Most large Western companies are dependent on capital markets and so pay much more attention to Wall Street than is yet common in Asia. Wall Street has strong expectations about the behavior and performance of business executives. There is less freedom of action for executives and boards in America than in Asia. Consequently, American executives are responsive to their boards and to Wall Street.

Most U.S. companies are run by professional managers who are succeeded by other professional managers, as a consequence of either retirement or replacement by the company’s board of directors. The better companies have sophisticated programs for developing executives within the company, and ordinarily choose a new chief executive officer from among them. The result is the continual combination and recombination of business assets in different corporate forms. This process of asset recombination in theory generates more efficient uses of productive resources (physical, human, and intellectual) and is a major generator of wealth creation.