such ac-tions can hurt their own performance over the short term(Gedajlovic&Shapiro,2002),these losses can be recouped from gains obtained through the secu-rity of future business relationships.Furthermore, the norm of reciprocity,whereby relational owners mutually safeguard each other from possible hos-tile takeovers and bankruptcy,directs firms to pre-serve their commitments to stakeholders because these firms in turn will provide assistance if rela-tional owners find themselves in difficulties (Sheard,1994).Transactional owners,by contrast, neither have business relationships nor any mutual safeguards,and thus they have incentive to limit the benefits accrued by stakeholders to maximize their own profit.Essentially,relational owners have economic incentives that can be met by a firm strategy that is convergent with the interests of employee stakeholders.
We contend that both managerial salaries and the size of a firm’s workforce should reflect the greater tendency for transactional owners to limit rent ap-propriation by employee stakeholders.A long-standing argument in prior research in agency the-ory is that growth,which diversification generally produces,may allow managers to capture value through higher salaries(Jensen,1986;Marris, 19).Furthermore,as diversification generally in-creases the complexity of managerial tasks,it may provide managers an opportunity to justify higher salaries(Henderson&Fredrickson,1996;Rose& Shepard,1997).Existing research has already shown that managers can generally obtain more lucrative compensation packages from owners with business relationships(David et al.,1998).Al-though increases in diversification may sometimes warrant greater pay,relational owners will likely be much more generous than transactional owners be-cause they not only favor growth over profits,but
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David,O’Brien,Yoshikawa,and Delios
may also anticipate reciprocal favors from the re-warded managers.
In terms of the size of a workforce,we have argued that both rank-and-file employees and exec-utives may benefit from growth in the workforce. (Ahmadjian&Robbins,2005;Ahmadjian&Robin-son,2001)have shown that foreign transactional ownership is associated with a greater prevalence of layoffs in Japanese firms,and relational domestic owners,who viewed lifetime employment as legit-imate and appropriate,helped curtail this effect. Conversely,relational owners should also be gen-erally more supportive than transactional owners of employment growth,and diversification may help serve as a prime vehicle for driving such growth.As Kester(1991:15)noted,growth oppor-tunities in their core businesses were sparse for Japanese corporations in the1990s,and hence di-versification into new markets served as a prime vehicle for fueling employment growth and“fulfill-ing the expectations of some key stakeholders(la-bor in particular)”(1991:15).Similarly,relational owners may support diversification as a vehicle for avoiding layoffs by finding new roles for redundant employees.Thus,although transactional owners will only favor diversification that is undertaken to increase profits,growth-oriented relational owners, bolstered by norms of reciprocity,will be more inclined to support diversification that is under-taken as a means of firm growth that can support both higher managerial compensation and a greater number of employees.
Hypothesis3.The relationship between diver-sification and growth in employment is more positive with relational ownership than with transactional ownership.
Hypothesis4.The relationship between diver-sification and managerial compensation is more positive with relational ownership than with transactional ownership.
METHODS
Sample
We utilized a sample of Japanese firms,as this population provided the requisite variance in owner type—relational versus transactional—that we required to test our hypotheses(Ahmadjian& Robbins,2005).Further,Japanese firms have en-gaged actively in international and product diver-sification activities since the late1980s,providing a population with considerable variance on the di-versification dimension(Lu&Beamish,2004).
To construct our sample,we combined data from four sources.Most of our data for variables came from the Pacific-Basin Capital Markets(PACAP) database for Japan.We supplemented these data with information from the annual publication Jap-anese Overseas Investments,which was used to calculate our measure of international diversifica-tion.We used the Japan Company Handbook to calculate our measure of product diversification and the NEEDS database to construct our measures of employment growth and director salaries.
