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The Effect of the Reform of Canadian State‐Owned Enterprises on Major Corporate Governance Mechanisms
Author(s) -
Bozec Richard,
Zéghal Daniel,
Boujenoui Ameur
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
australian journal of public administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.524
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-8500
pISSN - 0313-6647
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8500.2004.00380.x
Subject(s) - corporate governance , independence (probability theory) , business , accounting , state (computer science) , state owned , process (computing) , set (abstract data type) , public administration , market economy , economics , finance , political science , statistics , mathematics , algorithm , computer science , programming language , operating system
Corporate governance is nowadays one of the most discussed topics by academics, practitioners and regulators. Most of the discussion is targeted at publicly held corporations. The present research deals with the issue of governance in the public sector and more specifically in state‐owned enterprises (SOEs). We investigate the effect of the reform of Canadian SOEs on the characteristics of boards and board committees. Our results seem to confirm the presence of significant adjustments in board characteristics following two major events in the reform: commercialisation and privatisation. In both cases, boards have on average evolved towards a set of structures and mechanisms that have the potential to improve independence and governance. This study sheds new lights on the process of adjusting corporate governance mechanisms to new strategies and to new environments.