In 2018, automotive tycoon Carlos Ghosn was arrested in Japan on financial misreporting charges, followed later by charges of improper payments and misappropriation of funds. Over a year later, still awaiting trial, Ghosn organized his escape from house arrest in Tokyo to Beirut, Lebanon, where he held a press conference alleging an unfair Japanese justice system and political persecution. This case introduces the business and legal context surrounding Ghosn’s case, and explores Ghosn’s perspective and decision-making process from the time between arrest and escape.
This article examines the B Corporation movement that originated in the United States in 2006. The founders sought to create a new type of company whose governance structure mandated them to consider financial, social and environmental performance. A certification scheme was also introduced. In 2012 a group of Latin American business leaders took the concept to that region and widened its scope. Sistema B sought to engage policy makers, educators and other stakeholders in supporting a system-wide change to a more responsible form of capitalism. Although there were thousands of B Corporations by 2021, there were only seven based in Japan. This article explores the reasons for this low take-up of the new organizational form, including limited recognition of the concept, and overlap with traditional Japanese practices which made the cost of certification appear superfluous. The article concludes by placing the B Corps movement in a wider context of an ongoing paradigm shift away from the era of shareholder capitalism. The low take-up of B Corps in Japan reflected Japan's delayed engagement with the new trends which were shifting the nature of global capitalism.
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