Our initial sample encompassed all16,400firm-year observations listed in both PACAP and Japa-nese Overseas Investments for1990through2004. As small firms may be effectively locked out of foreign securities markets,we deleted the576firm-year observations for firms that had a book value of equity less than3billion yen(Anderson&Makhija, 1999).We also excluded firms in the highly regu-lated financial,public utilities,and communica-tions sectors(225firm-year observations).Further-more,we also lagged the independent variables one year so that growth and performance over a given year were modeled as a function of the ownership structure at the end of the previous year.We be-lieve this constitutes the most appropriate lag structure,as more distant predictors should be less influential,and contemporaneous measures tend to produce more endogeneity problems.As our theory was developed for foreign portfolio owners,we ex-cluded the31firms in which foreign owners had substantial(large block)ownership interests that could be regarded as“relational.”This exclusion resulted in a sample of14,294observations,encom-passing1,180unique firms.However,the actual number of observations varied from model to model because the market information necessary for constructing our measure of profitability was sometimes missing;product diversification data were only available for the years1992–2001,and we could not find unambiguous matches in NEEDS for some of the firms listed in PACAP. Dependent Variables
We modeled two performance outcomes:growth and profit.The appropriate measure of firm growth depends upon the theoretical rationale for a study (Weinzimmer,Nystrom,&Freeman,1998).Our the-ory suggests that relational owners may benefit as a focal firm’s revenues increase.Hence,we assessed firm growth with the natural logarithm of year-over-year change in sales,specified as ln(sales t/sales t–1) (Brush et al.,2000).Similarly,using data drawn from NEEDS,we measured employment growth as the nat-ural log of year-over-year change in number of total employees:ln(employees t/employees t–1).To measure shareholder profit,we use Tobin’s Q, which is the ratio of a firm’s market value to the replacement cost of its assets(Morck,Shleifer,& Vishny,1988).The market value of a firm was computed as the sum of the book value of its debt and the market value of its equity,and the replace-ment cost of assets was computed as the book value of total assets.The market value of a firm represents the stock market’s capitalization of the expected present value of future cash flows discounted by an appropriate risk rate(Lindenberg&Ross,1981). Montgomery and Wernerfelt(1988)noted two ad-vantages of Tobin’s Q as a measure of shareholder profit.First,it is less susceptible to accounting-based distortions because it relies on stock market values,unlike accounting-biased measures such as return on assets(ROA).Second,it is forward look-ing in incorporating not just current profitability, but also future profitability as gauged by the stock market valuation of future cash flows.Thus,To-bin’s Q is a commonly used measure of firm prof-itability from a shareholder perspective(Linden-berg&Ross,1981).Although we have noted some of the limitations associated with accounting-based measures,we found that tests using ROA yielded results that were substantively similar to the results we report using the market-based Tobin’s Q. Finally,the variable salaries was a proxy for managerial compensation using data from NEEDS on total director compensation,which includes base salary plus bonuses.Unlike firms in the United States,Japanese companies are not required to disclose the pay of individual executives and only report the total pay of all directors,which includes salaries,bonuses,fees,and other perks and benefits.Japanese companies have few and often no outside directors,and although some di-rectors are likely affiliated to relational owners through past employment,they tend to be full-time employees of the firm on whose board they sit (Gerlach,1992).Consequently,a firm’s president and its top executives comprise most or all of its board of directors.Therefore,director pay,al-though not identical to executive pay,is a reason-able proxy that has been used as an indicator of executive pay in a number of studies(e.g.,Joh, 1999;Kaplan,1994;Murase,1998;Xu,1997). Independent Variables
Our hypotheses relate to the outcomes of diver-sification.We expected product and international diversification to have similar effects,as both entail entering new markets and both can generate sales growth and impact profitability.Moreover,both may similarly benefit employee stakeholders.Intu-itively,it may seem that internationalization merely substitutes foreign factors of production for domestic factors of production,potentially harm-ing traditional domestic employee stakeholders. However,prior research has provided a more com-prehensive view of international growth and has distinguished between the effects of substitution (i.e.,international diversification may reduce de-mand for domestic labor as overseas labor is hired) and the effects of enhanced output(i.e.,interna-tional diversification may raise demand for domes-tic labor because of increased international sales) (Chen&Ku,2003).In practice,international di-versification combines the substitution and the output effects.Research on Japanese corporations has shown that internationalization has generally tended to raise levels of domestic employment (Higuchi&Matsuura,2003).Furthermore,interna-tional diversification is also likely to benefit sup-pliers because international expansion by a firm frequently helps its suppliers to expand overseas as well(Banerji&Sambharya,1996;Martin,Swami-nathan,&Mitchell,1998).Thus,we believe that in general,the effects of international diversification should be similar to those of product diversifica-tion.Accordingly,we tested all of our hypotheses using both measures of product diversification and international diversification.
Following previous studies(Delios&Beamish, 1999;Lu&Beamish,2004),we derived two count measures of international diversification from Jap-anese Overseas Investments.The first measure was a count of the total number of overseas subsidiaries that each firm had in a given year.The second measure was a count of the total number of coun-tries in which a firm had overseas subsidiaries in a given year.We then combined these two measures and created an index of international diversifica-tion following the method used by Lu and Beamish (2004).Specifically,to convert the count measures into ratios,we divided each count measure by the maximum value for that variable.We then calcu-lated the average of these two ratios.The final measure,international diversification,has values ranging from0to1,with larger values representing higher diversification.For product diversification, we gathered1992–2001data on each firm’s prod-uct-segment sales,classified using three-digit SIC codes from the Japan Company Handbook(Delios &Beamish,1999)and calculated the variable as an entropy measure(Palepu,1985).
