National Culture, Corporate Governance Practices, and Firm Performance

In this paper, we examine the universality of “good” corporate governance practices as exemplified by the Anglo-American governance paradigm. Using a new database from Governance Metrics International featuring highly granular measures of corporate governance practices across a large number of countries for the period 2006-2011, we first find that the national cultural dimension of individualism is positively associated with transparent disclosure and explicit corporate policy, and uncertainty avoidance is negatively associated with transparent disclosure and minority shareholder protection. In addition, the stock market-based (versus bank-based) financial system of a country is negatively associated with transparent disclosure and minority shareholder protection. We further find that firm-level corporate governance practices are positively associated with firm performance. The relation between firm-level corporate governance practices and firm performance is stronger in countries with a well-developed stock market. We conclude that national culture matters in firms’ adoption of “good” corporate governance practices, and that the effect of firm-level corporate governance practices on firm performance depends on whether firms are compared within a country or across countries.