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Purpose – The paper explains how internal reporting systems, as embedded practices informing organizational actions and “know-how”, contributed to the inertia in implementing a corporate form of governance in a transitional public organization in a developing country – Egypt.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper synthesizes an institutional theory framework in order to capture the case study mixed results. Drawing on DiMaggio and Powell's (1983) notions of isomorphic mechanisms, Ocasio (1999) and Burns and Scapens’ (2000) notions of organizations’ memory, history, cumulative actions and routines, Brunsson's (1994) notion of organizational institutional confusion as well as Carruthers's (1995) notion of “symbolic window-dressing” adoption of new practices, the paper explores the dynamic of a public hospital corporatization processes. Data collection methods include semi-structured interviews, documentary evidence and direct observation.

Findings – The case study evidence shows that the interplay between the new form of “corporate” governance and the intra-organizational power, routines and “know-how” created internal organizational confusion and changed organizational members’ narrative of risk and uncertainties.

Research limitations/implications – The paper does not reveal the role of reformers involved in the public sector “governance” reform in developing countries. Exploring such a role goes beyond the scope of this paper and represents an area of future research.

Originality/value – The paper provides a comprehensive account of public sector “governance” reform in a developing nation, while exploring the role of management accounting and costing systems in facilitating or otherwise that reform processes.

This paper aims to examine corporate governance and consequences of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) in the US from a socio‐political perspective.

The author employs neo‐liberalism and its related mentality of governmentality to develop an analysis of how corporate governance and reforms such as SOX are socially constructed through autonomous agents, including managers and accountants, and various power relationships that comprise government.

This paper theorizes that legislative reform, such as SOX, represents pervasive mechanisms of disclosure, surveillance and power, and an insurance rationality designed to manage the new and significant risks of corporate governance. A framework is established which conceptualizes SOX as the intersection of neo‐liberalism, political rationalities and governmental techniques, and accounting practices which lead to the elements of security, quantification and shareholder value. Through this framework a model of risk as governance is developed that examines SOX through technologies of the self, calculation and insurance, designed to act upon managers using knowledge about control or financial statement weaknesses. Such mechanisms identify corporate governance risks, which can be acted upon by outside experts, such as accountants.

The major inference from this paper is that corporate governance research in accounting should pursue new lines of inquiry, which will permit the more profitable extension of existing research. Such inquiry should focus less on empirical corporate governance factors and more on the relationships, and power constructs of corporate governance, as well as how legislative reforms employ tactics to normalize the behaviour of not only managers, but also accountants.

Explores the central role that private information on corporate intangibles plays in the private corporate governance role of financial institutions (FIs). The institutional fund managers’ (FMs) private understanding of many qualitative or intellectual capital factors driving corporate performance was the basis for wide‐ranging corporate governance influence concerning financial performance and conventional Cadbury‐style corporate governance issues. This was primarily a private, implicit corporate governance process by FIs and their FMs during good corporate performance. Also reveals how the nature of FM corporate governance influence became more interventionist with adverse changes in corporate performance factors, in FI‐side influence factors and in environmental circumstances. The qualitative intangible factors, especially board and top management qualities, were central to this more proactive form of intervention. Finally, discusses the case results within the research literature on the corporate governance role of FIs, identifies new directions for research and discusses policy implications briefly.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to develop a discussion expounding the Islamic perspective of corporate governance as a special case of a broader decision‐making theory that uses the premise of Islamic socio‐scientific epistemology. Islamic epistemology is premised on the divine oneness of God. The worldly explanation of divine unity is done by means of specific laws and instruments that make the Islamic epistemology functionally viable in developing, implementing and inferring from the application of the epistemological rules to different issues. In the present case the issue is of corporate governance.

The development and conclusions of this discursive paper as a conceptual one point out the possible application of a process‐oriented epistemology of unity of knowledge to corporate governance. The underlying methodology of institutional discourse and integration with dynamic parameters is formalized.

The end results of the conceptual framework of this paper on corporate governance are contrasted with the approach to corporate governance in mainstream literature. Also the same Islamic theoretical and philosophical background of corporate governance is examined from the dual (mixed) Islamic economic and institutional perspective.

The practical implications of the Islamic idea of corporate governance are immense in studying transaction cost minimization in decision‐making environments. In this regard it is argued that the theory of Islamic corporate governance presents a discursive process, transparency and institutional participation that reduce transaction costs.

The paper contributes fresh knowledge in corporate governance theory in the light of two central issues. First, an organic preference formation is studied by a process model. Second, transaction cost is minimized while pursuing a discursive and participatory model of decision making in an environment governed by the systemic meaning of unity of knowledge as its episteme. Relevant institutional policies can be developed in the light of such systemic discursion under the episteme of unity of knowledge understood and applied in the systemic organic sense.

