The top managers of Japanese corporations have been questioned about their capability to take necessary actions in dealing with various difficulties the companies experienced since 1990’s. Some empirical studies analyzed the CEO successions of Japanese firms in the era and concluded that the impact of them to their business results was too small and invisible, and that the managers who can realize more sizable short-term changes and improvements in performance would be suitable for the recent period. This study discusses two theoretical types of top succession i.e. the change model and the baton pass model, taken from theoretical literatures in the past (Vancil, 1987; Kagono et al., 1983), and examines the current status of the Japanese corporations in 1990’s and 2000’s by asking which model is more widely adopted and leads to better performance. In order to verify those questions, three empirical studies were conducted. Firstly, the case analysis of the seven notable CEOs of the Japanese corporations in the era identified the traditional baton pass model as main process of the top successions. The division of roles among the planner tops and the implementer tops was found as critical in the relatively long-term oriented passing baton process, which sometimes brought about very impactful “continuous improvement” or “evolutionary change” (Sakano & Lewin, 1999). Secondly, variance components analysis as Crossland & Hambrick (2007) was conducted to the data of the 210 Japanese corporations from five industries. One of the results suggested the baton pass companies were more widely spread in the segment with better business performance. Thirdly, the results from the survey analysis of another data from 108 companies, including correlations, factor analyses and regressions showed the baton pass model of top succession was with wider adoption and better performance than the change model. The results from the three analyses strongly suggest careful reconsideration of the short-term oriented top management and governance models, and reevaluation of the traditional long-term model which are still proved to be effective in the recent era.
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