Transactional and relational ownership were as-sessed as the total percentages of all outstanding shares held by the respective types of owner.Larger values represented more power for an owner type and consequently more influence over the out-comes of strategic decisions.Specifically,transac-tional ownership was the total number of shares owned by foreigners divided by total shares out-standing,and relational ownership was the total number of shares owned by Japanese financial in-stitutions and other Japanese business corporations divided by total shares outstanding(Yoshikawa et al.,2005).
We also controlled for a number of other factors that might impact either firm growth or profit. Fixed assets was net fixed assets divided by total assets.Cash was measured as total cash and mar-ketable securities divided by total assets,and size, as the natural log of total firm sales.Free cash flow was the ratio of operating income less taxes,inter-est,and dividends paid divided by total assets. Leverage was total debt(short-term loans,long-term loans,and debentures)divided by total assets. Volatility assessed the instability of the firm’s earn-ings as the standard deviation of return on assets over the previous five years.In addition to these annual,time-varying,firm-level control variables, we included a number of industry-level control variables.For each industry,industry growth,in-dustry profit,and industry volatility were measured as the median value of the corresponding firm-level variable for all firms for which that industry was their primary industry.
Analysis
Our analysis presented two critical method-ological considerations.First,unobserved heter-ogeneity was a concern because our data contain multiple observations per firm.Therefore,we in-corporated fixed firm effects into all our models. We deemed fixed-effects models to be superior to random-effects models because a Hausman test in-dicated significant(pϽ.01),systematic difference in the coefficients yielded by the two types of mod-els.A second methodological consideration was the potential endogeneity of both ownership struc-ture and diversification.If our models failed to include every variable that significantly influenced both of these variables and the dependent variable, then the endogenous variables would be correlated with the error term,and traditional ordinary least squares(OLS)methods would suffer from omitted variables bias.This problem could be reduced by using predetermined(i.e.,lagged)independent variables,and firm fixed effects could further alle-viate endogeneity issues by controlling for any omitted variables that were invariant over time. However,time-varying omitted variables might still be a problem.
A solution to the endogeneity problem was to use two-stage least squares(2SLS)instrumental vari-ables regression methods.We could eliminate en-dogeneity bias by first regressing the endogenous variables on all the independent variables and then using the predicted values of the endogenous vari-ables in lieu of the observed values in the second stage,when the dependent variable was regressed on the predictor variables.Although this approach improves estimates of the effect of an endogenous variable on a dependent variable,it is also less efficient because it tends to produce much larger standard errors than OLS(see Wooldridge,2003: Ch.15).Hence,even if a variable is theoretically endogenous,it is preferable to not model it as en-dogenous unless tests indicate that it induces a statistical problem.Accordingly,we tested to see if any of our critical variables created an endogeneity problem.
To test for endogeneity problems,we needed to find valid instruments for each of the potentially endogenous variables.These instruments should be strongly related to the endogenous variables but weakly related to the dependent variable.Although the suitability of various instruments varied some-what with different dependent variables,industry-level measures for the potentially endogenous variables were generally valid instruments.Fur-thermore,variables for cash and fixed assets also sometimes served as valid instruments.We also created instruments for the interactions between ownership structure and diversification by inter-acting their respective instruments.All the2SLS models that we tested employed more instruments than endogenous variables to enable tests of overi-dentifying restrictions to verify both that the instru-mental variables were appropriately excluded from the second-stage regression and uncorrelated with the error term in the second-stage regression,which is a critical assumption of2SLS regressions.David-son-MacKinnon tests of exogeneity indicated that the only endogeneity problem was created by inter-national diversification in the profit models(Fϭ7.7,pϽ.01).Hence,we employed2SLS regres-sions with firm fixed effects for these models and standard fixed-effects regressions for all other mod-els.Finally,all of our hypotheses compare the effects of relational and transactional ownership.Thus,to test our hypotheses we used Wald tests to determine whether the pertinent regression coefficients were significantly different from one another.
All four of our dependent variables contained some extreme observations.Rather than drop out-liers or nonlinearly transform the data,we achieved comparable model fit by winsorizing growth, profit,employment growth,and salaries at the99th and1st percentiles of their respective distributions.After winsorizing,analysis of Cook’s D s suggested that no outlier had a statistically significant impact on the models.Finally,all models included year fixed effects(not reported)in addition to the firm fixed effects.Table1provides descriptive statistics for all variables.
