TABLE 1 Country origin legal system, year and issuer of most recent worldwide codes
Country origin
legal system
Year of
last code
Issuer of last code Last code
English
Cyprus 2002 The Cyprus Stock Exchange Corporate governance code
Ireland 1999 Irish Association of Investment Managers Corporate Governance, Share Option and
Other Incentive Schemes
Australia 2003 ASX Corporate governance council Principles of good corporate governance
and best practice recommendations
Canada 2002 Toronto Stock Exchange Corporate governance policy-proposed
new disclosure requirement and
amended guidelines
Hong Kong 2004 Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Hong Kong code of corporate governance
India 2000 Securities and exchange board of India Report of the Kumar Mangalam Birla
Committee on corporate governance
Kenya 2002 Private sector of corporate governance
trust
Principles of corporate governance
Malaysia 2000 Securities commission Malaysia Malaysian Code on corporate governance
Pakistan 2002 The securities and exchange commission Code of corporate governance (revised)
Singapore 2005 Council on corporate disclosure and
governance
Code of corporate governance
South Africa 2002 Institute of directors in Southern Africa King report on corporate governance for
South Africa 2002 (King II Report)
New Zealand 2004 Securities Commission Corporate governance in New Zealand:
principles and guidelines
Thailand 2002 Stock Exchange of Thailand Code of best practice for directors of listed
companies
USA 2003 New York Stock Exchange Final NYSE Corporate governance rules
UK 2003 The Financial Reporting Council The combined code on corporate
governance
French
Belgium 2004 Corporate governance committee Belgian corporate governance code
France 2003 Association Française des Entreprises
Privées
The corporate governance of listed
corporations
Greece 2001 Federation of Greek Industries Principles of good governance
Brazil 2004 Instituto Brasileiro de governanca
corporativa
Code of best practice of corporate
governance
Indonesia 2001 The national committee on corporate
governance
Code for good corporate governance
Mexico 1999 Mexican Stock Exchange Codigo de mejores practicas corporativas
Perù 2002 National Supervisory commission of
companies and securities
Principios de buen gobierno para las
sociedades
Italy 2002 Committee for the corporate governance Corporate governance code
Malta 2005 Malta Financial Services Authority Principles of Good Corporate Governance
Portugal 2003 Comissão do Mercado de Valores
Mobiliários
Recommendations on Corporate
Governance
Spain 2004 Instituto de Consejeros-Administradores Principles of good corporate governance
Turkey 2003 Capital markets board of Turkey Corporate governance principles
The Netherlands 2003 Corporate Governance Committee The Dutch corporate governance code
German
Austria 2002 Austrian Working Group for Corporate
Governance
Austrian code of corporate governance
6 CORPORATE GOVERNANCE
Volume 16 Number 1 January 2008 © 2008 The Authors
Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
similar contents, but they may also differ in some principles.
Therefore, we analyzed codes to see if they cover the following
items (Gregory and Simmelkjaer, 2002): shareholders’
rights, employees’ role, board meeting and agenda, separation
of Chairman and CEO, board composition and independence,
board directorship, deontology for directors, conflict
of interest, election term/term limits/mandatory retirement,
evaluating board performance, directors’ remuneration,
remuneration committee, nomination committee, and audit
committee (see Table 2). We created a dummy variable for
each principle: 0 not covered, 1 covered.
Finally, we collected detailed notes on the codes’ recommendations
regarding the board of directors (i.e., the separation
of Chairman and CEO, the board composition and
independence, evaluating board performance, the composition
of remuneration, nomination, and audit committees).
These principles can be considered the core of good governance
codes. The strictness of recommendations may vary
from objective and strict on the one hand, and vague and
loose on the other hand. Subsequent readings of the collected
data focused on identifying the differences among
codes. After comparing and contrasting data numerous
times (Maxwell, 1996), we classified recommendations as: (i)
“strong” when they contained objectively strong and quantitatively
rigid rules; (ii) “semi-strong” when they contained
objectively semi-strong and quantitatively rigid rules; (iii)
“weak” when they didn’t contain objective and quantitatively
rigid rules, but only vague and general ones; and (iv)
“not covered” when the topic wasn’t covered by the code
(see Table 3 for the final categorization). We assigned a
number to each recommendation: 3 for strong recommendations,
2 for semi-strong, 1 for weak, and 0 for not covered.