Although researchers and multilateral agencies recognize that no single model of corporate governance exists, this has not stopped the push for a one best corporate governance model. Research recognized institutional factors, including culture, affects the nature of corporate ownership structure and consequently on disclosure, transparency and enforcement practices. Drawing on East Asian examples, the chapter argues that a focus on ‘market’ principles alone fails to account for the contextual effects of Asian political, historical and institutional forms which moderate corporate governance systems and practices. This chapter suggests that there is the need to consider the extant effects of ‘culture’ on corporate governance.

The purpose of this paper is to trace the evolution and persistence of different forms of business ownership in conjunction with the values and institutions that shaped those forms, and discuss the implications for corporate governance in India.

Research paper analyzing broad historical trends, integrating multiple frameworks.

Many ownership forms exist: family, government, professional, and foreign (multinational firms). In each period, shifts in values resulted in shifts in institutional and legislative frameworks, which, in turn, gave rise to different forms of business ownership. The end result, however, has been an amalgamation of diverse co‐existing ownership models, with evidence of evolution towards more balanced values.

Comparative research involving other national contexts will help broaden our understanding of the origins and persistence of different forms of governance. Exploration of other governance mechanisms, such as the changing roles of the board of directors or the impact of legislation, also can be explored in the Indian context.

As multinational firms expand their operations and outsourcing in India, they must understand the existing governance structures in order to better manage their activities.

Perspective of corporate ownership and governance in India using a cultural, institutional, and historical perspective.

The paper presents an overview of perspectives on corporate governance grounded in the Common Law legal traditions of the UK and the USA. It further discusses whether that perspective is suitable for global application.

The paper presents personal observations on the operational dynamics of rules and practices of corporate governance as necessary functional supports for large scale financial capitalization of enterprise under conditions of modern industrialization.

The paper concludes that the US perspective on corporate governance is rationally related to objective requirements of financing enterprise and that, as capital markets become larger and more liquid around the world, the corporate governance regimes will, in the main, come to resemble the US model. Though cultural variations on the US pattern are compatible with the purposes of corporate governance to constrain abuse of power in private corporations.

The implication of this paper is for the implementation of corporate governance regimes in emerging market countries, i.e. that flexibility is permissible but a focus on transparency and accountability under all circumstances is required.

The contribution of the paper is to provide a framework for balancing the rules and practices of US corporate governance with the cultural styles and patterns of different national regulatory settings.

The purpose of this paper is to present a paradigmatic look at corporate governance.

This paper starts with the premise that any worldview can be associated with one of the four basic paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. The paper looks at the current state of mainstream academic finance and notes that it is founded only on the functionalist paradigm. It argues that any view expressed with respect to corporate governance is based on one of the four paradigms or worldviews. It, therefore, discusses four views expressed with respect to the nature and role of corporate governance.

The paper emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the nature and role of corporate governance from a certain paradigmatic viewpoint. Emphasizing this example in the area of corporate governance, the paper concludes that there are opportunities for mainstream academic finance, in general, and corporate governance, in particular, to benefit from contributions coming from the other three paradigms if they respect paradigm diversity.

The paper recommends a serious conscious thinking about the social philosophy upon which finance, in general, and corporate governance, in particular, is based and of the alternative avenues for development.

This conceptual chapter develops a discussion expounding the Islamic perspective of corporate governance as a special case of a broader decision-making theory that uses the premise of Islamic socio-scientific epistemology. This chapter contributes fresh knowledge in corporate governance theory in the light of two central issues. First, the central issue is of organic preference formation studied systemically by process model. The second issue is of transaction cost minimization while pursuing such a discursive and participatory model of decision-making in an environment governed by a systemic meaning of unity of knowledge as its episteme. Relevant institutional policies are shown to be capable of formulation in the light of such systemic discursion under the episteme of unity of knowledge understood and applied in the systemic organic sense.

This paper seeks to challenge a tacit, but nevertheless prevalent, notion that a robust corporate governance framework will, as a matter of course, engender good corporate social responsibility and, thereby, ‘ethical’ decision-making. It does so by drawing, in the first instance, on an example of apparent good corporate social responsibility and exposing the possibly unethical dimensions of the incident. The paper suggests that corporate governance always has a subjective ethical dimension and that such regimes are best understood as ‘regimes of practice’ – actions, actors and discourses – that shape and mould both thinking and action. Such regimes, it is posited, can best be explored by looking at actual instances or events of significance and analysing these. The paper then offers the example of international pharmaceutical companies’ HIV/AIDS drugs pricing policies, especially in South Africa, as such a critical incident and interrogates it using the ‘analytics’ approach outlined by Dean (1999). The principal aims of the paper are to demonstrate that corporate social responsibility and corporate governance regimes are not neutral processes but aspects of ‘governmentality’ and to offer a technique, analytics, by which such processes can be explicated.