How CGIR Contributes to the Development of Corporate Governance: One Mission, Various Formats

• Author: Praveen Kumar,Alessandro Zattoni
• Published date: 01 November 2013
• Date: 01 November 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/corg.12043

Editorial

How CGIR Contributes to the Development

of Corporate Governance: One Mission,

Various Formats

Praveen Kumar and Alessandro Zattoni

What kind of papers does Corporate Governance: An

International Review (CGIR) publish? Does CGIR

publish only empirical papers or also accept conceptual

ones? Is my study suitable for publication in CGIR? These

are typical questions we receive from scholars who are con-

sidering submitting a paper to the journal and want to have

a better understanding of its mission and scope. The editors’

responsibilities obviously include answering these – and

other – questions from potential submitters, along with con-

tinually improving the journal’s website so that it becomes a

useful tool for the editorial team, the authors, and the

readers of the journal.

We have decided to write this editorial to help address

the persistent requests for more details on the style of

the journal. In particular, we focus on the various types

(or formats) of papers that CGIR welcomes. As stated in

the authors’ guidelines, CGIR solicits six different types of

articles: (1) empirical, (2) conceptual, (3) review, (4) perspec-

tive, (5) commentary and, from this issue onward, (6) point

and counterpoint. We now provide more details and infor-

mation on each format.

(1) Empirical studies published in CGIR should aim at

constructing or testing theories about the antecedents or the

consequences of corporate governance mechanisms and

processes. CGIR particularly encourages the submission of

multi-country studies because they often generate interest-

ing international corporate governance insights; however,

we also welcome single-country studies if suff‌icient new

insights on the underlying theory and/or empirical meth-

odology are generated. This means that the study should

explain if the results can hold across several types or catego-

ries of governance systems, or if they are affected strongly by

some national institutions, and/or provide signif‌icant new

methods-related innovations regarding the empirical testing

of international corporate governance theories. We solicit

both quantitative method papers aimed at testing theoretical

hypotheses about the relationships between key constructs,

and qualitative method studies aimed at building new theo-

retical insights (Zattoni, Douglas, & Judge, 2013). In both

cases, empirical studies should be characterized by a rigor-

ous data collection and analysis in order to reach the publi-

cation standards of the journal. Most of the studies

submitted to CGIR are in fact empirical studies and, conse-

quently, they are the most frequently published format. For

example, in volume 20 (2012), 28 out of 32 articles published

were empirical studies.

(2) Conceptual articles are aimed at developing new theo-

retical insights and relationships regarding the antecedents

or the consequences of corporate governance mechanisms

and processes. These articles develop theoretical frame-

works and propositions that can be empirically tested. The

new theoretical insights can be generated in several ways;

for example, by combining different theoretical insights, by

exploring logical paradoxes in the literature, by challenging

existing theories (like the dominant agency theory), or by

synthesizing recent insights into a new theory. Conceptual

studies – like the empirical ones – should explain in which

governance systems the new theoretical insights can apply

and/or how national institutions affect them. But even

though CGIR welcomes conceptual papers, we receive few

such conceptual papers,and only very few of them reach the

publication stage because the submitted studies often tend

to be purely descriptive and do not provide a strong theo-

retical contribution. For this reason, it is not surprising that

only one conceptual paper was published in CGIR in 2012

(i.e., Cuevas-Rodriguez, Gomez-Mejia, & Wiseman, 2012).

(3) Review articles are aimed at summarizing a stream of

research on a specif‌ic topic, identifying gaps in the literature,

and highlighting the most promising directions for future

studies. Review articles should go beyond a mere synthesis

of the literature; they should analyze the various theoretical

frameworks applied and the set of empirical methods

513

Corporate Governance: An International Review, 2013, 21(6): 513–515

© 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

doi:10.1111/corg.12043