Innovative Research Methods for Corporate Governance

Corporate governance has long been criticized for being a “discipline with a narrow focus on empirical studies of abstracted variables and bereft of attempts at holistic explanations of integrated and interrelated social and economic institutions and systems” (Clarke, 2017, p. 48). Delbrigde and Keeloy (2010) point to the fact that the unreflective acceptance of management language and definitions proposed by mainstream research has promoted and supported a one-sided understanding of the functioning and governance of organizations. Research methods that allow governance scholars to go beyond the managerialist conceptions of social reality and challenge assumptions, methods, interpretations, and communication (Morten, 2019) are needed for relevant governance research. The predominant research method in a particular area may have a significant impact on the relevance of the research, and methodological sterility may reduce rigor (Filatotchev & Wright, 2017; Gabrielsson et al., 2019). Corporate governance research can benefit from a plurality of research methodologies and traditions, like any other management discipline (Lee, 2020). There is a global tendency of knowledge creation which prioritizes “context-free methodological principles” to create “value-free, apolitical knowledge” by supposing that all contexts can be assessed in the same manner and from the same standpoint (Bell et al., 2017, p. 3). Although quantitative and qualitative empirical methods have a long history and tradition in corporate governance research (Judge, 2008; Tosi, 2008; Hambrick et al., 2008; Buchanan et al., 2014; Zattoni & Van Ees, 2012; McNulty et al., 2013), the field has been “dominated by quantitative research” (McNulty et al., 2013, p. 190). An earlier call points to the need for assessing real complexities of governance through exploratory, descriptive, or transformative studies (Bédard and Gendron, 2010) rather than through large scale quantitative studies (Ahrens and Khalifa, 2013). This dominance of quantitative research methods has limited the scope of governance research leading for example to corporate governance processes themselves being bypassed in academic research and being poorly understood as a result (de Villiers & Dimes, 2021; Parker, 2017). Innovative methods to assess broader qualitative context encompassing history, narratives, and legal, economic, and political systems can be helpful to ensure a holistic research approach to governance (Godwin et al., forthcoming). In addition, the theory of path dependence has emphasized the importance of organizational and cultural behaviors and routines in corporate ownership and governance (Esposito De Falco, 2014; Bebchuk & Roe, 1999). Scholars in corporate governance have been asking for a change for some time (see for example Leblanc, 2004). Given the continuously evolving nature of corporategovernance, there is a need for studies that can explore and describe corporate governance phenomena with due sensitivity to the novelty and diversity in which they are embedded. After all, research is not just a question of methodology but the selection of method implies some view of the situation being studied (Lee, 1992). For example, by examining shareholder theory and stakeholder theory, Ciappei et al. (2021) highlight how in corporate management the political approach is superordinate to the ethical approach. This relationship between politics and ethics is analyzed in the context of corporate social responsibility. Indeed, the research argues that corporate social responsibility is a political and not ethical fact. The ethical roots of corporate social responsibility can only be rediscovered through the enhancement of the moral dimension of management (Ciappei et al., 2021). In this way, some research is emerging. For example, there has been consideration of “sustainable corporate governance” (Huse, 2005; Aguilera, 2005; Cucari, 2018; Esposito De Falco, 2021), taking into account that approaches which look for “good” and “effective” governing are similarly challenged (Banerjee, 2007; Clarke, 2017). Recently, one methodological innovation based on set-theoretic approaches has been adopted in corporate governance research to empirically help tackle the complexity implied by the bundle perspective on corporate governance (Garcia Castro et al., 2013; Bell et al., 2014; Cucari, 2019). In the past, some studies have already proposed to rethink corporate governance, for example, from a law and economics perspective (Pacces, 2012). Others have suggested that to answer the fundamental question “how does corporate governance work?”, we need to develop an updated framework for analyzing the phenomenon, based on the ongoing debate in the economic and legal analysis of corporate governance because both law and economics are complementary tools for investigating social reality (Calabresi, 2016). Critical perspectives have emphasized all sorts of domination within the larger political and social context and the role of corporate governance in relation to emancipation (Godwin et al., forthcoming). There is, however, still a lot to do (Jebran & Chen, 2020; Scherer et al., 2020; Gelter & Puaschunder, 2021). This handbook aims to offer a timely opportunity to explore, revisit, and critically examine new methodological insights and innovations in the corporate governance scholarship with the purpose of advancing diversity and novel theorizing in this field. In this book, we have gathered innovative corporate governance research that addresses formal structures, informal structures, processes that exist in the corporate settings, and the broader economic, political, social, and environmental context. We have also developed pathways to interdisciplinary methods and built a link between theory and practice. In compiling this handbook, we are delighted to have recruited contributors of varying levels of seniority in academia from early career researchers who can bring fresh new ideas, to emeritus professors who can understand the limitations in existing ideas about corporate governance. Similarly, we are thrilled that the authors and the focus of their chapters provide a truly international range of perspectives that may facilitate the cross-pollination of ideas for the reader. We have organized the chapters that others have written into three broad sections of perspectives, research designs, and empirical studies.