Corporate governance reforms amidst economic maturation and democratization: the case of the Korean chaebol since the 1990s

This collection of research deals with a broad issue of business organizations and history that awaits unremitting refinements and improvements by scholars who always find fresh enigmas that might wobble the established theories in the field. A new conundrum about South Korea and its conglomerate businesses – the chaebol – is its organizational resilience that seems to protect them from the relentless attention from the government and civic interest groups as to issues such as their so-called ‘backward’ corporate governance structures. Of course, this is a conundrum as it is this very chaebol corporate governance that helped create the ‘Miracle on the Han’ and unprecedented wealth for the nation during its entire postwar history. Therefore, this special issue features empirical studies of the chaebol corporate governance and its evolution with a variety of foci. These are: (a) rent-sharing, (b) succession, (c) outsider board members and (d) the reforms after the 1997 Asian financial crisis.