Japanese companies role had changed?

According to today's NIKKEI column "KEIZAI-KYOSITU", Prof. Noma said that Japanese companies did not R&D and facility investment recently rather than the past days(before 1980s). And contrarily those companies increased the dividend. What does it mean? Prof. Noma point out that those companies prefer distribution rather than growth or future business. This means that those managers may give up the management itself. It is a serious problem.