Comparative Corporate Governance & International Business Research

• Author: William Judge,Igor Filatotchev,Ruth Aguilera
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8683.2010.00832.x
• Published date: 01 November 2010
• Date: 01 November 2010

Editorial

Comparative Corporate Governance &

International Business Researchcorg_832493..495

By William Judge, Igor Filatotchev, & Ruth Aguilera

It is well known that the editors at Corporate Governance:

An International Review (CGIR) are dedicated to making

this journal the premiere scholarly outlet for all corporate

governance research. To wit, our central mission is to

develop a rigorous and relevantglobal theory of antecedents

and effects of corporate governance.However, CGIR is more

than just a corporate governance journal, it is also an inter-

national business journal that is focused on a specific but

essential phenomenon where a geographically-diverse set of

authors submit their work to an equally geographically-

diverse set of reviewers which eventuallyis read by scholars

throughout the world. In this editorial, we discuss the con-

tributions of CGIR to the international business literature.

We illustrate the international business thrust of CGIR by

first reviewing the contents of this issue. Then, we expand

our focus by considering the larger sweep of CGIR contri-

butions to and reliance on the international business litera-

ture. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of

CGIR scholarship to the effective practice of business in a

global economy.

This issue contains five scholarly publications. The lead

article was written by Carpenter, Miller, Indro, & Richards

and it addresses the relationship between CEO compensa-

tion structure and the amount of foreign equity capital

raised by firms operating in 40 countries throughout the

world. Interestingly, Carpenter and associates reveal that

home country risk influences this relationship considerably,

which suggests that home country characteristics systemati-

cally influence host country financing for multinational

firms.

Our second article was authored by Voulgaris, Stathopou-

lis, and Walker and it too is focused on CEO compensation.

However, this time compensation structure is the dependent

variable, unlike the first article where compensation struc-

ture is the independent variable. Voulgaris and associates

seek to understand the relationship between the utilization

of compensation consultants in the United Kingdom and its

affect on CEO compensation structure. They rely on the lit-

erature developed in the United States,and they find that the

use of compensation consultants has a similar impact on

CEO payin terms of the ratcheting up effect found in the US.

However, unlike the US market, use of compensation con-

sultants in the UK makes the firm much more likely to utilize

incentive compensations tied to overall company perfor-

mance in the overall compensation package. Hence, even

though the UK governance environment is quite similar to

that of the US, some different governance relationships

emerge.

Johanson and Ostergren (2010) authored our third article

and it is a conceptual exploration of the board independence

norm. By comparing the governance environments in

Sweden and the United Kingdom, these authors reveal some

interesting new insights on how national context influences

corporate governance standards and practices. Specifically,

they show how differences in social culture, business groups,

and ownership patterns have logical and systematic differ-

ences on the board independence norms in these two differ-

ent economies. In general, this article demonstrates how a

global norm associated with board independence would be

misplaced and dysfunctional if applied universally.

Next, Delgado Garcia, del Queveda-Puente, and del la

Fuente-Sabada (2010) explore the relationship between

ownership structure and firm reputation in Spain. Using

literature developed in the US and UK, these scholars illus-

trate how legal systems influence reputational capital in

different ways. For example, in the Anglo-American gov-

ernance environments, institutional ownership has been

shown to have a positive influence on firm reputation.

However, in Communitarian governance environments,

such as Spain, institutional ownership is shown to have a

negative relationship. Hence, we learn that ownership

structure has a differing impact on corporate reputation

suggesting that ownership structure is perceived differ-

ently throughout the world.

Our fifth and final article is written by Eminet and Guedri

and it explores the international labor market for directors.

Specifically, this study explores how director reputation

interacting with the board nominating committee influences

director characteristics in France. From this novel study of

yet another governance environment, we learn that the labor

493

Corporate Governance: An International Review, 2010, 18(6): 493–495

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8683.2010.00832.x