ECMLG'15: Corporate governance in emerging economies

I had the pleasure of chairing the 'emerging economy' session at ECMLG this year. Three papers were presented by researchers who have been investigating the emergence and conduct of corporate governance in Romania, Tunisia and Lithuania:

• Romania: Florina Pinzaru described the corporate governance environment in Romania, with particular emphasis on companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. Her opening statement, that corporate governance is in effect a 'fashion statement' certainly caught the audience's attention. It turns out that corporate governance really only exists amongst publicly listed companies—the understanding being that corporate governance is the compliance framework by which and through which companies and and boards are held accountable for their actions. Pinzaru was attempting to find linkages between corporate governance and financial performance. Similar to much prior quantitive research, her statistical analysis found no direct connection to performance.
• Tunisia: Coral Ingley spoke about a multiple case study of Tunisian SMEs conducted by an international team of researchers, to understand power shifts and board roles in different SME environments. Ingley and her colleagues identified five different archetypal 'styles' of board contribution, ranging from a legal fiction to a fully integrated and performance-oriented contribution. The model, in its early stages of development, demonstrates that 'different strokes for different folks' is a truism—that no one-size-fits-all model or approach to board activity in [Tunisian] SMEs is likely to be conducive to performance outcomes.
• Lithuania: Renata Korsakiene discussed a study that explored how personality traits of managers might (or might not) be related to the success of small firms. Building on earlier research that the characteristics of owner/managers seem to be material to business success, Korsakiene's study attempted to test whether previously postulated personality traits are material. The study demonstrated a positive relationship between some personality traits and turnover. However, the results were neither consistent nor predictable. This is perhaps not surprising given the vagaries of human agency, the highly contextual nature of leadership, and that many internal and external factors may bear in on firm performance at any given time. 

These studies were useful to the extent that they highlighted some interesting variations between the dominant understanding of corporate governance in developed nations and developing nations. They also highlighted the relative maturity of methodological approaches to research being conducted in developing nations. Much of the research continues to utilise methodologies and approaches that were common in developed nations some years ago. As such, researchers based in developing nations may well benefit from robust discussions with colleagues from developed nations, to take advantage of contemporary and emerging research techniques.