Corporate governance codes and their contents: An analysis of eastern European codes

Abstract

Existing literature suggests that the contents of corporate governance codes are similar due to external forces, such as increased integration of countries in the global economy, the increased role of foreign institutional investors and recommendations on corporate governance practices of international organisations. This paper analyzes and compares the code contents of seven Eastern European countries with respect to generally accepted best practice recommendations on disclosure rules, strengthening shareholder rights and modernising boards. We show that for some countries the contents of the country codes are actually rather different as compared to these best practices, suggesting that domestic forces related to country-specific characteristics of corporate governance systems may have helped shaping the contents of corporate governance codes.