In Search of a Greater Pluralism of Theories and Methods in Governance Research

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/corg.12101
• Date: 01 January 2015
• Author: Praveen Kumar,Alessandro Zattoni
• Published date: 01 January 2015

Editorial

In Search of a Greater Pluralism of Theories and

Methods in Governance Research

Praveen Kumar and Alessandro Zattoni

Afew years ago, Durisin and Puzone (2009) undertook a

major effort to map the intellectual structure of gover-

nance research with the ultimate aim of understanding the

level of maturity of corporate governance as a discipline.

Their bibliometric analysis of more than 1,000 publications

shows that corporategovernance research is characterized by

both the use of agency theory as the dominant theoretical

lens, and empirical samples from one country, typically the

US and to a less extent the UK. In such a context, the authors

claim that CGIR has the distinction of significantlycontribut-

ing to the maturation of corporategovernance as a discipline

by providing an intellectualspace where authors from differ-

ent disciplines and geographic areas can dialog and build on

others’ research. At the same time, Durisin and Puzone

encouraged CGIR to take further initiatives to move the

debatebeyond its current theoretical and geographical limits.

Later, Zattoni and Van Ees (2012) supported and extended

this view by analyzing papers published in CGIR during the

period 2008–10. They show that a large majority of studies

explore governance issues relatedto control and monitoring,

build hypotheses using an agency theoretical perspective,

collect empirical dataabout one single country (in most cases

a liberal market economy), and follow an explanatory theory

testing methodological approach. Based on this review, they

invited governance scholars to broaden the theoretical and

methodological scope of their research in order to increase

our understanding of global corporate governance phenom-

ena. In particular, they encouraged scholars to develop

studies that: (i) adopt complementary or alternative theories

to agency theory; (ii) explore the interaction among gover-

nance mechanisms; (iii) collect longitudinal data in order to

capture the evolution of governance practices and national

institutions over time; and (iv) analyze governance phenom-

ena in relatively unexplored countries and/or in cross-

country research projects takinginto account the institutional

forces developed at the national level.

Given this background, the journal is striving to publish

papers that fulfill these expectations. The four papers pub-

lished in this issue are all nice examples of studies broaden-

ing our understanding of corporate governance phenomena

by going beyond agency theory as a single lens and adopt-

ing a methodological pluralism (Judge, 2008). In particular,

the first study provides not only a more systematic under-

standing of the out- or under-performance of listed family

firms versus other types of firms, but also explores the role

of firm strategies in the family control–firm performance

relationship. We particularly appreciate both the use of a

robust meta-analysis technique on studies using samples of

US family listed companies (see also Carney, Van Essen,

Gedajlovic, & Heugens, 2013, for private family firms), and

the search for the effect of strategic mediating variables on

family control–performance relationship (see also Zattoni,

Gnan, & Huse, 2013, on the mediating role of board pro-

cesses and effectiveness). The second and the third studies

follow a qualitative approach (e.g., McNulty, Zattoni, &

Douglas, 2013; Zattoni, Douglas, & Judge, 2013) and provide

interesting and relevant evidence on the growing literature

on board processes and effectiveness (e.g., Kumar &

Sivaramakrishnan, 2008; McNulty, Florackis, & Ormrod,

2013; Zona & Zattoni, 2007). These studies are noteworthy

because they explore two board characteristics, namely,

directors’ nationality and language and directors’ identifica-

tion, that are relatively understudied in the literature. They

then examine the impact of these characteristics on board

processes and effectiveness in Scandinavian countries. The

special merit in the fourth paper is to develop a sociopoliti-

cal perspective on the diffusion of shareholder value orien-

tation and to test hypotheses on a longitudinalsample of the

largest listed companies in the Netherlands. In sum, all

papers make significant efforts to advance our theoretical,

empirical, and practical knowledge of corporate governance

issues around the world.

In more depth, the first study published in this issue

contributes to the literature by addressing an importanttopic

in corporate governance and family business research:

whether publicly listed family firms outperform other types

of companies. To advance our knowledge on this issue, Van

Essen, Carney, Gedajlovic, and Heugens develop hypotheses

on the relative performance of listed family firms versus

listed nonfamily firms. In addition, the study explores the

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Corporate Governance: An International Review, 2015, 23(1): 1–2

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

doi:10.1111/corg.12101