RESULTS
Table2reports results of our empirical analysis of international diversification.Models1and2 present the fixed-effects regressions that were used to test the effects of ownership structure and inter-national diversification on sales growth.Model1 reveals that both relational ownership and transac-tional ownership are positively related to sales growth,and the two coefficients are not signifi-cantly different.International diversification has no significant main effect on sales growth.Model2 adds the hypothesized interactions.Their addition significantly improves model fit.Although the in-teraction between international diversification and transactional ownership is not significant,the in-teraction between international diversification and relational ownership is positive and significant.In keeping with Hypothesis1,the difference between the two interactions is significant(Fϭ6.85,pϽ.01),suggesting that sales growth is the perfor-mance objective of international diversification when relational ownership is high,but not when transactional ownership is high.
Models3and4present the2SLS-IV regressions that we used to test the effects of ownership struc-ture and international diversification on profit.The Sargan overidentification test statistic was insignif-
icant for both models,confirming that the instru-
mental variables were indeed exogenous and cor-
rectly excluded from the profit equation.Also,the
Wald chi-square was highly significant for both
models.We do not report multiple squared corre-
lation coefficient statistics(R2s)because this statis-
tic has no natural interpretation in2SLS regres-
sions.Although2SLS methods yield better
estimates of the ceteris paribus effect of an endog-
enous variable on a dependent variable,overall
model goodness of fit is not a consideration and
may very well decline when a variable is treated as
endogenous(see Wooldridge,2003:Ch.15).Ac-
cordingly,it is also inappropriate to test whether
including an endogenous variable(or interaction)
improves overall model fit.
Model3reveals that relational ownership,trans-
actional ownership,and international diversifica-
tion are all positively related to profit.Interest-
ingly,the coefficient for transactional ownership is
significantly greater than that for relational owner-
ship(2ϭ144.23,pϽ.01),and the magnitude of the difference suggests that on a share-per-share
basis,transactional owners are over three times
more effective than relational owners in pressuring
managers to improve profit.Model4adds in the
hypothesized interactions.Although the interac-
tions between international diversification and
both transactional and relational ownership are
both positive and significant,the interaction with
transactional ownership is significantly more pos-
itive(2ϭ15.18,pϽ.01).Supporting Hypothesis 2,this suggests that transactional owners are more
TABLE1
Descriptive Statistics a
Variable Mean s.d.123456710111213141516
1.GrowthϪ0.010.11
2.Profit0.930.52.18
3.Employment growthϪ0.030.08.25.18
4.Salaries3Eϩ51Eϩ6Ϫ.02.01.00
5.Industry growthϪ0.010.05.50.07.02.01
6.Industry profit0.80.2.10.41.13Ϫ.06.16
7.Industry volatility0.010.00.03.16Ϫ.04Ϫ.12.04.34
8.Size11. 1.28Ϫ.01.09.02.57.00Ϫ.06Ϫ.22
9.Free cash flow0.000.03.00.22.22Ϫ.05Ϫ.04Ϫ.16Ϫ.12.06
10.Leverage0.320.23Ϫ.15Ϫ.36Ϫ.25.13Ϫ.07Ϫ.24Ϫ.20.11Ϫ.27
11.Cash0.110.09.04.21.15.00.03.15.11Ϫ.09.11Ϫ.32
12.Fixed assets0.250.13.02.01Ϫ.05Ϫ.16.04.11Ϫ.06Ϫ.14.00.10Ϫ.28
13.Volatility0.020.01.02.16Ϫ.08Ϫ.12.02.13.42Ϫ.25Ϫ.15Ϫ.09.11Ϫ.02
14.Transactional
ownership
0.070.07.11.38.09.15.06.01.08.36.24Ϫ.37.14Ϫ.12.03
15.Relational ownership0.0.12.02.04.09.07Ϫ.01.16Ϫ.07.24Ϫ.06.00Ϫ.08.11Ϫ.13Ϫ.16
16.International
diversification
0.070.08Ϫ.02.10Ϫ.02.82.00Ϫ.02Ϫ.02.62Ϫ.04.08Ϫ.05Ϫ.21Ϫ.11.29.06
17.Product diversification 1.030.40Ϫ.03.11Ϫ.06.42Ϫ.04.02Ϫ.01.53Ϫ.06.10Ϫ.14Ϫ.14Ϫ.14.22.08.
a Correlations with an absolute value greater than.01are significant at the.05level.concerned with diversifying for the sake of im-proved profit than are relational owners.
