2014 Best Paper Awards Announcement

• Date: 01 July 2015
• Published date: 01 July 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/corg.12120

2014 Best Paper Awards Announcement

Please join us in congratulating the authors of the award-winning papers published in 2014 (volume 22) of Corporate

Governance:AnInternational Review (CGIR).The nomination criteria included the followingthree standards: (1) the research

question and f‌indings must be highly relevant to practitioners and/or policymakers; (2) the research study must be both the-

oretically and methodologically rigorous; and (3) the research publication must be published in 2014 in CGIR.

Using these criteria, nominations were made by members of our distinguished Editorial Advisory Board (EAB) –many of

whom have direct,f‌irst-hand working experience in dealingwith the challenges confrontingcorporations from their respective

regions all over the world or are leading lights in corporate governance scholarship. Of the 27 articles published last year

amongst the 319 submitted to CGIR, four were nominated to be considered for our best paper distinction by EAB members.

We formed an awards committee comprising three exceptional scholars serving on our Editorial Review Board. In keeping

with our emphasison diversity of perspective, theycollectively represent diverse functional and national backgrounds. Specif-

ically, the three distinguished members of the awards committee were: Joseph Fan (Finance/Hong Kong), Eduardo Schiehll

(Accounting/Canada), and Jean Chen (Accounting/UK).

The committee was charged with ranking all eligible papers for their rigor and relevance to international corporate gover-

nance issues. Whilethis was an extremely challengingtask, there was a rather strong consensus on studies that madethe most

signif‌icantcontributions to the international corporategovernance literature.Based on the committee’srankings, we are pleased

to announce the 2014 best paper and runner-up awards.

The 2014 bestpaper award goes to Young Un Kim and SalihZeki Ozdemir for their empiricalstudy on how corporate boards

are structuredfor effective governance. In particular,using data from 23 countries, the studyexplores whether boards were de-

signed to fulf‌ill a wealth protection or a wealth creation function. The results emphasize that board practices depend upon the

national institutional environment.As such, the study offers a more nuancedunderstanding of the links betweenf‌irm-level and

institution-level governance mechanisms. The following is a nominatingcomment by Diane Denis, a distinguished member of

our editorial advisory board, on the strengths of this particular research study:

“The followingare the strengths of the paper:(i) it does a good job of addressing theinteraction between externaland internal governance

measures; (ii)it addresses two facets of the broader roleof the board of directors: creating wealthand protecting wealth; (iii) it is carefully

done and well-written. The f‌indings are of interest to academics and to practitioners.”

This “Best Paper Award”article may be now accessed free on our journal’s website, and its citation is as follows:

Kim, Y. U. & Ozdemir, S. Z. 2014. Structuring corporate boards for wealth protection and/or wealth creation: The effects of

national institutional characteristics. Corporate Governance: An International Review, 22(3): 266–289.

The runner-up award winner for 2014 was co-authored by Douglas Cumming, Sof‌ia Johan and Minjie Zhang. Their study

explores the impact of entrepreneurship on several key country measures (e.g., GDP/capita, unemployment, exports/GDP,

patents). Using datafrom three datasets, the study shows that entrepreneurship has a positive impact on a country’sdevelop-

ment and employment. As such, the resultsemphasize the role of institutional and cultural variables in determining the effec-

tiveness of entrepreneurship. SteenThomsen, an internationally recognized governancescholar serving on our advisory board

who nominated this study, made this nominating comment:

“Although this paper does not deal with a classical corporate governance topic, it does deal with something important that cor-

porate governance researchers should be concerned about: the impact of regulation on entrepreneursh ip and economic growth.

Thus relevance is a strong plus. If standard factors like board structure do not matt er much to performance and economic

growth, the f‌ield should perhaps focus more on what does matter. Moreover, it is becoming increasingly clear that corporate

governance includes regulation just as it now is almost self-evident that owner ship is part of corporate governance.”

The “Runner-Up Article Award”citation is as follows:

Cumming, D., Johan, S. & Zhang, M. 2014. The economic impact of entrepreneurship: Comparing international datasets.

Corporate Governance: An International Review, 22(2): 162–178.

Thanks go to our nominators and evaluators for this year’s award selection process. Congratulations go to these authors

for their signif‌icant contributions to the international corporate governance literature. We encourage everyone to read these

articles and consider submitting their own work in future editions of CGIR, which is growing in reach, exposure, and in-

f‌luence every year!

© 2015 JohnWiley & Sons Ltd

doi:10.1111/corg.12120

397

Corporate Governance: An International Review, 2015, 23(4): 397