A bibliometric review of global research on corporate governance and board attributes

Abstract

© 2019 by the authors. This paper conducts a bibliometric review of global research on the role of boards of directors in corporate governance. Boards of directors play a crucial role in the corporate governance of publicly traded firms, as they monitor the performance of top executives on behalf of shareholders and help to set the firm's overall strategic direction. Our review documents most influential articles, authors, and journals in this area. The bibliometric analysis highlights the multi-disciplinary nature of research on boards of directors, covering the fields of finance and economics, accounting and auditing, and management and strategy. Furthermore, co-citation analyses reveal the core theoretical and conceptual articles on agency theory and ownership structure that provide the foundation for research on corporate governance and boards of directors. The review shows that, despite its practical importance, studies on how boards of directors contribute to corporate sustainability represent only a small fraction of the articles in this literature. This highlights the need for more research on this particular topic in the coming years. Moreover, the keyword co-occurrence analysis suggests other emerging research topics in the BDCG knowledge base are in the areas of gender diversity, CSR, and innovation, which pinpoints possible future research directions for scholars in the field.