Corporate governance research in "the rest of the world"

The United States has led the way in academic corporate governance research. This is not unwelcome, nor should it be gullibly criticized or impulsively dismissed. Even if such research inarguably takes place both within a given academic tradition, as well as within a particular institutional corporate governance context, we stand to learn a lot from it despite any such contextual strictures. Insightful, cutting-edge, and innovative research should be invaluable wherever it initiates. But it leaves a void, as indeed corporate governance practices, and reforms, move apace and are important the world over. The limelight on corporate governance indisputably has been accelerated by the 2008 financial crisis. Although there is no consensus on what caused the crisis, and there probably never will be, there has been no shortage of suspects (Davies [2010]), which has spawned calls for reform of accounting, company boards, and pay, just to name a few related to corporate governance. In that sense, the crisis has done corporate governance research a favor, as it provides a rich laboratory in which to study failures and lessons, as well as changes and impacts, both intended and unintended. So research on corporate governance in different contexts has to strengthened.