SOME PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS
Some of the findings presented in the papers in this issue were consistent with the findings in developed economies; other results were contradictory. Do Western theories and findings hold up when applied in the context of China and India? Do we need uniquely Asian theories to address the governance issues in China and India? While the papers in this special issue allow us to begin to answer these questions, we believe many more questions remain to be asked and answered. It is clear that some theories – such as the agency and institutional perspectives – offer useful lenses with which to view corporate governance practices and issues across different cultures. However, we also note that given the unique historical and religious backgrounds, paths of development, and sheer size of China and India, the patterns of corporate governance and the interrelationships among the key concepts and relationships may be considerably different from what have been established in existing theories. If correct, this suggests that contextually rich, new theory building is required.
Nonetheless, we should also keep in mind that the transitions in China and India are not isolated; they are part of a larger global transformation. Thus, many of the governance issues China and India confront also exist in other emerging economies, so future theory building and theory testing studies should aim at discovering patterns that are important and generalizable to emerging economies. This special issue offers a first attempt in testing extant theories, but, unfortunately, we did not receive many theory-building studies for the special issue. In particular, the next phase of research should examine how firms from these countries influence corporate governance in other countries as they expand abroad, and it would be interesting and useful to observe the extent to which corporate governance is similar within a wider variety of emerging market economies.
As we wrap up this special issue, we want to thank the Editor-in-Chief, Bill Judge, the Associate Editors, and the reviewers for their constant support and guidance, for without their effort, this special issue would not be possible. Since we each were born and raised in these two countries, this has been an unusually satisfying endeavor. We commend this issue for your consideration and research.