Asli M. Colpan, Associate Professor and Mizuho Securities Chair at the Graduate School of Management, has been selected as the recipient of the 2nd annual Tachibana Prize awarded to the most prominent woman researcher at Kyoto University.

The Tachibana Prize was established in 2008 as a means to support and acknowledge the excellence of young women researchers at Kyoto University. Two recipients are chosen every year – one student and one researcher. There were nine candidates in the researcher category and Professor Colpan was selected as this year’s recipient. She is also the first winner of the prize as an international scholar and social scientist.

The award ceremony and research introductions will take place on March 3, 2010 from 13:00 to 14:35 at Kyodai Kaikan Room 101.

Synopsis of Professor Colpan’s research：

Business groups have not quite enjoyed an honorable standing in social science research, as their general pattern of diversification into widely-scattered and technologically-unrelated industries bring about the reputation of unsystematic organization, low efficiency and marginal viability. Professor Colpan takes on this conventional view of business groups and proposes a fresh insight based on her through theoretical examination and careful empirical fact finding. Business groups such as Japan’s prewar zaibatsu and South Korea’s postwar chaebol have actually functioned as the major developmental agent that made positive and dynamic contributions to each society’s economic modernization.

Professor Colpan’s major research will be published in the following edited volume:

Oxford Handbook of Business Groups (Oxford: Oxford University Press, May 2010)

Remarks by Professor Colpan for the Tachibana Prize ceremony:

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Kyoto University and its Center for Women Researchers that have awarded me the Tachibana Prize of this year. I also would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported me in terms of my research at Kyoto University on the “Competitive Dynamics of Business Groups”.

More specifically, my thanks are first due to the Graduate School of Management of Kyoto University and its Mizuho Securities Endowment that have given me a wonderful environment to pursue my academic research. I especially thank our Dean Tatsuhiko Nariu for his continuous support and encouragement.

I then bow deeply to several of my teachers and friends whose dedication to research inspired me and from whom I comprehended warm heart as well as cool head. I am lucky enough to be surrounded by these great people: (in alphabetical order) Takashi Hikino, Haruo Imai, Geoffrey Jones, James R. Lincoln, Hiroaki Miyoshi, Randall Morck, Yasuo Nishiguchi, Kazuo Nishimura, Takamitsu Sawa and Masahiro Shimotani.

I also thank my colleague and editor at Oxford University Press, David Musson, for trusting and supporting me in organizing an international research and publication project of this large scale.

Finally, my family in Turkey, Nesrin, Melih and Ozgur Colpan, deserve special mention for being always close to me despite long distance. I would not have succeeded without their love and understanding; and I dedicate this prize to them.

Thank you everyone once again.