Taking Stock of Corporate Governance Research While Looking to the Future

Editorial This essay identifies some key issues for the analysis of corporate governance based on the articles within this special review issue coupled with our own perspectives. Our aim in this issue is to distil some research streams in the field and identify opportunities for future research. We summarize the eight papers included in this special issue and briefly highlight their main contributions to the literature which collectively deal with the role and impact of corporate boards, codes of corporate governance, and the globalization of corporate governance systems. In addition to the new insights offered by these reviews, we attempt to offer our own ideas on where future research needs to be targeted. We highlight a number of research themes where future governance research may prove fruitful. This includes taking a more holistic approach to corporate governance issues and developing an inter-disciplinary perspective by building on agency theory while considering the rich new insights offered by complementary theories, such as behavioral theory, institutional theory and the resource-based views of the firm. In particular, future corporate governance research needs to be conducted in multiple countries, particularly in emerging economies, if we want to move closer to the journal's aim of producing a global theory of corporate governance. Our analysis suggests that analytic and regulatory approaches to corporate governance issues should move from a "one-size-fits-all" template to taking into account organizational, institutional and national contexts.