Model5tests the effects of international diversi-fication and ownership structure on employment growth.As with sales growth,both relational own-ership and transactional ownership are positively related to employment growth(although the two coefficients are not significantly different),and in-ternational diversification has no significant main effect.Addition of the hypothesized interactions in model6significantly improves model fit.Although the interaction between international diversifica-tion and transactional ownership is not significant, the interaction between international diversifica-tion and relational ownership is positive and sig-nificant.In keeping with Hypothesis3,the differ-ence between the two interactions is significant (Fϭ6.97,pϽ.01),suggesting that relational own-ers,unlike transactional owners,pressure manag-ers to increase employment in response to a move abroad.Overall,we infer from these results that transactional owners use international diversifica-tion to enhance profits,and relational owners use diversification to both improve competitiveness and to enhance sales revenues,thus not only pre-serving domestic employment but perhaps even expanding the workforces of firms.
Models7and8test the effects of international diversification and ownership structure on mana-gerial compensation.In the base model,model7, diversification has a marginally significant,posi-tive effect on director salaries.Relational owner-ship has a significant,positive effect,and transac-tional ownership has no significant effect.Addition of the hypothesized interactions in model8signif-icantly improves model fit.Although both interac-tions are significant,the interaction between inter-national diversification and relational ownership is significantly more positive than the interaction be-tween international diversification and transac-tional ownership(Fϭ68.39,pϽ.01),thus sup-porting Hypothesis4.
Table3presents models comparable to those in Table2,but using the smaller sample for which we had data on product diversification.As this sample is more restricted,we present this analysis primar-ily as a robustness check to illustrate that similar results are obtained when product diversification is substituted for international diversification.Even though we expected similar results,it is important
Relational Owners,Transactional Owners,and International Diversification:Regression Analysis Results a
Variables
Sales Growth Profit Employment Growth Salaries Model1:
Fixed
Effects
Model2:
Fixed
Effects
Model3:
2SLS-IV
Model4:
2SLS-IV
Model5:
Fixed
Effects
Model6:
Fixed
Effects
Model7:
Fixed
Effects
Model8:
Fixed
Effects
Industrial growth 1.00** 1.00**0.14†0.16†0.12**0.12**0.54†0.53*
Industrial profit0.010.010.**0.88**0.010.01Ϫ0.05Ϫ0.03
Industrial volatility0.210.25Ϫ2.59*Ϫ2.92*Ϫ0.68†Ϫ0.67† 5.95† 6.09†SizeϪ0.11**Ϫ0.11**Ϫ0.09**Ϫ0.08**Ϫ0.01*Ϫ0.01* 1.01**0.99**
Free cash flowϪ0.21**Ϫ0.20** 2.15** 2.11**0.56**0.56**0.290.45
LeverageϪ0.07**Ϫ0.07**Ϫ0.21**Ϫ0.16**Ϫ0.07**Ϫ0.07**Ϫ0.57**Ϫ0.55**
Cash0.00Ϫ0.010.31**0.35**0.020.020.58**0.55**
Fixed assets0.010.01Ϫ0.06**Ϫ0.06**Ϫ0.15Ϫ0.22
Volatility0.17†0.17† 2.46** 2.42**Ϫ0.39**Ϫ0.38**Ϫ5.73**Ϫ5.47**
Diversification0.030.02 3.91** 3.09**Ϫ0.10Ϫ0.08 1.34* 1.49*
Transactional ownership0.11**0.12** 1.23** 1.04**0.05*0.06*0.130.46
Relational ownership0.08**0.09**0.36**0.48**0.03*0.04*0.40**0.80**
Diversificationϫtransactional
ownership
0.3120.21**0.028.01** Diversificationϫrelational
ownership
0.83**8.71*0.56*25.34**
n14,29414,29414,02614,02610,62810,62810,75610,756
F211.6**196.9**65.**60.81**65.62**67.0** R2.29.29.14.14.14.15 F:Improvement in R211.0** 5.5**80.5** Wald2172,168**169,390**
a All models also included year fixed effects(not reported).
†pϽ.10
*pϽ.05
**pϽ.01
Two-tailed tests.to note that,unlike the case of international diver-sification,the main effect for product diversifica-tion on profit is negative and marginally significant (see model3).In terms of support for our hypoth-eses,the only substantive difference found with product diversification pertains to model8.Al-though the coefficient for the interaction between diversification and relational ownership is larger than the coefficient for the interaction with trans-actional ownership,the difference between the two is only marginally significant(Fϭ2.87,pϽ.1). Thus,overall,Hypotheses1,2,and3receive strong support with both product and international diver-sification,and Hypothesis4receives strong sup-port with international diversification,but only marginal support with product diversification. Finally,to illustrate the economic significance of our results,we used model4of Table2to plot the relationship between international diversification and predicted profit for various ownership struc-tures.As Figure1illustrates,international diversi-fication generally leads to improved profit.Further, relational ownership strengthens this relationship, but transactional ownership strengthens it to a much greater extent.As an example,the slope for the relationship between international diversifica-tion and profit is69percent greater for firms with high levels of relational ownership(i.e.,the95th percentile of that variable)than it is for the median firm.However,the slope for the relationship be-tween international diversification and profit is al-most three times steeper for firms with high levels of transactional ownership(i.e.,the95th percentile of that variable)than it is for the median firm.
