This book is the result of an international comparative study of corporate governance begun in 2002, and provides analysis of the issue as it applies to management, moral hazards, accounting practices, and the institutional investor from both a Japanese and a global perspective. The study presents a view of the company as an entity that not only maximizes profit for stockholders but that also has a social role to play in maintaining a sustainable society.

Zusammenfassung
In Japan, the problem of corporate governance has been cogently argued in the ?eld of social science for the past decade, and the issue has also been taken up separately in law, business administration, and accounting.This book, however, is the ?rst to take a general overview of corporate governance with respect to management, risk management, accounting, and the capital markets. Corporate governance in the broad sense must include stakeholders with various interests while taking into consideration the sometimes unscrupulous affairs of companies and bankruptcies of big businesses, along with today's increasing numbers of mergers and acquisitions.Both the company manager and the institutional investor have begun to be more concerned about corporate social responsibility (CSR) and socially responsible investment. After 2003, the issue of CSR began to be taken up more frequently by the media in Japan,and study meetings and committees associated with the Ministry of Economy,Trade and Industry, Ministry of the Environment, and the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare were established.These trends are evidence of signi?cant changes in Japanese corporate governance.The study presented here proposes that a company should play a social role to bring about a sustainable society.

Inhalt
Four Approaches to Corporate Governance.- Management and Corporate Governance.- Moral Hazard in Corporate Governance.- Accounting and Corporate Governance.- Institutional Investors and Corporate Governance.- Corporate Governance in Japan.- Institutional Investors Exercising Shareholder Voting Rights in Japan.- Board of Directors.- Accounting and Disclosure in Japan.- Managerial Judgment Hazard in Corporate Governance.- Corporate Governance in Global Economy.- The Effect of Global Shareholder Activism on the Japanese Financial System and the Japanese Corporation.- OECD Principles of Corporate Governance.