A Content Analysis of Corporate Governance Codes in Emerging European Countries

The objective of this study is to analyse the corporate governance codes from 14 Emerging European Countries and examine if these countries comply with the recommendations of European Commission regarding corporate governance by using the content analysis technique. The main research proposition is to identify how many out of the 32 recommendations included in this analysis are fulfilled by the corporate governance codes from the Emerging European Countries and how these developed during time. Data sample consists of 14 corporate governance codes from Emerging European Countries, which are examined in the context of the recommendations of European Commission. Firstly, we compile the list of recommendation published in 2003 (2003/284/EC), 2004 (2004/913/EC), 2005 (2005/162/EC) and 2009 (2009/384 and 385/EC) by the European Commission and the recommendation published in the next years related to the remuneration policy and the role of non-executive and supervisory board. Following the steps made by Hermes et al. (2006), Hermes et al. (2007) and Kubicek (2016) we divide the recommendations into 32 priorities. The results of this research provide a general overview regarding the compilation between the national corporate codes from Emerging European Countries with the latest European Commission recommendations. Thus, among the countries who respect the recommendations of European Commission, Slovenia is the first with 28 recommendations respected out of 32, followed by the Czech Republic with 27 recommendations respected and Slovakia with 26. The countries with least respected recommendations are Poland with 13 out of 32 and Bulgaria with 16 recommendation out of 32. Future research directions may attempt to broaden the sample to all European countries who published a corporate governance code and finding new possible patterns of research in Europe, making a comparison between developed countries and emerging countries. Moreover, future research could also investigate if the European Commission recommendations were implemented into the company's annual reports.