Comparative Corporate Governance: A Research Overview

Corporate governance developed to maintain the accountability, stability, and performance of corporations. It has evolved to concern not just the financial health of the company, but its social and environmental impact. There is considerable international institutional diversity in corporate governance. The role and significance of market institutions varies among different governance systems.

This work provides a concise insight into the defining impulses of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century corporate governance evolving through a series of competing epoch-making paradigmatic contests. The present paradigm highlights a shift towards corporate sustainability involving the corporate delivery of long-term value in financial, social, environmental, and ethical terms. In analysing the purpose of the company and the definition of value creation, the hegemony of agency theory and shareholder primacy is challenged. More expansive theoretical explanations are considered which recognise the deeper values companies are built upon, the wider purposes they serve, and the broader set of relationships they depend upon for their success.

This book will be of value to researchers, scholars, and students in corporate governance, sustainability, business, and accounting. Managers, professionals, and other general business readers will also find this text of interest.

Thomas Clarke is Professor Emeritus at the University of Technology Sydney, Visiting Professor at Toulouse Business School (Barcelona), and was a foundation professor at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS).