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This paper aims to explore how heads in South Korean workplace perceive the retirement preparation of older Korean workers and their roles in accordance with life design perspective.

Qualitative in-person interviews were conducted with top leaders of 15 corporations in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and analyzed by using a conventional content analysis.

Top leaders in corporations consider that older Korean workers whose retirement preparation is their own responsibility have not been actively preparing for their postretirement life. Nevertheless, some of these heads are attempting to assist with career development or career transition. Some believe that older workers should work as long as they are capable and should be retained after the official retirement age.

These exploratory findings are preliminary, and the top-down mechanism might work differently in a specific sector. Future research merits a large-scale investigation of each specific business.

It is implied that policy initiatives should support SMEs with subsidy programs for older workers’ employment, empowering longer working as healthy pathways to postretirement.

This pilot study indicates some degree of possible roles of top corporate leaders for workers’ retirement preparation in terms of career development and career transition and retainment of older workers.

This book is a policy proposal aimed at the democratic left. It is concerned with gradual but radical reform of the socio‐economic system. An integrated policy of industrial and economic democracy, which centres around the establishment of a new sector of employee‐controlled enterprises, is presented. The proposal would retain the mix‐ed economy, but transform it into a much better “mixture”, with increased employee‐power in all sectors. While there is much of enduring value in our liberal western way of life, gross inequalities of wealth and power persist in our society.

The purpose of this paper is to participate in the discussion of a relatively new field of corporate governance (CG) and its development. The aim of the research is to discover how well‐known Estonian business leaders perceive the purpose of business activities, corporate relations with the society and environment and who they consider the most significant stakeholders. These issues are studied and analyzed during a ten‐year period in the real‐life Estonian business environment.

The empirical part of the paper is based on the results of in‐depth interviews with 26 top Estonian managers and owners, often known as generalists. The paper discusses the results of qualitative research conducted among these business leaders, owners and top‐managers in Estonian organizations, exploring how business purposes and interests, relations with the society and environment as well as different stakeholders are perceived and how these perceptions have changed in Estonia during the period of ten years (1995‐2004).

This paper shows how business purposes, interests, corporate relations with the society and environment as well as with different stakeholders are perceived in a rapidly developing former post‐socialist and now EU member state, Estonia. It was revealed that stakeholder interests and corporate relations with the society and environment in business have not yet been considered important issues in business organizations. According to the results, the stakeholder thinking and stakeholder concepts have just recently became recognized and understood among the Estonian business leaders. There is a clear difference seen in two periods studied in this research.

The main limitation of the study is related to survey methodology. In‐depth interviews are conducted with 26 representatives; this sets limits to the possibility to generalize the results. In further research, the aim is to get more data through structured questionnaires thus enabling to conduct quantitative analysis and draw conclusions based on larger amount of respondents.

In order to stay sustainable and be able to develop further there is a need for Estonian business leaders and organizations to start paying more attention to the different stakeholders, and see the organizations as a part of the environment and society.

The main contribution of the paper can be found in the in‐depth discussion of the concept of CG particularly from the perspective of stakeholder theory.

The unprecedented economic development and increase in the number of global corporations in the Greater China region, comprising the Chinese mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong, have led to more emphasis on corporate leader-stakeholder communication. Bilingual web-based messages posted on corporate websites, which aim to strategically cultivate positive relationships between leaders and stakeholders, have emerged as a primary mode of communication for Chinese corporations. However, a research study investigating the prominent themes and underlying cultural values depicted in leaders’ messages intended for different groups of stakeholders is lacking. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the themes and cultural values expressed through corporate leaders’ web-based messages in a non-western context.

Using an inductive approach, open coding and a categorization system, this study analyzed the web-based messages of leading corporations with WordSmith 6.0.

Six prominent themes in leaders’ communication were identified. These themes included, in order of importance: company development, operating philosophy, company profile, business environment, performance, and products and services. It was found that leaders strategically selected certain themes such as focusing on progress and the business environment but omitted others depending on how they wanted to strategically influence their stakeholders’ attitudes. Differences between the cultural values depicted in Chinese and the corresponding English messages could be attributed to leaders’ cultural adaptation of the messages intended for non-domestic stakeholders.

Since this study provides insights into the major themes preferred by leaders of corporations operating in Greater China, it will enable existing stakeholders to understand the main business focus of leaders and offer leaders more information about commonly accepted themes. These possibilities for enhanced knowledge on the part of stakeholders and business leaders, in turn, may potentially increase academic appreciation of the complexities involved in corporate communication. It also informs stakeholders about the variations in the values reflected in the English and Chinese messages of leaders, and, therefore, has a potential to offer value to academics and practitioners.

In a review of the literature, supported by six case studies, executive development for senior managers in public and private organisations is explored in depth. The study looks at the roles and responsibilities of the chairman, CEO, executive and non‐executive directors, the required capabilities to achieve successful performance, and the related executive development activity implemented to support these. Methods of delivery, development needs analysis and evaluation are explored in case organisations to ascertain current practice. A detailed review of the leadership and governance literatures is included to highlight the breadth of knowledge required at director level. Key findings of the study include the importance of focusing executive development on capability enhancement, to ensure that it is supporting organisational priorities, and on its thorough customisation to the corporate context. Deficiencies in current corporate practice are also identified.

Few works have dealt with the impact of a corporation's country of origin on the perception of the qualities and behaviour expected of its leaders. This paper seeks to focus on these aspects with special attention to the specific nature of the Japanese leadership style. The choice of Japan was conditioned neither by the author's admiration for this country, nor by his admiration for their unusual determination to attain perfection, but mainly by the position that Japanese corporations occupy in the global economy. The main objective of the work is to analyze the nature of the vision creation process.

The research project incorporated surveys of and interviews with 2,000 of the world's largest corporations (the Forbes Global 2000 database (2006 version)).

Japanese corporations' leaders more frequently opt for giving their subordinates a free hand in shaping their own visions than leaders of the other researched corporations. However, in nearly all the cases it was mentioned that the proposed assumptions must be coherent with the vision envisaged by top management.

The paper attempts to examine the phenomenon of leadership from the perspective of corporate business. The work deals with the problem of the impact of the corporation's country of origin on the perception of the expected qualities and behaviours of its leaders.

The Nature of Business Policy Business policy — or general management — is concerned with the following six major functions:

Several scholars have maintained that corporatist arrangements may contribute to a national consensus between groups with opposing interests (Katzenstein, 1985; Siaroff, 1999). Some have even described (neo) corporatism as a strategy for consensus building (Woldendorp, 1995). These general viewpoints seem to imply that participation in the various channels and networks in a corporatist system may influence participants to moderate their ideological attitudes, to become more centrist. Participation has a “civilising” effect. In a study of the Swedish industrial relations system Öberg and Svensson (2002) concluded, however, that there is not much trust across the class borders, a finding which questions the validity of these assumptions. It seems therefore appropriate to test these assumptions empirically in a variety of national settings.