Role of institutions in shaping corporate governance system: evidence from emerging economy

Corporate governance (CG) is often split among rule and principle-based approaches to control in idiosyncratic institutional contexts. This split is often primed by the types of institutional conformations, their potencies, and the complementarities within them. Drawing on the theoretical foundation of institutional theory, this study theorizes CG practices and structures as institutionally resoluted and directed and explores the key institutional determinants of good CG practices in an emerging economy. Based on qualitative method, this study presents eight specific antecedents of good corporate governance practices in weak institutional settings (Pakistan). In particular, the study explores the extent to which certain underlying formal and informal institutional determinants, such as the auditing, political, legal, board, shareholders awareness, voting, culture and values play a determining role in corporate governance. This study advocates how each of these precursors must be implied, enunciated and hitched, on the basis of pertinent institutional peculiarities, in order to address contextual corporate governance challenges. This study contributes to the institutional theorizing of good corporate governance, by paying attention to the context, efficacy (instrumentality) and legitimacy (symbolic) in expounding the good corporate governance practices in an international business environment.