DISCUSSION
We investigated how differences between trans-actional owners and relational owners shaped the performance consequences of diversification both for shareholders and for stakeholders.Going con-trary to prior work in which it is assumed that all powerful owners appropriate rents solely through profit,we propose that some owners also appropri-ate rents through growth,and they may influence managers accordingly.Performance goals are shaped by the type of relationship they have with the firms they invest in:transactional owners have arms’-length ties and therefore appropriate rents strictly through higher profits,but relational own-
Relational Owners,Transactional Owners,and Product Diversification:Fixed-Effects Regression Analysis Results a
Variables
Sales Growth Profit Employment Growth Salaries Model1Model2Model3Model4Model5Model6Model7Model8
Industrial growth0.97**0.97**0.20†0.21*0.10**0.10**0.52†0.56†
Industrial profit0.03*0.03* 1.07** 1.07**0.020.02Ϫ0.04Ϫ0.02
Industrial volatilityϪ0.65Ϫ0.62Ϫ5.23**Ϫ5.26**Ϫ0.81*Ϫ0.80* 5.20 5.19
SizeϪ0.19**Ϫ0.19**0.010.01Ϫ0.01Ϫ0.01† 1.14** 1.14**
Free cash flowϪ0.29**Ϫ0.29** 1.82** 1.83**0.53**0.53**Ϫ0.010.07
LeverageϪ0.07**Ϫ0.07**Ϫ0.21**Ϫ0.20**Ϫ0.07**Ϫ0.07**Ϫ0.56**Ϫ0.53**
CashϪ0.04Ϫ0.04†0.28**0.30**0.010.010.79**0.78**
Fixed assetsϪ0.08**Ϫ0.09**Ϫ0.05Ϫ0.03Ϫ0.09**Ϫ0.09**Ϫ0.05Ϫ0.09
VolatilityϪ0.04Ϫ0.05 2.49** 2.54**Ϫ0.37**Ϫ0.37**Ϫ6.93**Ϫ6.72**
Diversification0.010.00Ϫ0.06†Ϫ0.05†Ϫ0.01Ϫ0.010.27**0.3** Transactional ownership0.19**0.21** 1.** 1.58**0.05†0.066†0.180.24
Relational ownership0.11**0.11**0.39**0.37**0.020.0320.59**0.71**
Diversificationϫtransactional
ownership
Ϫ0.19**0.98**Ϫ0.12* 1.66**
Diversificationϫrelational
ownership
0.14**0.020.12** 2.68**
n8,4328,4328,3318,3318,0078,0077,4387,438
F176.0**162.9**153.7**142.4**48.37**45.44**50.21**48.7** R2.34.34.31.32.13.13.14.15 F:Improvement in R214.1**14.6**12.9**31.5**
a All models also included year fixed effects(not reported).
†pϽ.10
*pϽ.05
**pϽ.01
Two-tailed tests.
ers have closer ties that allow for the appropriation of rents through higher growth,which enhances both business prospects and mutual safeguards.Their divergent performance goals affect their orien-tation toward other stakeholders as well:relational owners facilitate greater value capture by stakehold-ers from diversification than do transactional owners.Our empirical analysis yields results supportive of these ideas.The relationship between diversifi-cation and profit is more positive under transac-tional ownership than under relational ownership.Conversely,the relationship between diversifica-tion and growth is more positive with relational ownership than with transactional ownership.Fur-thermore,diversification yields greater benefits for stakeholders—that is,higher employment growth and executive salaries—under relational owner-ship than under transactional ownership.
The relationship between strategic action and performance is a central question in the strategy field (Barney,2002),yet the question of “perfor-mance for whom”has not been given sufficient emphasis,particularly in the diversification litera-ture.We explain the importance of considering dif-ferences in the performance goals of owners from a rent appropriation perspective.Differences in per-formance goals arise because various shareholders and stakeholders capture value in different ways.Although the prior research assumption has been that all shareholders seek profit from corporate di-versification strategies,our research suggests that profit maximization is not a universal goal of own-ers.As we found in our study,profit is the only goal for transactional owners,but growth is a more im-portant goal for relational owners.Similarly,re-search in the future might delve more deeply into issues related to the performance outcomes for shareholders.It would be worth exploring the ex-tent to which the enhanced growth from diversifi-cation actually improves business prospects or
FIGURE 1
Economic Significance
a
a
The x-axis plots international diversification from the 5th to the 95th percentile,and the y-axis gives predicted performance.The line labeled “Median”represents firms that have the median level of both relational and transactional ownership.The line labeled “High relational”depicts firms that have the median level of transactional ownership,but a high level (i.e.,95th percentile)of relational ownership.Similarly,the line labeled “High transactional”depicts firms that have the median level of relational ownership,but a high level (i.e.,95th percentile)of transactional ownership.
