Mapping the growth and direction of corporate governance research: A broad overview of literature between 1930 and 2014

Abstract

In the past two decades, corporate governance (CG) literature has grown in leaps and bounds. The quick succession with which some corporate scandals surfaced in the early 2000s and their extensive media coverage have prodded the social science researchers to go back to their story boards and examine the reasons for such scandals. Interestingly, corporate behaviour was no more the exclusive preserve of micro-economists and finance researchers. Instead, researchers from different disciplines like philosophy, psychology, sociology and law too joined in examining issues related to what is today popularly known as corporate governance. Each scholar tested hypothesis and offered explanations in a language native to her own discipline. Given the pervasiveness of the social sciences, very soon corporate governance begun to be explained and understood in an increasingly multi-disciplinary perspective. Each discipline brought in its own unique flavour in picking and explaining the nuances of corporate governance. With so many disciplines contributing to a single overarching theme, it is no surprise that today there is a surfeit of corporate governance literature and more continues to get added every single day. This paper reviews the growth and development of CG literature over the past eight decades. In doing so, it studies 1789 published research papers to track how literature organized itself to build the CG discourse.