Maturation of Corporate Governance Research, 1993–2007: An Assessment

• Published date: 01 May 2009
• Date: 01 May 2009
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8683.2009.00739.x
• Author: Fulvio Puzone,Boris Durisin

Maturation of Corporate Governance Research,

1993–2007: An Assessment

Boris Durisin* and Fulvio Puzone

ABSTRACT

Manuscript Type: Review

Research Question/Issue: This study seeks to investigate whether governance research in fact is a discipline or whether it

is rather the subject of multi-disciplinary research. We map the intellectual structure of corporate governance research and

its evolution from 1993–2007.

Research Findings/Results: Based on the analysis of more than 1,000 publications and 48,000 citations in Corporate Gover-

ance: An International Review (CGIR) and other academic journals, our study identif‌ies the most inf‌luential works, the

dominant subf‌ields, and their evolution. Our study assesses the maturation of corporate governanceresearch as a discipline;

it f‌inds increasing sophistication, depth and rigor, and consistency in its intellectual structure.

Theoretical Implications: There is a large body of accumulated corporate governance research in the US, yet there is an

empirical gap on cross-national studies in the literature. Furthermore, hardly any of the top cited works undertake their

study in a cross-national setting. Thus, corporate governance research and CGIR in its quest to contribute to a global theory

of corporate governancemight benef‌it if articles have a cross-national methodological approach and empirical grounding in

their research design and if articles explicitly aim at stating the theoretical underpinnings they draw on.

Practical Implications: Globalists f‌ind in CGIR an outlet addressing economics and f‌inance (e.g., whether and how

compensation or dismissal of CEOs is related to board characteristics), management (e.g., whether and how best practice

codes adoption is related to board characteristics and performance), and accounting (e.g., whether and how earnings

manipulations is related to board characteristics) issues globally.

Keywords: Corporate Governance, Journal Inf‌luence, Co-citation Analysis, Bibliometrics

INTRODUCTION

Governance is exposed to criticism. In situations of cor-

porate and political failure, criticisms of governance

failure abound and calls for new oversight often promptly

follow. Similarly, the f‌ield of corporate governance research

is exposed to criticism, too. While encompassing contribu-

tions from many disciplines, including economics, manage-

ment, f‌inance, law, and accounting, some doubt whether

corporate governanceresearch in fact is a discipline in and of

itself; in this view, corporate governance research is the

subject of multi-disciplinary research rather than a disci-

pline. Thus, while the relevance of corporate governance

research is not questioned, there are reservations about its

intellectual structure. The paper addresses this issue. It

examines the common body of knowledge of corporate gov-

ernance research – its existence and evolution. The study

does not contribute to a specif‌ic topic of the f‌ield of corpo-

rate governance; it aims to contribute to the discipline of

corporate governance research. It does so by analyzing the

f‌irst 15 years of Corporate Governance: An International Review

(CGIR) from 1993 to 2007 and the works on corporate gov-

ernance research in other academic journals – Academy of

Management Review (AMR), Academy of Management Journal

(AMJ), Accounting Review (AR), Administrative Science Quar-

terly (ASQ), International Journal of Accounting (IJA), Journal

of Accounting and Economics (JAE), Journal of Accounting

Research (JAR), Journal of Business (JoB), Journal of Finance (JF),

Journal of Financial Economics (JFE), Management Science (MS),

Organization Science (OS), Review of Economic Studies (RES),

Review of Financial Studies (RFS), and Strategic Management

Journal (SMJ) – during the same period. The study does not

assess the evolution and inf‌luence of a certain f‌ield of cor-

porate governance research; it assesses the evolution of cor-

porate governance research as a discipline. If there is an

established common body of knowledge that is inf‌luential

*Address for correspondence: Bocconi University, Management Department, Via

Guglielmo Roentgen 1, I-20136 Milano, Italy. Tel: +39 02 58 36 68 57; Fax:+39 02 58 36

25 30; E-mail: boris.durisin@sdabocconi.it

266

Corporate Governance: An International Review, 2009, 17(3): 266–291

© 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8683.2009.00739.x

across contributions from economics, management, f‌inance,

law, and accounting, scholars who do not consider it in their

research projects do so at the peril of the advancement of

corporate governance matters in society. The study investi-

gates whether there is common agreement on the topics that

are at the core of corporate governance research, how the

topics evolved over time, whether new topics emerged, and

if works related to specif‌ic topics are increasinglygrouped in

common intellectual repositories. It contributes to the litera-

ture by addressing the kind of criticisms that question cor-

porate governance research as a discipline.

Corporate governanceresearch will be exposed to the pro-

cesses of maturationof a discipline’s common body of knowl-

edge, in case it is not only the subject of multi-disciplinary

research. The maturation of a discipline can be considered as

taking place if the variety of topics over time increases (evi-

dence of increasing sophistication); if for a specif‌ic topic, new

contributions emerge to complement old works as reference

(evidence of increasing depth and rigor); and if works related

to specif‌ic topics are increasingly grouped in common intel-

lectual repositories (evidence of increasing consistency in the

intellectual structure of the f‌ield). By analyzing three time

segments within a 15-year period, we map the evolution of

the intellectual structure of the f‌ield. By comparing CGIR to

other academic publications, we assess what CGIR achieved

in corporate governance research in its quest to “publish

cutting-edge research on the phenomena of comparative cor-

porate governancethroughout the global economy” (mission

statement of CGIR).

