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The purpose of this paper is to examine how corporate headquarters control business units, the governing of which has emerged as a vital issue as business portfolios have grown increasingly complex due to diversification, globalization, and corporate group expansion via spinoffs and mergers and acquisitions.

This study utilized questionnaire survey data from 251 firms listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The authors approached the issue of business unit governance by measuring the degree of decentralization and the intensity of monitoring, and compared the governance of internal business units with that of subsidiaries, and analyzed the impact of corporate governance characteristics on business unit governance.

Comparing in‐house business units and subsidiaries, the authors found a significant difference in their governance. The degree of decentralization toward subsidiaries was higher for strategic and personnel decision‐making. However, the complementarity of decentralization and monitoring was not observed for subsidiaries, whereas it was for in‐house business units. Subsidiary monitoring corresponding to decentralization was inadequate. Examining the relationship between corporate governance and business unit governance, the paper found that firms with reformed boards of directors and under a greater degree of pressure from capital markets monitored their business units more strictly.

The paper shows how the business portfolios and governance arrangements of Japanese firms have changed since the 1990s, and analyzes business unit governance based on valuable data obtained from a questionnaire survey.

Using the lens of the romance of leadership, the authors aim to investigate how knowing the causes of negative outcomes affects the evaluation of those outcomes and the extent to which leaders are blamed.

The authors used an experimental situation with three conditions of organizational failure, caused by leadership, employees, and unavoidable external factors, respectively. Participants were assigned to one of three conditions and then asked to evaluate the outcomes and the extent to which they blamed the leader.

Negative outcomes attributed to leadership are not necessarily evaluated more harshly than outcomes attributed to other factors are. However, leaders are blamed more harshly when outcomes are attributed to internal factors, including leaders and employees, than to external factors. This tendency is even more evident when the victims of bad outcomes are customers.

The attributional process apparently differs between positive and negative outcomes.

Leaders are blamed for and occasionally expected to resign as a result of negative outcomes, despite not being actually responsible for those outcomes. Blame can be mitigated by developing good relations with the public or investors in advance and apologizing and explaining its actual causes carefully after the outcome occurs.

The cognitive shortcut known as the romance of leadership – the tendency of attributing results to leadership and evaluating those results according to the value attached to leadership – does not always play a role in people's evaluations of negative outcomes.

This study aims to examine the dimensions of organisational failure in the Brazilian sugarcane and ethanol refineries, as reported in judicial recovery plans.

This paper follows a qualitative, inductive approach that uses content analysis to examine the details of recovery plans. Besides, a cause-and-effect relationship diagram is proposed, making it possible to identify the interconnections between the identified variables.

There is evidence that organisational failures are not a linear outcome. Organisational failures are complex and occur because of several factors, often interdependent and operating at different levels.

Organisational failures basically have three interrelated levels: the macro-level (external environment), the meso-level (organisational environment) and the micro-level (associated with the decision-maker). The relationship between these levels is not trivial and involves coordinated research efforts.

Organisations must consider all types of failure levels when developing business reorganisation plans. Reorganisation plans are more than a formal document to achieve judicial recovery, as they should incorporate strategic factors.

Organisational failures are regularity in organisations’ day-to-day. Understanding failure’s sources is vital to design firms’ strategies and public policies.

The study of organisational failure involves the analysis of complex and multidimensional phenomena. Judicial recovery plans are the means for companies to get a second chance. To that end, this paper addresses the sources of organisational failures through the lens of judicial plans.

In this second part of the report on Printed Circuit World Convention IV held at the Tokyo Prince Hotel, Tokyo, from 3–5 June 1987, a general synopsis of the content of the papers presented in the eighteen technical sessions will be given. As three sessions were run in parallel throughout the 2½‐day conference, and therefore not all presentations were heard by those reporting on the technical programme, a number of them have been briefly summarised from the Convention Proceedings.