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

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 Ichigoro, 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.