What should corporate R&D general manager be?

Abstract

In recent years, the quickly changing circumstances surrounding corporate environments have led to the need to reorganize various administrative structures, including the board of directors (BOD), as the concept of corporate governance grows in importance. This situation has revealed those Japanese corporations which have separate governance and management boards. The concept of corporate governance in Japanese companies first appeared in the early 1980s, and directors of the board of such companies began studying the concept of American corporate governance in the mid 1980s, In this paper, the authors first provide an overview of changes in the R&D structure of Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (MELCO), analyze failures in the process of creating new business, and from this viewpoint, clarify why the importance of corporate governance is realized. They then summarize information related to the reorganization of MELCO's board of directors, and discuss the position of the general manager of corporate R&D (GMCRD) from the viewpoint of governance and management. They conclude that the GMCRD must act as a corporate intermediary, at present and in the future, for both the governance and management boards of an organization.