September, 2006(No.15)


Since 1998, the JMA Group has been conducting a survey on newly appointed directors of listed companies, to learn about their current situation and business management issues. Here, we document the overview of the survey results that were published in August 2006.


The question is who's interest to prioritize among all the stakeholders. Those who responded "employees" amounted to 42.3% and was higher than the 25.1% marked for "shareholders". This was the first time employees surpassed shareholders since the survey first started in 1998. This is presumed to be due to the spread in awareness to question short-term shareholder profit over everything else, stemming from the business practices of Livedoor and other shareholders. It also seems that there is more tendency to compensate employees for their hard work, after overcoming the recession by mainly reducing the number of personnel, following the destruction of the bubble economy.


Attitude toward employment seem to reflect the awareness to prioritize employees. As a result, in every year we are seeing increase in "the sustenance and creation of jobs is the honorable mission and social responsibility of an enterprise". This year, it amounted to 51.4%, which was half of the respondents. On the other hand, responses for "corporate prosperity comes first, and restructuring is required" is decreasing year by year. This year, merely 1.7% responded in this way, which was a drastic drop.

In response to the diversity of personnel, over 93% marked "necessity to utilize more women". Responses remained stagnant at 37.1% for "women are given opportunities to exert their potential", and therefore hints that the current situation is still not good enough.


This question concerned attitudes toward M&A and corporate alliance. 30% responded that this is a "real issue." Among these respondents, more than 90% indicated that "it's a real issue that requires active approach", and thereby greatly surpassed the passive side. Further, more than half of the respondents thought that ﾒit is not an imminent issue now, but anything can happen at any time.ﾓ


For the first time since the survey started, there were more than 20% of respondents indicating that they seek promotion to president or chairman in the future. On the other hand, those who “don't seek any higher promotion” accounted for 30%, as has happened in the past.


The average age of new director was 52.6 years old (Youngest: 34years old and Oldest: 66years old). The average age of operating officer was 52.6 years old (Youngest = 31 years old and Oldest = 64 years old).

Among the 171 executive directors, 2 were female. The newly appointed directors of the board were all male.


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