From business to politics: cross-border CEOs and political leadership in Japan and South Korea

Ingyu Oh and Taichi Takahara

Asia Pacific Business Review, 2019, vol. 25, issue 2, 173-193

Abstract: Whether or not successful CEOs can make themselves competent political leaders has been a concern within the field of management studies. The fact that capitalist democracy depends largely on a close orchestration between the capitalist class and political leaders has also instigated many studies on the exact nature of such bi-partite relationships between the two groups. The number of the cross-border CEOs who expand their horizons into politics has been on the rise in East Asia, as both historical and contemporary examples indicate. A new trend of the cross-border CEOs invites us to examine historical patterns to confirm how widespread the phenomenon has been since the expansion of capitalist democracies. This study offers a limited historical comparison between Japanese and South Korean cross-border CEOs using an illustrative historical case of Aoki Ichigorô, who mass mobilized the farmers movement against the US military base in Japan and a contemporary case of Ahn Cheol-soo, who unsuccessfully ran for the presidency in 2017. We find that CEOs can be successful as political leaders if they can promote networking leadership styles for both business and politics.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1080/13602381.2018.1548544

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