Understanding an emergent diversity of corporate governance and organizational architecture: an essentiality-based analysis
提出一个基于人力资产与非人力资产组合模式的框架，解释公司治理与组织架构之间联系的新兴多样性，并用日本案例验证了传统模式之外的新路径。
This article proposes a simple framework for understanding an emergent diversity of linkages between corporate governance (CG) and organizational architecture (OA). It distinguishes discreet modes of their linkage by different combinatorial patterns between three basic assets: managers’ human assets (MHA), workers’ human assets (WHA), and non-human assets (NHA). Using the concept of essentiality of human assets proposed by Hart (1995) and distinguished from that of complementarities, we first propose a new characterization of four known modes of CG-OA linkage: three traditional (Anglo-American, German, and Japanese) and one relatively new (Silicon Valley) models. Then we present empirical evidences of emergent diversity of CG-OA linkages in Japan, which is somewhat at odds with the old Japanese model. We interpret its emergent dominant mode as the path-dependent evolution of a new pattern of essentiality between human assets, made viable by lessening of institutional-complementarity-constraints, which surrounded the traditional Japanese model. We argue that this new mode interpreted in terms of essentiality may have broader applicability beyond Japanese context.