2015 Best Paper Awards Announcement

• Date: 01 July 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/corg.12171
• Published date: 01 July 2016

2015 Best Paper Awards Announcement

Please join us in congratulating the authors of the award-winning papers published in 2015 (volume 23) of Corporate

Governance:AnInternational Review (CGIR). Thenomination criteria included thefollowing three standards:(1) the research

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

theoretically and methodologically rigorous; and (3) the research publication must be published in 2015 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 dealing with the challengesconfronting corporations fromtheir respective

regions all over the world or are leading lights in corporate governance scholarship. Of the 24 articles published last year

amongst the 432 submitted to CGIR, eleven were nominated to be considered for our bestpaper distinction by EAB members.

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

our emphasis on diversity of perspective, they collectively represent diverse functional and national backgrounds. Specif‌ically, the

three distinguished members of the awards committee were: Chris Florackis (Finance/Liverpool), Douglas Cummings

(Entrepreneurship/Canada), and Cynthia Clark (Management/USA). Cynthia has a special role as she is the representative of

the Geneen Institute that sponsors the two awards: $7,500 for the best paper award and $2,500 for the runner-up paper award.

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

governance issues. While this was an extremely challenging task, there was a rather strong consensus on studies that made

the most signif‌icant contributions to the international corporate governance literature. Based on the committee’srankings,

we are pleased to announce the 2015 best paper and runner-up awards.

The 2015 best paper award goes to William Rees and Tatiana Rodionova, for their empirical study on the impact of family

shareholding on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) ratings. Using a longitudinal sample covering 46 countries

and 3,893 f‌irms from2002–12, the study shows that familyownership is negatively associatedwith ESG indicators, also control-

ling for governance. These results are strong across Liberal Market Economies, while they are weaker in Coordinated Market

Economies. As such, the study provides a more nuanced understanding of how the interaction between f‌irm-level and coun-

try-level governance mechanisms can affect ESG performance. The following is a nominating comment by Chris Florackis on

the strengths of this particular research study:

“Very well executed study that provides important insights into the relationship between family ownership and environmental, social,

and governance (ESG) rankings. In my opinion, the novel evidence of this paper relates to the mediating role played by the national

governance systems on this relationship. The analysis is based on sound methods such as the quintile regressing and propensity score

matching, which help address the obvious endogeneity issue.”

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

William Rees and Tatiana Rodionova, 2015. The Inf‌luence of Family Ownership on Corporate Social Responsibility: An

International Analysis of Publicly Listed Companies, Corporate Governance. An International Review, 23(3): 184–202.

The runner-up award winner for 2015 was co-authored by Reggie Hooghiemstra, Niels Hermes and Jim Emanuels. Their

study explores the association between national cultures and the disclosure on internal controls system. The idea behind the

paper is that culture affects managerial perception of the positive and negative consequences of information disclosure. Using

data from a sample of 1,559 f‌irms from 29 countries in the period between 2005–07, the study shows that national cultures af-

fects disclosure directly andindirectly,i.e. through the level of investors’protection.As such, the results contributeto the debate

on the design of governance mechanisms by showing that differences in disclosure on internal controls are determined by

cultural differences. Cynthia Clark made this nominating comment on the paper:

“Interestingfocus on culture and its effecton corporate disclosure.The cross boarder tensionbetween the US (required)and the rest of t he

world (voluntary)is a nice setting for incentives to disclose risk-related information. Policy implications are clear and meaningful

(conformity of disclosures is counterproductive)”.

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

Reggie Hooghiemstra, Niels Hermes, and Jim Emanuels, 2015. National Culture and Internal Control Disclosures: A Cross-

country Analysis, Corporate Governance: An International Review, 23(4): 357 –377.

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

their signif‌icantcontributions to the international corporategovernance literature. We encourage everyone to read thesearticles

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

year!

© 2016 JohnWiley & Sons Ltd

doi:10.1111/corg.12171

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