A Behavioural Approach to Corporate Governance: Theories and Methodologies

Abstract
Most of the studies oncorporate governance that have been conducted thus far are based on Agency Theory and are mainly focused on the structural approach. These studies which are mostly have done by accounting and finance scholars, do not represent  the board members real behavior and interactions among the players as well. Therefore, the board decision-making processes has remained a black box for those researchers specializing strategy and organizational behavior. This study aims to systematically review the corporate governance  researches  that have been particularly focused on organizational behavior perspective.  The research question is what scholars have published so far on theory and methods in this area of study? We used a systematic literature review applying a qualitative Meta-synthesis approach. We found 140 articles from which 78 articles with average JIF score 4.34, were selected. From coding process we recorded 1404 descriptive and 337 content analysis codes which revealed 28 theories that have been classified in three categories of “Board Role Theories”, “General Theories” and “Social Psychological Theories”. Findings show that until now most of the studies are based on the Agency Theory, using  quantitative  data with cross-sectional research design unable to perfectly explore the processes and dynamics of board meetings. Based on the findings , in order to better understand the processes and dynamics of board members behavior, we suggest that researchers consider mixed research designs  and  collect  primary data from interviews, and direct observations, instead of relying on archival data that comes out  from securities market databases.