Incoming Editorial

• Author: Praveen Kumar,Alessandro Zattoni
• Published date: 01 January 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/corg.12012
• Date: 01 January 2013

Incoming Editorial

Praveen Kumar and Alessandro Zattoni

It is an honor and a privilege for us to take on this new role

and responsibility as editors-in-chief (EICs) of Corporate

Governance: An International Review. After 20 years of exist-

ence, the journal is in good shape: it is now considered the

premier outlet for corporate governance research. We cel-

ebrated the twentieth anniversary with a conference at the

Judge Business School on corporate governance bundles a

few months ago, where we met all the previous EICs of the

journal (namely, Bob Tricker, Chris Mallin, and Bill Judge).

We learned a lot from them, through their speeches and

through personal conversations with them. Bob Tricker

explained why he decided to launch a journal on corporate

governance; Chris described how she moved the journal

forward; and Bill provided us with a lot of suggestions and

insights on how to lead the journal and take it to the next

level.

CGIR has improved considerablyboth in term of rigor and

relevance under Bill Judge’s leadership. He created a strong

and well-reputed editorial board that includes six associate

editors, 33 editorial review board (ERB) members, 24 advi-

sory board members, and two screening editors. The results

from this strong editorial board under Bill’s leadership have

been very impressive. Just to mention a few: (1) the number

of submissions is now steady at over 400 per year; (2) the

impact factor of the journal is around 2.0 (it was 2.8 in 2011,

and is 1.89 in 2012); (3) the turnaround cycle is under 2

months; (4) the journal has recently been listed amongst

f‌inance journals in the Social Sciences Citation Index.

The articles published in this issue are an example of the

style and the quality of the journal. In the f‌irst article,

Jansson explores the Swedish media as governance mecha-

nisms using an institutional and symbolic perspective. The

author uses a qualitative analysis of articles published in the

Swedish press covering two governance scandals involving

Skandia and ABB. The study contributes to the governance

literature by showing that the prevailing institutional logic

of the media is an important variable for understanding their

functioning as governance mechanisms. The study also indi-

cates that the media support different sets of norms in dif-

ferent governance environments.

In the second paper, Elsilä, Kallunki, Nilsson, and Sahl-

ström use unique data on the personal wealth of CEOs of

Swedish listed f‌irms to address a major gap in the large

literature on the incentive effects of CEO compensation.

While theoretically,performance incentives of CEO compen-

sation should depend on the proportion of compensation to

the CEO’s total wealth, the paucity of data on CEO wealth

has limited the empirical tests of one of the most important

issues in corporate governance. This paper provides novel

evidence and insights on this issue.

In the third paper, Alon examines the implications of

the widespread adoption of the International Financial

Reporting Standards (IFRS), which is an important aspect

of the effort to bring uniformity to corporate governance

standards, on organizations in transitioning or emerging

economies; the adoption of IFRS can engender institutional

complexity in these countries because of conf‌licts with

existing institutional structures and logic. Focusing on

the specif‌ic institutional context of Russia, and using a

unique dataset, the paper emphasizes that new standards

co-existed with existing standards, and analyzes factors

that allow f‌irms to deal with the co-existence of “dual”

institutions.

In the fourth paper, McNulty, Florackis and Ormrod

explore a timely and relevant topic: the relationship between

board processes and f‌irm f‌inancial risk. The article uses

primary data collected through a questionnaire survey

directed to company chairs of UK nonf‌inancial companies.

By investigating social-psychological dynamics of collective

board behavior, the authors provide a theoretical and

empirical contribution to the understanding of board pro-

cesses and effectiveness in controlling f‌inancial risks.

In the f‌ifth paper, Liao and Hsu examine an important

issue regarding board structure and performance that has

received relatively little attention, namely, the determinants

and performance consequences of common membership of

directors across committees (such as the audit and compen-

sation committees). Using archival data from the US, the

paper f‌inds that common memberships are more likely in

f‌irms with poor governance and limited expertise, but are

not driven by demand for higher coordination across

committees.

In the last article, Aerts, Cheng and Tarca analyze the

relationship between earnings management and manage-

ment’s use of earnings explanations. The study is based on

archival data from listed companies in four countries char-

acterized by different regulatory environments for manage-

ment commentary. The results indicate that the type of

explanation signif‌icantly affects the relationship between

performance explanation and earnings management, and

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Corporate Governance: An International Review, 2013, 21(1): 4–6

© 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

doi:10.1111/corg.12012