One of the sharpest distinctions among corporate governance systems is between communitarian and contractarian governance systems. At the core of this distinction is corporate ownership. Ownership in Japanese governance system, a typical communitarian governance system, used to be quite stable. However, many Japanese firms experience significant ownership change in recent decades. Despite numerous studies on the debate about change and continuity of communitarian governance system, there is a lack of scholarly efforts on why some firms experience significant change of corporate governance while others do not. Besides, past research predominantly views ownership as an exogenous factor in determining firm outcomes and suggests that it is increasing transactional ownership and declining relational ownership that facilitate corporate governance reform. Nonetheless, we have limited understanding of what triggers change of ownership from relational to transactional shareholders in the first place. / To fill these research gaps, my dissertation adopts symbolic interactionism perspective to explain ownership regime change, which happens when a firm owned by relational shareholders becomes dominantly owned by transactional shareholders. It is an unusual phenomenon in communitarian corporate governance system where ownership is more of a symbolic representation of the underlying social relationships between a firm and its shareholders. The central premise is that certain corporate actions undertaken by a firm may violate the shared meanings underlying communitarian governance system, which triggers a higher likelihood of ownership regime change. With a sample of 24910 firm-year observations from 1990 to 2010 in Japan, I demonstrate that downsizing, hostile takeover, and business relationship termination undertaken by a firm affect the likelihood of ownership regime change, which is moderated by corporate actions conforming to communitarian meanings (e.g. minority shareholding, new alliance formation) and the frequency of corporate actions against shared communitarian meanings at the organizational field level. / This dissertation sheds new lights on corporate governance research by providing an alternative view to explain the antecedents of ownership regime change in communitarian governance system. By adopting a symbolic interactionism perspective, it enriches our understanding of the realm of meanings underlying corporate governance system as well as the interactions between shareholders and firms. Besides, it goes beyond previous feature-oriented approach in corporate governance research by illustrating how salient corporate actions, as events in shareholders’ view, can trigger profound change of corporate governance structure. / 儘管許多文獻曾探討過社群治理體系的變化和沿用，管理學界依然缺乏有關企業經歷重大公司治理變化的成因研究。過往研究大多假設在社群情境裡，外國投資者的增加會導致公司治理變化；然而，這種由外國投資者主導的變化忽略了原來本地關係型股東在公司治理中的角色。此外，股權結構一直被理所當然的視為公司治理變革的外因，卻對觸發股權變動的成因所知甚少。 / 為了彌補這個研究缺口，本文以象徵互動論去解釋社群情境下的股權變動。股權不僅作為公司治理的控制機制，同樣作為企業與股東間社會關係的象徵。本文的中心前提是：企業引起的事件可能會違犯了社群治理體系中的蘊含的共同意義，因此損害了企業與關係型股東的關係，導致更大機會出現關係型股東出售股權予外國投資者。本文以1990年至2010年的於日本上市的工業企業為研究樣本，結果發現企業緊縮和敵意併購會增加發生股權變動的機會；然而，當企業頻繁地進行一些遵從社群治理角度的行為，以及當這些違犯社群共同意義的行為在社群當中愈見頻繁，企業事件對股權變動的影響將減弱。 / 本文對公司治理研究的貢獻在於從另一角度去解釋股權變動的成因。從象徵互動論出發，本文增加了對公司治理體系中蘊含的意義，以及企業與股東交互的理解。此外，不同於以往側重於公司治理特徵的研究，本文著重研究公司的事件如何最終導致此公司治理架構的變化。 / Chen, Xing. / Thesis Ph.D. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2015. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-120). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on 09, September, 2016). / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only.