We also measured the strictness of all codes’ recommendations
on the board of directors using a variable (i.e., the
overall strength of the code) calculated as the number of
strong recommendations on boards included in each code.
TABLE 1 Continued
Country origin
legal system
Year of
last code
Issuer of last code Last code
Czech Republic 2004 Czech Securities Commission Corporate governance code
Germany 2003 Government Commission German
Corporate Governance Code
The Cromme Code
Korea 1999 Committee on corporate governance Code of best practice for corporate
governance
Japan 2004 Tokyo Stock Exchange Principles of corporate governance for
listed companies
Taiwan 2002 Taiwan Stock Exchange Taiwan corporate governance best-practice
principles
Switzerland 2002 Swiss business federation Swiss code of best practice for corporate
governance
Hungary 2002 Budapest Stock Exchange Corporate governance recommendations
Lithuania 2003 Lithuania stock exchange The corporate governance code
Poland 2004 The Best Practices Committee of the
Warsaw Stock Exchange in association
with the Corporate Governance Forum
Best practices in public companies
Slovakia 2002 Bratislava Stock Exchange Corporate governance code
Slovenia 2005 Ljubljana Stock Exchange, Managers’
Association of Slovenia, Association of
the Supervisory Board Members of
Slovenia
Corporate governance code
Scandinavian
Denmark 2003 Copenhagen Stock Exchange Committee
on Corporate Governance
Report on Corporate governance in
Denmark
Finland 2003 HEX Plc, Central Chamber of Commerce
of Finland Confederation of Finnish
Industry and Employers
Corporate governance recommendation
for listed companies
Sweden 2004 The codes group Swedish code of corporate governance.
Report of the code group
Norway 2005 Norwegian Corporate governance Board The Norwegian Code of Practice for
Corporate Governance
WHY ADOPT CODES OF GOOD GOVERNANCE? 7
© 2008 The Authors Volume 16 Number 1 January 2008
Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
DATA ANALYSIS
Data analysis of the content of codes followed generic prescriptions
for analyzing qualitative data and involved
various applications of sorting, organizing, and coding data
(Lee, 1999). This was done through the use of theoretical
memos (Maxwell, 1996).
We started collecting information on the governance
systems of countries considered in the study, to understand
the main peculiarities of national corporate governance
systems. We collected information from different sources,
such as books and articles presenting or comparing national
governance systems (Reynolds and Flores, 1989; Charkham,
1994; Hopt, Kanda, Roe, Wymeersch and Prigge, 1998;
Gugler, 2001; etc.). We also analyzed literature on codes
(Gregory and Simmelkjaer, 2002; Aguilera and Cuervo-
Cazurra, 2004; etc.) to set up an initial coding scheme.
Then we started coding two codes from each countryorigin
legal system: the UK and the US code for English
origin legal systems, the Norwegian and the Swedish code
for Scandinavian origin legal system, the German and the
Japanese code for German origin, and the French and the
Italian code for France origin. Both scholars rated all items
independently. After this test of the coding system, we
measured consistency among coders, and we defined
coding rules according to the differences encountered. Then
TABLE 2 Items considered in the analysis of codes’ coverage
Items Description
Shareholders’ rights Treatment of shareholders in term of one share/one vote,
protection from controlling shareholders’ abuse, general
meeting participation and proxy voting
Employees’ role Role of employees in corporate governance in term of right to
elect some members of the board
Board meeting and agenda Frequency of board meetings per year and agenda
Separation of Chairman and CEO Separation between the role of chairman and chief executive
officer
Board composition and independence Board recommendations in term of minimum size, composition,
mix of inside and outside directors, qualification, and
membership criteria such as experience, personal
characteristics, independence, core competencies and
availability
Board directorship Directorship recommendations in term of number and kind of
positions that each director should have in other companies
Deontology for directors Specific director’s criteria
Conflict of interest Non competition obligations and specific principles to avoid
conflict of interest for board’s members
Election term/term limits/mandatory retirement Specific election term criteria such as age, appoint term and
re-election term
Evaluating board performance Boards evaluation procedures
Directors’ remuneration A specific set of remuneration principles for directors both
executive and non-executive and managers in term of shares,
share-price incentives, share option schemes and limit to vest
shares and to exercise options
Remuneration committee A specific set of criteria about roles, size, composition,
membership criteria such as experience, personal
characteristics, independence, core competencies and
availability, and schemes of remuneration
Nom