It would also be helpful to extend our typology of relational versus transactional to explicitly em-brace owner types that may be prevalent in other institutional contexts.For example,research on U.S.firms has distinguished between pressure-re-sistant owners(who are similar to transactional owners in that they lack business relationships with the firms in which they hold stock)and pres-sure-sensitive institutional investors(similar to re-lational owners in that they have business relation-ships with the owned firms)(David et al.,1998). Similarly,family owners appear to have a long-term attachment similar to that of relational owners (Schulze,Lubatkin,&Dino,2003).Such owners are prominent all over the world,including in Europe (Faccio&Lang,2002),Asia(Claessens,Djankov, Fan,&Lang,2002),and China(Delios,Wu&Zhou, 2006).Although caution must be exercised in ex-trapolating our results,which may be specific to the Japanese context,we believe it would be worth-while to investigate whether the performance goals of these other types of owners could be distin-guished in ways similar to what we have done for transactional owners and relational owners in Japan.
The question of“performance for whom”is even more salient for stakeholders other than sharehold-ers.Just as shareholders can differ in their perfor-mance goals,various stakeholders also capture value in a variety of ways.Employees and execu-tives capture value both from higher compensation and from reduced employment risk.Modeling the performance outcomes desired by other stakehold-ers,such as customers,suppliers,and the commu-nity at large,is analytically and empirically chal-lenging,but the effort holds considerable promise (Lieberman&Chacar,1997).From a rent appropri-ation perspective,a strategy provides competitive advantage and yields economic rents when the ben-efits to at least some stakeholders are greater than their opportunity costs(Coff,1999).Thus,finding a way to aggregate performance benefits for various stakeholders should provide a better understanding of the extent to which diversification strategies cre-ate economic rents in forms that cannot be identi-fied from shareholder profit.Furthermore,the ex-tents to which various stakeholders capture value from a diversification strategy will likely differ. Future research can seek to explain how value gets allocated among various stakeholder groups.
Our research provides insights as to why employ-ees and managers obtain greater benefits from di-versification under relational ownership than un-der transactional ownership.Our explanation is based on a rent appropriation perspective.We ar-gue that the pursuit of growth to appropriate rent from their relationships causes relational owners to be more tolerant of rent appropriation by stake-holders.Alternately,it can be argued that relational owners’embedded relationships make them sup-portive of taken-for-granted institutional policies of lifetime employment.Institutional legitimacy ex-planations complement our explanation of rela-tional owners’support of lifetime employees but fail to explain relational owners’support of higher executive pay.Unlike lifetime employment,which is institutionally legitimized in Japan,high mana-gerial compensation runs counter to Japanese norms of egalitarianism(Dore,2000).Although managers and executives in Japanese firms have a strong respect for seniority and reward it with greater pay,the differences among levels of senior-ity are kept low.The ratio of the wages earned by the highest-versus the lowest-paid employee is typically about400:1in U.S.companies,but it is just10:1in Japanese companies(Wahlgren,2001). Thus,the institutional norm in Japan is to curtail high executive compensation.If relational owners support stakeholders in accordance with institutional norms,one would expect them to limit the extent to which managers can use diversification to justify higher salaries.Instead,we found that relational own-ers foster higher managerial salaries from diversifica-tion,suggesting a rent appropriation rather than in-stitutional legitimacy explanation.
Disentangling rent appropriation from institu-tional legitimacy is a complex task,but one worth pursuing.Stakeholders likely benefit most when institutional and rent appropriation explanations converge.Thus,relational owners may support em-ployee stakeholders on the basis of norms of insti-tutional legitimacy,and such support is reinforced by rent appropriation considerations from which relational owners benefit as well.Finding contexts in which rent appropriation explanations conflict with institutional legitimacy—and therefore weaken the effects of rent appropriation considerations—holds considerable promise for advancing this line of work.