The intellectual basis upon which a discipline develops

is largely revealed in the citations that researchers use in

their writings. A growing amount of researchers’ attention

has been devoted to bibliometric analyses of various areas of

management research, as most managerial disciplines

emerge from relatively youthful stages and interest to assess

the progress done arises. Among them information systems

science (Culnan, 1987; White and McCain, 1998), research in

organizational behavior and organization theory (Blackburn

and Mitchell, 1981; Culnan, O’Reilly and Chatman, 1990;

Üsdiken and Pasadeos, 1995), marketing-related subjects

(Goldman, 1979; Leong, 1989; Cote, Leong and Cote, 1991;

Hoffman and Holbrook, 1993; Pasadeos, Phelps and Kim,

1998; Tellis, Chandy and Ackerman, 1999), operations man-

agement research (Pilkington and Liston-Heyes, 1999),

international management (Dubois and Reeb, 2000; Werner

and Brouthers, 2002), accounting (Sriram and Gopalakrish-

nan, 1994), f‌inance (Alexander and Mabry, 1994), strategic

management (Tahai and Meyer, 1999; Ramos-Rodríguez and

Ruíz-Navarro, 2004; Nerur, Rasheed and Natarajan, 2008),

and even f‌ields in their infancy, such as knowledge manage-

ment research (Ponzi, 2002).

Though not always ref‌lecting a transfer of knowledge or

intellectual indebtedness (Biemans, Griff‌in and Moenaert,

2007), the strength of bibliometric studies is their unobtru-

siveness: being conducted post-publication and without

direct contact with the author, they guarantee a high degree

of objectivity (Garf‌ield, 1979). It is widely accepted that

researchers tend to gather in “invisible colleges” – informal

networks where common questions are examined with

common frameworks (Price, 1963; Crane, 1972; Burt, 1977).

Through a process of incremental revisions, modif‌ications,

and expansions on previous works by members of the same

invisible college, theories evolve until they reachthe status of

paradigms (Kuhn, 1962). Therefore, the patterns of citation

within a certain f‌ield document the evolution overtime of the

intellectual structure of that f‌ield, as they are an objective

representation of the exchanges occurring within the corre-

sponding invisible college. Authors working in a stream of

research often cite one another as well as draw on common

sources of knowledge. Further, their works are likely to be

frequently co-cited (i.e., cited together) by other authors

working on intellectuallysimilar themes. As Paisley(1984: 14)

argues that “journalcitations are strong indicators of the f‌low

of information to, within, and from a scientif‌ic discipline.”

Thus, citations of seminal works provide a basis for untieing

the complex patternsof associations that exist among them as

well as to trace the evolution of the intellectualstructure over

time. If corporate governance research were the subject of

multi-disciplinary research rather than a discipline, works

would not be expected to exhibit topic-related consistency in

their citationpattern and co-citationswould be fortuitous. On

the other hand, if works get constantly cited by corporate

governance studies and if their citation pattern exhibits con-

sistency, and if these works get complemented in their cita-

tion pattern by new works exhibiting more depth and rigor,

and if a coherent co-citation pattern with other works related

to the topic is displayed, corporate governance research

exhibits the traits of a discipline.

Thus, this article analyzes the evolution of the intellectual

structure of corporate governance research. We conduct a

bibliometric review of all the journal article contributions to

one of the leading journals in research on corporate gover-

nance, namely Corporate Governance: An International Review

(CGIR), as well a series of other academic journals (AMR,

AMJ,AR,ASQ,IJA,JAE,JAR,JoB,JF,JFE,MS,OS,RES,RFS,

and SMJ) publishing work on corporate governance topics.

The time span considered is 1993 to 2007, divided in three

time frames. Bibliometric methods have the advantages of

quantif‌iability and objectivity; bibliometric analysis can

avoid some of the potential subjective biases and perhaps

serve to providevalidationto what the best experts in the f‌ield

may have intuitively inferred. Since corporate governance is

a multidisciplinary f‌ield that has liberally borrowed and

assimilated works from a variety of academic disciplines, a

bibliometric analysiscovering an extended period of time can

help us to pinpoint the most inf‌luential works and the inter-

relationships among them. Our study can assess whether

corporate governance research can exhibit the traits of a

discipline. It analyzes the citations contained in the articles,

identif‌ies how the citationsare related to the various topics of

corporate governance research and how the patterns of

co-citations evolved. It outlines the subf‌ields that constitute

the intellectual structure of corporategovernance research. It

identif‌ies works that play a dominant role in a subf‌ield and

works that playa crucial role in bridging the sphere between

the subf‌ields. It discusses whether and how new topics

emerged and had an inf‌luence on citation patterns.

The paper is composed of three main sections. First, the

methodology adopted to measure the evolution of the intel-

lectual structure of corporate governance research is brief‌ly

outlined. Next, the results of the analysis are presented.

Finally, the article discusses considerations for future

MATURATION OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE RESEARCH, 1993–2007 267

Volume 17 Number 3 May 2009© 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd