Diversity and disobedience at the top, pay incentives, social norms, and board reforms: A kaleidoscope of corporate governance research

• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Author: Konstantinos Stathopoulos,Till Talaulicar
• Date: 01 July 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/corg.12468

EDITORIAL

Diversity and disobedience at the top, pay incentives, social

norms, and board reforms: A kaleidoscope of corporate

governance research

1|OVERVIEW

This editorial intends to sum up some of our major accomplishments

in the previous publishing year of Corporate Governance: An

International Review and to stimulate and foster the global corporate

governance community to take stock of the intriguing insights to be

gathered from the research that we were able to release in 2021. It is

the mission of CGIR to be the premier scholarly outlet for international

corporate governance research that is both rigorously done and

relevant to practitioners. Corporate governance is defined broadly as

the exercise of power over corporate entities so as to increase the

value provided to the organization's various stakeholders, as well as

making those stakeholders accountable for acting responsibly with

regard to the protection, generation, and distribution of wealth

invested in the firm. Rigorous research builds or tests extant theory,

contains clear definitions of constructs and well-specified relation-

ships, demonstrates a command of previous literature, and is method-

ologically sound. Relevant research asks research questions that

practitioners and policymakers care about. It addresses real problems

which practitioners and policymakers are wrestling with and offers

insights to practitioners and/or policymakers that can assist them in

governing corporations better.

We are delighted that we continue to receive a very high number

of submissions. This indicates that corporate governance research is

actively pursued widely and that CGIR is viewed as a leading outlet

sought to publish this work. CGIR is open to corporate governance

research from a wide variety of academic disciplines, theoretical

underpinnings and methodological approaches. Submitting authors

have backgrounds in, and affiliations with, accounting, business,

economics, finance, law, management, political sciences, and

sociology. Regarding article types, CGIR publishes conceptual, empiri-

cal (quantitative and qualitative), and review articles. Key is that

submissions provide original, insightful, and interesting theory and

research to build on previous corporate governance research and/or

redirect research into entirely new areas.

In 2021, we received a total of 536 submissions which is the sec-

ond largest number after the previous year's record number of

688 submissions that was certainly also driven by the unique pan-

demic situation. Due to our multiple-stage selection process, we were

able to provide timely feedback to submitting authors. The initial

screening process allows us to assess the formal requirements and

overall fit of a submitted manuscript with the mission and scope of

the journal. About 50% of all submissions were desk-rejected in this

initial screening stage. The editorial figures of our review and selec-

tion processes remained largely stable regarding the proportion of

accepted articles as well as the proportion of rejected submissions

after initial screening. The average number of days between submis-

sion and the first decision remained exactly the same to the previous

years and amounted to 33 days. Due to the high number of submis-

sions, we were also able to accept a record number of manuscripts to

be published in CGIR. In 2021, the authors of 46 submissions received

the pleasant news that their articles have been accepted—the highest

number of accepted manuscripts in the 3 years of our first term as

Editors-in-Chief and a doubling compared with 2020.

Volume 29 consists of six regular issues with 27 articles, 24 of

which are original articles and three are review articles. Currently into

the 30th year of CGIR's service to the global corporate governance

community, we can all be proud of the journal's contributions to the

continuous development of corporate governance practice and the-

ory. We are delighted that our readership base continues to increase

tremendously. In 2021, the journal's outputs were downloaded

268,635 times by users from all around the globe. This is an increase

of almost 20% compared with our downloads in the previous year,

which may, at least partly, stem from our recently established pres-

ence in the social media platforms of Twitter (@CGIRjournal) and

LinkedIn (#CGIRJournal). Make sure to follow us on these platforms

and stay connected in order to be informed promptly about newly

accepted articles, calls for papers, and CGIR conferences and

workshops.

2|EDITOR'S PICKS 2021

In 2021, we introduced the new category of lead articles that we term

“Editor's picks.”These are articles that, for various reasons, we choose

to lead the issue and for which Wiley grants open access for the

12 months after their publication to increase their reach. This is not

to have a superior subset of articles published in CGIR. The decision

to flag an article as Editor's pick is rather a purely editorial one as we

are convinced that our community may want to start reading a new

issue of the journal with this article that illuminates some new twist,

may be particularly provocative, or stimulates general thinking with

DOI: 10.1111/corg.12468

394 © 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Corp Govern Int Rev. 2022;30:394–398.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/corg