Good corporate practices in poor corporate governance systems

Purpose Attempts to benchmark corporate governance practices have focused primarily on developed capital markets, whereas cross‐country comparisons remain difficult for emerging markets. Given the growing importance of emerging markets as an asset class, this paper attempts to shed some light on the quality of governance practices in a large sample of countries and the extent to which that quality may offset perceived weaknesses in the institutional framework in which companies operate. Design/methodology/approach In the absence of comparable data for many emerging markets, the paper employs new survey evidence from the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report. Findings The analysis suggests the following: first, legal institutions play a key role for corporate governance, but other factors, such as politics and cultural and historical roots, matter too. While corporate governance practices in emerging markets tend to be weaker than in developed capital markets, several emerging markets have already made substantial progress in upgrading their practices and, as their institutions continue to emerge, the existing quality gap looks set to narrow further. There are several countries whose companies on average appear to follow better practices than the quality of their legal and regulatory environments would suggest. Research limitations/implications Good corporate governance at the company level need not be tied or constrained by its local environment. That good company practices may at least partly offset weak framework conditions and could have important implications for the mode of entry foreign investors choose, an issue to be left for further research. Originality/value Overall, the paper's main contribution lies in its novel approach to disaggregate different levels of corporate governance, thus allowing a more textured assessment of corporate governance risk.