his paper reviews the mainstream theories of corporate governance and the relationship between corporate governance structures and firm financial performance. We show that the four predominant theories often employed to study the corporate governance – firm performance relationship are agency theory, stewardship theory, resource dependence theory, and institutional theory. In spite of being an overwhelmingly predominant theoretical approach in corporate governance studies, agency theory has recently been criticized for not fully reflect corporate governance practices in various institutional contexts. It is, therefore, necessary to re-examine the traditional agency framework to understand the corporate governance – firm performance relationship in various institutional environments. |
