2017 Best Paper Awards Announcement

• Date: 01 September 2018
• Published date: 01 September 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/corg.12254

ANNOUNCEMENT

2017 Best Paper Awards Announcement

Please join us in congratulating the authors of the award‐winning

papers published in 2017 (volume 24) of Corporate Governance: An

International Review (CGIR). The nomination criteria included the

following 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 2017 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 challenges

confronting corporations 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 337 submitted to

CGIR), seven were nominated to be considered for our best paper

distinction by EAB members.

We formed an awards committee comprising of four exceptional

scholars serving on our Editorial Review Board. In keeping with our

emphasis on diversity of perspective, they collectively represent

diverse disciplinary backgrounds. Specifically, the four distinguished

members of the awards committee were: Ruth Aguilera

(Management/USA), Chris Florackis (Finance/UK), Cynthia Clark

(Management/USA), and Andrea Melis (Accounting/Italy). 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 contribu-

tions to the international corporate governance literature. Based on

the committee's rankings, we are pleased to announce the 2017 best

paper and runner‐up awards.

The 2017 best paper award goes to Anna Alon and Amy M.

Hageman for their analysis of unofficial payments for tax purposes in

20 transition economies. The study shows that rule of law and dispo-

sitional trust have, respectively, a negative and a positive influence on

unofficial payments. These findings highlight that informal institutions

play an important role in transition economies of the former Soviet

bloc, where bribes may be common means to speed up bureaucratic

procedures. The following is a nominating comment by Chris Florackis

on the strengths of this research study:

“Excellent research design and analysis that is based on a

sample of over 5000 firms in 20 transition economies of

the former Soviet Bloc. This study scores highly in the

area of “significance”as very likely will “catch the eye”

of researchers who study corporate governance issues

and hopefully of regulators who design/develop reforms

in emerging economies”.

This “Best Paper Award”article may be now accessed free on our

journal's website, and its citation is as follows:

Anna Alon and Amy M. Hageman, 2017. An institutional perspec-

tive on corruption in transition economies. Corporate Governance. An

International Review, 25(3): 155–166.

The runner‐up award winner for 2017 was authored by Steve

Gove, Mark Junkunc, Olga Bruyaka, Luiz Riccardo Kabbach De Castro,

Martin Larraza‐Kintana, Santiago Mingo, Yue Song, Pooja Thakur

Wernz for their article on variable measurement. The study investi-

gates the conceptualization and measurement of CEO duality, a key

variable in several governance studies. The results show that CEO

duality is instable and that this instability varies both at the national

and within‐firm levels. A such, these findings challenge the reliability

of single dichotomous variables and invites scholars to assess the sta-

bility of these variables over time.

Bill Judge made this nominating comment on the paper:

“This article is timely, relevant, multi‐national in focus,

and is clearly written. There has been a lot of recent

research on the flawed conceptualization of this

construct (e.g., Krause & Semandeni), but there hasn't

been much methodological explorations of it nor has

there been specific recommendations put forth in the

literature. I especially liked the cross‐national team

engaged in this pioneering work, consistent with CGIR's

mission. While researchers in the field are likely to

continue using more and more sophisticated methods

using crude and unstable archival measures such as

binary, single year measures of CEO duality, this article

is a plea for more rigorous conceptualization and

measurement of this construct. I especially liked the

thoughtful and concrete recommendations offered in

this study. While we need to question the entire edifice

of archival research whereby we take for granted the

reliability and validity of the raw data collected by

others, this study helps to begin to address the biased

imbalance in research and review standards applied for

primary and secondary data”.

DOI: 10.1111/corg.12254

390 © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Corp Govern Int Rev. 2018;26:390–391.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/corg