At the 2004 SAVE Conference, the authors have proposed a method for evaluating the interaction effects produced by compounding added functions monetarily using the 3 indices of the amount of the interaction effects: the ratio of the interaction effects, and the rate of recognizing the interaction effects, and clarified its usefulness. In this study, they further analyze the difference in the scale of effectiveness of interaction effects caused by attribute differences of potential customers, and clarify the relationship between the attributes of potential customers and the interaction effects. They demonstrate that leveraging the relationship between the potential users and the interaction effects can help calculate predicted selling price, which is the key to establish a strategic product concept-making, a standard selling price and a target cost.

Nowadays the role of SMEs in national economies is widely recognized. However, due to its limited resources availability, especially the lack of capital, SMEs have no margin for mistakes. The leading objective of this study is to develop a management control system to provide SMEs a resource to address its lack of information for decision-making purposes. The research proposal contributes to determine the volume and mix of core business by the integration of Theory of Constrains (TOC), Activity Based Costing (ABC) and Economic Value Added (EVA^TM). The election of management tools relies on its potential to address the profitability when considering a multiple product and limited resource environment. Results confirm that the integrated management system provide insights into the mix that leads to the maximization of the firms economic profit with respect to the trade-offs among resources deployed and constraints faced by the firms.

This paper analyzes the effects of advertising and R&D expenditures on the values of intangibles for the 382 Japanese manufacturing firms for 12 years from 1990 to 2001. The advertising and R&D expenditures significantly increase the value of intangibles only for 25% of the firms, but for the other 75% neither the advertising nor R&D expenditure increases the value of intangibles. This finding suggests the inappropriateness of imposing an identical relationship over all the firms. We also demonstrate that the accounting data for our analysis exhibits a panel structure with cross-section and time series properties, which leads to apply a generalized least squares (GLS) method of estimation to the regression model instead of conventional ordinary least squares. To our knowledge, there has never been previous analysis applying the GLS method to the time series data. This method is potentially applicable to many problems in the field of accounting.

Prior research provides mixed results on the ability of American shareholder activists to improve managerial behavior. In Japan, the means of external control (e.g., takeover, litigation) are not as effective as they are in the U.S. Challenging management during annual meetings may be the only option left for disgruntled shareholders. Yet, the situation is complicated by the existence of corporate racketeers who disrupt meetings to blackmail managers. In response, authorities have encouraged companies to hold their annual meetings on the same day to spread the racketeers' thin over simultaneous events. However, this policy has a similar effect on legitimate activists. Our empirical results indicate that, contrary to governmental expectations, shareholder activism leads to improvement in a company's corporate governance, informational environment and profitability. It also enables firms to attract foreign shareholders. In addition, firms that collude to have their meetings on the same day have lower profitability and worse governance. This provides evidence of the positive role activists may play and suggests the authorities should reverse their policy of discouraging shareholder activism.

The existing literature posits that large corporate cash holdings might induce agency problems and thus hinder firms' operating performance. This paper investigates how Japanese firms maintain high/low cash holding position during the late 1980s and early 1990s. I find that firms pile cash because there is no profitable project. On the other hand, firms maintain a low cash holding position due to over-investing. I also find that excess cash holdings significantly affect firms' operating performance. Lastly, I find no direct evidences that ownership structure affect firms operating performance.