A systematic review of corporate governance and ownership

Abstract

This study aims to systematically review the key characteristics and issues of corporate governance and ownership (CGO) research and to offer directional suggestions concerning the future of CGO research. The Systematic Assessment Quantitative Technique (SQAT) was used to identify and analyze 65 peer-reviewed CGO articles from six high-quality academic databases. The study covered 2009 to 2019 and there is evidence of a growing number of CGO articles over the number of years covered. Most of the studies have taken place in Asia and Europe, while South America has the lowest number of studies.  98% of CGO research has been empirical in nature, which calls for more conceptual studies to give more understanding of the research area because knowledge is dynamic. The primary focus of the articles has been on firm performance and closely followed by regulatory policies. All the CGO articles adopted the quantitative research method, using mainly critical analysis. However, combining both quantitative and qualitative methods will make future studies more robust and give additional insight into various issues of CGO. Finally, the use of only six databases which although contains high quality, peer-reviewed articles, but not all peer-reviewed CGO articles were in the databases. Future systematic reviews can widen the scope of databases to gain further insight.