Professional Asset Managers and the Evolution of Corporate Governance in France and Japan: Lessons from a Questionnaire Survey

A corporate governance system consists of a set of mechanisms which restrict managerial discretion. The constraints on managerial discretion in the Anglo-Saxon environment, considered as a benchmark, are usually described as being primarily driven by shareholder interests, whereas the French and Japanese systems are traditionally thought of as more stakeholder oriented. However, the increasing share of international ownership has had a significant impact on corporate governance in both countries over the last two decades. The shareholder-driven discourse on corporate governance best practice, which leans heavily on agency theory, has been progressively institutionalized on a global scale (Aguilera & Cuervo-Cazurra, 2004). Institutional investors and professional asset management firms are likely to have been powerful advocates of institutionalizing discourse on corporate governance best practice (Wirtz, 2008a). We conducted a survey in order to study asset management firms' underlying perceptions and motivations in actively influencing corporate governance in France and Japan. Specifically, we set out to know to what extent professional asset managers endorse standard discourse on corporate governance best practice and feel they exert an active influence on corporate governance in France and Japan. In this paper, we present the major results of the survey.