Our findings also have important implications for the governance literature,which is rooted in an economic perspective on stakeholders in which they are generally fixed claimants with no need for governance safeguards.Only shareholders,as re-sidual claimants,are deserving of governance safe-guards according to this perspective(Shleifer&Vishny,1997).Although the importance of stake-holders has long been recognized in the manage-ment literature,most notably in the extensive re-search on the stakeholder theory of the firm spearheaded by Freeman(1984),several main-stream economists(Allen&Gale,2000;Tirole, 2001;Zingales,2000)and strategy scholars with an economics perspective(Mahoney,2007;Wang& Barney,2006)are now proposing that stakeholders require explicit consideration,especially in the context of economies reliant on“knowledge work-ers.”Our study contributes to this conversation by suggesting that ownership structure can serve as a governance mechanism for safeguarding stakehold-ers as well as shareholders.Broadening the some-what narrow preoccupation with shareholders in prior work to include governance safeguards for a broader set of stakeholders holds considerable promise for future research.
Our research also has implications for the com-parative governance literature,which addresses worldwide differences and similarities in gover-nance(Aguilera&Jackson,2003;Ahmadjian&Rob-bins,2005;Hall&Soskice,2001).Much of the early work in this literature emphasized unique gover-nance practices of various national economies;con-ceptual work distinguishing shareholder capital-ism(e.g.,the U.S.and U.K.governance regimes) from stakeholder capitalism(e.g.,the Japanese and German governance regimes)(Allen&Gale,2000; Dore,2000)is an example.Several studies have addressed differences between U.S.and Japanese corporations.For example,(1)unlike U.S.firms that emphasize profit over growth,Japanese firms emphasize growth over profit(Abegglen&Stalk, 1985;Aoki,1988;Kester,1991),(2)Japanese firms invest more in R&D than do U.S.firms(Hundley, Jacobson,&Park,1996;Thomas&Waring,1999), and(3)shareholder-owner relationships in Japa-nese firms reflect stewardship norms,but those in the United States reflect principal-agent norms(Lee &O’Neill,2003).More recent comparative gover-nance research explores the extent to which con-vergence is taking place across countries(Gordon& Roe,2004).
Our results provide evidence both for divergence and convergence,with the degree of openness of capital markets acting as an incomplete impetus to convergence.As long as Japanese capital markets stayed relatively insulated from the rest of the world,relational owners helped preserve firms’commitment to stakeholders by emphasizing growth over profit,reflecting their divergence from more shareholder-oriented U.S.firms.However,as Japanese capital markets have opened up to foreign owners,Japanese firms have faced pressures to em-phasize profit over growth and hence have con-verged somewhat with U.S.firms in terms of per-formance objectives.For example,Japanese firms have greatly increased their access to international bond markets for debt financing(David,O’Brien,& Yoshikawa,2008).
Nevertheless,despite some evidence of conver-gence,we also find resistance in the form of the traditional governance provided by relational own-ers,who continue to support diversification strate-gies that emphasize growth rather than profit.The Economist(2007)reported a shift toward a share-holder orientation in the late2000s,as Japanese firms increasingly adopted many of the practices of U.S.corporations,such as stock options,indepen-dent directors,and even hostile takeovers.Yet the article reiterated that debates continue as to the appropriate balance between stakeholder and shareholder orientations.It is perhaps likely that corporate governance“hybrids”incorporating el-ements of the U.S.or U.K.model into local prac-tices will increasingly be seen as radical institu-tional change progresses(Aguilera&Jackson, 2003;Yoshikawa&Rasheed,2009).It will be interesting to see how and how much governance orientations change over time in Japan and in other countries.
As foreign owners spread their investments across global boundaries(Useem,1998),our re-search gains implications for other stakeholder-oriented nations,such as Germany and France, that are grappling with the conflict between a traditional stakeholder orientation and pressures for a shareholder orientation.Furthermore,for-eign owners include owners from various coun-tries.In this study we found support for the view that foreign portfolio investors seek rent appro-priation through profit.Differences in national origin may,however,have other implications that warrant further research.
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Parthiban David(parthiban.david@american.edu)holds the Collins Chair in Strategic Management at American University’s Kogod School of Business,where he is an associate professor.He received his Ph.D.from Texas A&M University.His current research interests include corporate governance and its links with strategy and performance.
Jonathan P.O’Brien is an assistant professor of strategic management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lally School of Management&Technology.He received his Ph.D.in strategic management from Purdue University. His current research interests include real options,cor-porate governance,and the strategic implications of firms’financial structure.Toru Yoshikawa is a professor of strategic management at McMaster University.He received his Ph.D.from York University.His current research interests include corpo-rate governance and boards,collaborative strategies,and venture capital firms.
Andrew Delios is a professor in the Department of Strat-egy and Policy,National University of Singapore.He obtained his Ph.D.from the Richard Ivey School of Busi-ness,University of Western Ontario.His research focuses on international management and international strategy issues for firms competing in
Asia.
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